Tesla Cuts Full-Year Capex Guidance to About $20 Billion

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA ) reported third-quarter financial results on Wednesday. The transcript from the company's third-quarter earnings call has been provided below. This transcript is brought to you APIs. For real-time access to our entire catalog, please visit for a consultation. View the webcast at Summary Tesla, Inc. reported strong Q3 performance, with demand for vehicles exceeding production, driven significantly by Full Self-Driving (FSD) capabilities. The company began production of the Tesla Semi truck and demonstrated the new Roadster, indicating increased manufacturing capacity toward a goal of 5 million vehicles annually by 2030. Energy demand is high, with almost all Megapack slots sold out for 2027, and margins are expected to increase. Energy storage deployments were at 13.7 GWh, with gross margins improving to 33.1%. Tesla's Robotaxi and Cybercab initiatives are scaling quickly, with exponential growth in autonomous miles driven. The Cybercab fleet in Austin expanded significantly within a month. The Optimus robot production is in early stages, with the company expecting to resolve design and AI issues by the end of next year and projecting it as a major future product. Financially, the company had over 480k vehicle deliveries for two consecutive quarters, with improved margins and positive free cash flow of over $1.5 billion. Tesla revised its CapEx guidance to $20 billion for the current year, supported by efficient capital deployment and operational cash flow, securing borrowing capacity up to $30 billion. Future plans include scaling the Terafab facility and expanding autonomous services globally, despite regulatory challenges, with FSD and Robotaxi expected to be significant revenue contributors. Full Transcript Travis Aklerad (Head of Investor Relations) Good afternoon everyone and welcome to Tesla's third quarter 2026 Q&A webcast. My name is Travis Aklerad, head of investor relations, and I'm joined today by Elon Musk, Vaibhav Taneja and a number of other executives. Our Q3 results were announced at about 3 p.m. Central Time in the update deck we publish at the same link as this webcast. During this call we will discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements. These comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today; actual events or results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those mentioned in our most recent filing with the SEC. During the question and answer portion of today's call, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please use the raise hand button to join the question queue. Before we jump into Q&A, Elon has some opening remarks. Elon Musk (Chief Executive Officer) Thank you. So the third quarter was very strong, and I'd like to give a big congratulations to the whole Tesla team for working hard to make it happen. Demand is growing rapidly for our vehicles. It's exceeding our production by a significant margin, and obviously