Tesla Stock (TSLA): Credits, Deliveries and a 394x P/E in Numbers
Michael Whitman
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Trading since 2017, full-time since 2020
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YouTube creator, 137K subscribers
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Published 2026-11-07
Tesla stock trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker TSLA. At the November 6, 2026 close of $358.22 it was valued at $1.42 trillion and about 394 times trailing earnings of $0.91 a share, and regulatory credit sales equaled 36.7% of its net income over the twelve months to September 30, 2026.
Tesla stock trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker TSLA. It is priced like no other carmaker: close to 400 times the last twelve months’ earnings, a multiple that only adds up if profits become far larger. Tesla’s own pitch for that rests on self-driving software, robotaxis and robots. The filings show what it earns today, and some of that profit has come from selling permits rather than cars.
Quote pages agree on the price and roughly on the P/E, though even they disagree on the exact multiple. None of them shows the revenue split, how much of the profit came from regulatory credits, or how the shares behave on the two kinds of day Tesla reports news: results and deliveries.
TSLA at a glance: 26.9% below the December 2025 record
Price is the November 6, 2026 close, a day the shares rose 4.23%. Earnings, revenue and equity come from the 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2026, filed October 22, and the 2025 10-K. Tesla’s year is the calendar year, so the trailing twelve months are the fourth quarter of 2025 plus January to September 2026.
| measure | value | how it is worked out | as of |
|---|---|---|---|
| share price | $358.22 | Nasdaq close | Nov 6, 2026 |
| market value | $1.42 trillion | price × 3,952,757,946 shares | shares at Oct 15, 2026 |
| P/E | 393.6x | price ÷ trailing diluted EPS of $0.91 | Sep 30, 2026 |
| price-to-sales | 13.67x | market value ÷ trailing revenue of $103.57 billion | Sep 30, 2026 |
| price-to-book | 15.86x | price ÷ book value of $22.59 a share | Sep 30, 2026 |
| operating margin | 3.3% | trailing operating income of $3.47 billion ÷ revenue | Sep 30, 2026 |
| dividend | none | no dividend in the price record | Nov 6, 2026 |
In 2026 to November 6 the price fell 20.3%, from $449.72, while the S&P 500 rose 7.8%. The record close was $489.88 on December 16, 2025, and the price ended 26.9% below it. The low of the past year was $298.32 on July 29, 2026.
How it works: Tesla’s five revenue lines in two segments
Tesla reports two segments, automotive and energy generation and storage, and splits revenue into five lines.
Automotive sales are the cars. Regulatory credits are permits Tesla earns by selling zero-emission vehicles and then sells to other carmakers that need them to meet emissions rules. Leasing is cars on operating leases. Energy is the Megapack and Powerwall batteries plus solar. Services and other covers repairs, used cars, insurance, paid charging and merchandise.
| revenue line | 2019 | 2021 | 2023 | 2025 | Jan-Sep 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| automotive sales | 78.8% | 82.0% | 81.1% | 69.4% | 70.6% |
| regulatory credits | 2.4% | 2.7% | 1.8% | 2.1% | 0.8% |
| automotive leasing | 3.5% | 3.1% | 2.2% | 1.8% | 1.4% |
| energy generation and storage | 6.2% | 5.2% | 6.2% | 13.5% | 10.7% |
| services and other | 9.1% | 7.1% | 8.6% | 13.2% | 16.4% |
| total revenue | $24.58 billion | $53.82 billion | $96.77 billion | $94.83 billion | $78.67 billion |
Revenue in the first nine months of 2026 was 12.5% above the same months of 2025. The September quarter was flat at $28.05 billion against $28.10 billion, and its net income was $787 million.
The original data: regulatory credits against Tesla’s profit
Regulatory credits against net income, 2013-2026. We took credit revenue and net income from every 10-K and from the 2026 10-Qs, then set one against the other. The ratio is our own arithmetic: credits are revenue with little direct cost, while net income is after costs and tax, so the comparison shows scale, not an exact profit share.
