Wedbush Securities' Global Head of Technology Research, Daniel Ives, has raised Tesla Inc.‘s (NASDAQ:TSLA) price target to $350 after Elon Musk announced “significantly” reducing his time allocation to the Department of Government Efficiency in its earnings call on Tuesday.
What Happened: Musk, during its first-quarter earnings call, said, “Starting probably next month, in May, my time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly.”
“The large slug of work necessary to get the DOGE team in place is mostly done; I’ll continue to spend 1-2 days per week as long as the President wants me to,” he added.
According to Ives, "Musk made a huge move forward as his time in DOGE/White House now winds down and he will be laser focused on Tesla again."
This "remove the black cloud over Tesla," said Ives, and raised Tesla's target from $315 to $350 per share.
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Why It Matters: Not all analysts found the silver lining in Tesla's earnings, as Ross Gerber appeared increasingly skeptical of Musk’s ambitious projections following the electric vehicle maker’s rough first-quarter results, which saw profits plunge 71% year over year.
Gerber stated this is the worst performance he’s witnessed in his 11 years covering the company.
Gary Black saw the positives in Tesla’s latest results. The Future Fund’s Black noted on X that “earnings quality was fairly high” this quarter because profits weren’t significantly boosted by ZEV credit sales, unlike in the past. Black also pointed to substantially higher operating and non-operating expenses as further evidence of this stronger earnings quality.
Tesla reported first-quarter revenue of $19.34 billion, down 9% year-over-year. The revenue total missed a Street consensus estimate of $21.35 billion according to data from Benzinga Pro. Its earnings were 27 cents per share, down 40% year-over-year and missing a Street consensus estimate of 31 cents per share.
Price Action: Tesla shares jumped 6.56% in premarket on Wednesday after ending 4.6% higher on Tuesday.
Benzinga Edge Stock Rankings shows that TSLA has a weaker price trend over the short, medium, and long term. Its momentum ranking was strong at the 92.94th percentile, whereas its value ranking was very weak; the details for which, along with other metrics, are available here.
The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY) and Invesco QQQ Trust ETF (NASDAQ:QQQ), which track the S&P 500 index and Nasdaq 100 index, respectively, rose in premarket on Wednesday. The SPY was up 2.27% to $539.22, while the QQQ advanced 2.73% to $456.63, according to Benzinga Pro data.
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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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