Tesla reports second-quarter earnings Tuesday. Investors want a robotaxi update

Tesla will report second-quarter earnings after the bell on Tuesday. The company’s vehicle deliveries report on July 2 was better than analysts feared, but still represented a decline from the previous year.

The earnings call on Tuesday will give investors a better understanding of what CEO Elon Musk and company are doing to return to growth after reporting the biggest revenue decline since 2012 during the first quarter.

Some institutional investors will focus on the health of Tesla’s automotive gross margins and the company’s operating expenses after it implemented sweeping layoffs and offered price cuts and other incentives to drive EV sales.

Retail investors who submitted questions via the Say Technologies platform ahead of time are hoping for answers about the company’s delayed plan to unveil its CyberCab, a “dedicated robotaxi” and its progress on self-driving technology in general.

According to LSEG, as of Monday, analysts were expecting Tesla to report 62 cents per share in adjusted earnings on revenue of $24.77 billion for the period ending June 30, 2024.

Retail investors who submitted questions via the Say Technologies platform ahead of time are hoping for answers about the company’s delayed plan to unveil its CyberCab, a “dedicated robotaxi” and its progress on self-driving technology. They’re also seeking details about Tesla’s near-term priorities; the outlook for its rapidly growing battery energy storage business; the status of a new factory it promised to build in Monterrey, Mexico; and more.

In light of Musk’s recent endorsement of former President Donald Trump, and the CEO becoming a Republican megadonor this presidential election cycle, Tesla shareholders also submitted political questions ahead of the call.

One asked, “do you believe a Trump / Vance admin will support Tesla and EVs? How confident are you based on your conversations?” And another asked, “How can Elon Musk endorse/fund a party that denies climate change, yet at the same time Tesla’s mission statement is derived directly to fight climate change?”

Former president Trump has indicated that he would do away with subsidies and other federal programs that help buyers of, and producers of, fully electric vehicles specifically but not other automakers.

Reuters reported last week that Musk’s political and polarizing statements have “sparked concerns about Tesla’s brand, especially in liberal states such as California, which accounts for 10% of the company’s global deliveries.” California Tesla registrations fell to 52,211 vehicles during the second quarter, according to data from the California New Car Dealers Association.

Investors also submitted questions via Say Technologies about Tesla’s progress developing humanoid robotics that the company aims to put to work in its factories.

Musk claimed, during an annual shareholder meeting in June, that Tesla’s Optimus robots will be the catalyst for lifting the company’s market cap to an astronomical $25 trillion someday. Musk also called himself “pathologically optimistic” at that meeting.

Early Monday, Musk said in a social media post on X, Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robots will be “genuinely useful” and in “low production” for internal use at Tesla next year. He added they could be “hopefully,” in a higher volume production and available for use by “other companies in 2026.”

In April, Musk had told Tesla shareholders on a first-quarter earnings call Optimus would be in “limited production in the natural factory itself, doing useful tasks before the end of this year,” and Tesla “may be able to sell it externally by the end of next year.”

Tesla is a latecomer among tech companies developing humanoid robots. Its Optimus competitors include Boston Dynamics, Agility Robotics, Unitree and others. Robotics companies such as Sanctuary, Apptronik, 1X, Fourier are also working on dexterous manipulation hardware, mimicking human hands.

Musk has a long history of promising investors that futuristic Tesla products or services will be ready soon, even if they do not exist beyond a design concept.

For example, the billionaire CEO promoted a next-generation Roadster concept at an event in November 2017 and again in June 2018 in a series of tweets. He said at that time, “SpaceX option package for new Tesla Roadster will include ~10 small rocket thrusters arranged seamlessly around car.” The engines would improve speed and “even allow a Tesla to fly,” he wrote at the time. The refreshed Roadster is still not in production six years later, though Tesla has taken $250,000 deposits from customers who wanted one.

In another example, in 2015, Musk told shareholders that Tesla cars would achieve “full autonomy” within three years. In 2016, Musk said a Tesla car would be able to make a cross-country drive without requiring any human intervention before the end of 2017. And in 2019, on a call with institutional investors that would help him raise more than $2 billion, Musk said Tesla would have 1 million robotaxi-ready vehicles on the road in 2020, able to complete 100 hours of driving work per week each, making money for their owners.

None of those things have happened yet.

Tesla has recently made big changes to its driver assistance software, marketed in the U.S. as Autopilot and FSD-S (Full Self Driving Supervised) garnering excitement and favorable reviews among many fans and owners.

Musk and other execs are expected to discuss their remaining challenges to deliver on these longstanding self-driving promises on Tuesday’s call.