- 2013-2019: Tesla sold $2.25 billion of credits across seven years and lost money in every one of them. In 2019 it took in $0.59 billion of credits against a net loss of $0.86 billion.
- 2020, the first profitable year: $1.58 billion of credits against net income of $0.72 billion, so credits were 219.1% of the profit.
- 2021-2023: the share shrank to 26.5%, 14.1% and 11.9% as net income rose to $15.00 billion, a 2023 figure that included a one-time $5.9 billion tax benefit.
- 2024-2025: it climbed back to 39.0% and 52.5% as profit fell to $3.79 billion, against $1.99 billion of credits in 2025.
- Twelve months to September 30, 2026: $1.18 billion of credits against $3.22 billion of net income, 36.7%. The first nine months of 2026 brought $639 million against $1,451 million a year earlier. The 10-Q says “recent governmental and regulatory actions have restricted certain regulatory credit programs”, and in the September quarter Tesla reversed $475 million of credit revenue for credits returned under contract.
The revenue mix over time. Energy and services have taken share from car sales since 2019, and the energy business earns more per dollar than its share of revenue suggests.
- Energy gross profit: $3.80 billion in 2025, 22.2% of Tesla’s $17.09 billion gross profit, up from 6.5% in 2023. In the first nine months of 2026 it was 17.0%, with energy revenue 5.7% lower than a year earlier.
- Services and other reached 16.4% of revenue in the first nine months of 2026, from 9.1% in 2019.
Deliveries: the 2023 peak, two down years and a 2026 rebound
Deliveries, from Tesla’s own quarterly reports. Tesla delivered 499,550 vehicles in 2020, 936,172 in 2021, 1,313,851 in 2022 and 1,808,581 in 2023.
Then the count fell: 1,789,226 in 2024 and 1,636,129 in 2025. In the first nine months of 2026 it delivered 1,324,681, 8.8% more than the 1,217,902 of the same months of 2025.
Energy storage deployments were 31.4 GWh in 2024 and 46.7 GWh in 2025, and 36.0 GWh in the first nine months of 2026 against 32.5 GWh a year earlier.
Download the data: revenue mix and credits and event-day moves. Reuse is fine with a credit and a link back, as the site license sets out.
| Dataset | Covers | Pages citing it | Download |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tesla revenue by source and regulatory credits against net income, 2013-2026 | Calendar years 2013 to 2025 (full revenue split from 2019), plus the twelve months to September 30, 2026 | 1 | Tesla revenue mix and credits (CSV) |
| Tesla share-price moves on results days and delivery-report days, 2010-2026 | 66 quarterly results releases (August 2010 to October 2026) and 47 quarterly production-and-deliveries reports (April 2015 to October 2026), all 8-K Item 2.02 (EDGAR indexes the third-quarter 2011 release under Item 2.01) | 0 | Tesla event-day moves (CSV) |
A worked example: why Tesla’s P/E is hard to pin down
Apart from the share price, every input below comes from the 2025 10-K or the 10-Q filed October 22, 2026.
- Trailing EPS. Diluted EPS was $1.08 for 2025, $0.84 for January to September 2025 and $0.67 for January to September 2026. Trailing = $1.08 − $0.84 + $0.67 = $0.91.
- P/E. $358.22 ÷ $0.91 = 393.6. Each EPS figure is rounded to the cent, so the true trailing figure could sit anywhere from $0.905 to $0.915, and the P/E anywhere from 391.5 to 395.8. When earnings are this small, a cent moves the multiple by about four points. Our P/E ratio page covers the method.
