Tesla Earnings: Stock Pops in Premarket Trading; More News From ...

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Tesla stock was soaring Thursday morning after posting solid earnings Wednesday evening.

For the third quarter, Tesla reported earnings per share of 72 cents, better than the 60 cents Wall Street was projecting, according to FactSet. Automotive gross profit margins excluding the impact of regulatory credits and operating profit margins both improved sequentially and year over year.

Tesla stock was up 11.2% in premarket trading at $237.57, while S&P 500 futures were up 0.5% and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were down 0.2%.

Wall Street looks impressed with earnings. KGI Securities analyst Terry Lee upgraded Tesla to Outperform from Neutral with a $276 price target, up from $210 a share, according to FactSet. Goldman Sachs analyst Mark Delaney raised his price target to $250 a share from $230. He rates shares Hold.

Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas called the quarter “one of the strongest Tesla prints in a while.” (Analysts refer to quarterly reports as earnings prints.) He also believes the quarter could mark the bottom in investor sentiment towards Tesla’s car business. Jonas rates shares Buy and has a $310 price target for the stock.

Coming into Thursday trading, Tesla shares were down about 14% year to date. Falling sales have weighed on investor sentiment. Tesla delivered just under 1.3 million cars in the first three quarters of the year, down about 2%. Tesla, however, said Wednesday that it still expects to grow deliveries in 2024, implying fourth-quarter deliveries of at least 515,000 vehicles, a record and better than the roughly 490,000 analysts were projecting.

The average analyst price target for Tesla stock is now about $219 a share, up about $3 from Wednesday.