Tesla Q3: revenue flat at $28.05B, adjusted EPS $0.48 beats; operating income plunges 56% as energy revenue drops 16% on tariff refunds
What happened
Tesla reported Q3 2026 revenue of $28.05 billion, roughly flat year over year and about in line with consensus (~$27.9-28.3B), while non-GAAP EPS of $0.48 beat estimates ($0.43-0.45), though down 4% YoY. GAAP operating income plunged 56% to $718 million (2.6% margin) as operating expenses surged 39% to $4.78 billion on AI/superintelligence R&D, stock compensation and SG&A. Automotive revenue fell 3% to $20.56B on 486,532 deliveries (-2% YoY), but automotive gross margin improved to 18.5% GAAP (18.1% ex-credits, up from 15.4% a year ago), and services revenue jumped 33% to $4.61B. Energy generation and storage revenue fell 16% to $2.88B, which Tesla attributed in part to tariff-related customer refunds, even as storage deployments grew 10% to 13.7 GWh and order intake hit record highs. FSD (Supervised) attach exceeded 75% of North American deliveries with 1.74M active subscriptions (+67% YoY); Tesla delivered its 10 millionth vehicle, ended with its largest passenger-vehicle backlog in four years, put Cybercab into the Austin Robotaxi fleet, began Optimus production in Fremont and Semi production in Nevada. Free cash flow was $1.53B and cash rose to $45.4B.
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Start your free 14-day trialWho’s affected
- TSLA — EPS beat and improving auto margins offset by collapsing operating income and energy weakness; shares +1.3-2% after hours
- Solar/storage peers (ENPH, SEDG, RUN) — Tesla's energy revenue drop partly reflects tariff refunds, not pure demand weakness
- Mag 7 / robotaxi-AI narrative — Cybercab, Optimus and FSD milestones feed the autonomy story