Bloomberg Surveillance · Wednesday, July 22, 2026
Tesla reported earnings of 33 cents per share, significantly missing the expected 51 cents, and experienced negative free cash flow. While the company is investing heavily in AI and robotics, analysts note that it needs to sell more cars to fund its $25 billion capital expenditure plan for the year. The company's strategy of lowering average selling prices, even with record vehicle deliveries, impacted profitability.
“That's a big mess, you know, thirty three cents versus fifty one cents, and I get that Tesla is no longer really a car play.”
“To fund that twenty five billion in capex they have planned for this year, they need to sell a lot of cars. So they did sell well in the second quarter, right, but yet we're coming in low.”
“So they made money. They went negative cash flow. We expected that. They didn't go as negative as was expected, so that's good, but they did go negative cash flow.”