- The share count. Trailing net income was $3.22 billion. The 10-Q cover lists 3,952,757,946 shares, but the September quarter’s earnings were shared over 3,240 million basic and 3,541 million diluted shares. The 10-Q explains most of the gap: about 423.7 million performance-based restricted shares from the 2025 CEO Performance Award, and restricted shares issued in 2026 when the CEO exercised about 304.0 million options from the 2018 award. Restricted stock is left out of diluted shares “until the shares have been deemed to be earned”.
- Two ways to the multiple. Market value ÷ net income = $1.42 trillion ÷ $3.22 billion = 440.0. Price ÷ (net income ÷ diluted shares) = 394.2. The first counts the CEO’s unearned shares in the price; the second does not. That is one reason quote pages print different P/Es for the same stock.
- Book value. Stockholders’ equity of $89.29 billion ÷ 3,952,757,946 shares = $22.59, and $358.22 ÷ $22.59 = 15.86. The price-to-book page explains the ratio.
Tesla’s results days and delivery days
Tesla files two kinds of Item 2.02 8-K. Quarterly results come after the close a few weeks after each quarter ends. Production-and-deliveries reports come within days of the quarter’s end, usually before the open.
We read every one and kept 66 results releases since August 2010 and 47 quarterly delivery reports since April 2015. We left out two 2013-2014 sales updates, a July 2017 in-transit note and two filings that carried staff emails. EDGAR’s index lists the third-quarter 2011 release under Item 2.01, but the 8-K itself says Item 2.02 and carries the shareholder letter, so it is in the count.
Each event is matched to the first session that could trade on it. On July 3, 2017 the market closed at 1 p.m. and the delivery report came at 3:21 p.m., so we count July 5. The base rate is every session that was neither kind of event day.
| results days | delivery days | other days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| count | 66 | 47 | 3,977 since 2010 |
| median move | 6.72% | 4.65% | 1.76% |
| moved 5% or more | 59.1% | 46.8% | 10.4% |
| up | 47.0% | 53.2% | 51.6% |
| binomial p for up vs the base | 0.46 | 0.88 |
- The largest results-day moves were +24.40% on May 9, 2013, after Tesla’s first quarterly profit, and −14.52% on July 23, 2026.
- The largest delivery-day moves were +13.53% on January 3, 2022 and −12.24% on January 3, 2023.
- Since 2021, 24 results days had a median move of 7.42% and only 9 were up. The October 22, 2026 session fell 3.08%, and the October 2, 2026 delivery report was followed by a 4.65% rise.
The delivery days’ base comparison is against the other days since 2015, where 11.1% moved 5% or more.
When it fails: when credits shrink and deliveries stall
Credits can vanish. A profit line that leaned on credit sales for 36.7% of its size is exposed when those programs shrink, and the September 2026 quarter showed what that looks like: $113 million of credits against $417 million a year earlier.
Growth stalled before it resumed. Deliveries fell in 2024 and 2025. A stock priced at almost 400 times earnings needs the business to grow into the price, and two down years show it does not always.
Huge swings both ways. TSLA rose 743.4% in 2020 and fell 65.0% in 2022 against the S&P 500’s 19.4% fall. It dropped 53.8% from a record of $479.86 on December 17, 2024 to $221.86 on April 8, 2025, before regaining that high on December 16, 2025. The invested $1,000 in Tesla page covers the 2021-2023 fall, and our drawdown page explains the measure.
These numbers are snapshots. A P/E near 394 changes a lot with each quarter’s earnings, which is why every figure here carries its date.
Questions people ask
What is Tesla’s market cap?
$1.42 trillion at the November 6, 2026 close of $358.22, using the 3,952,757,946 shares on its latest 10-Q cover, dated October 15. That count includes the CEO’s restricted shares; see market cap for the method.
Why is Tesla’s P/E so high?
Trailing diluted earnings were $0.91 a share, so even a share price in the hundreds gives a multiple near 394. A multiple that high means the price rests on profit investors expect later, not on current profit.
How many cars did Tesla deliver in 2025?
1,636,129, by its January 2, 2026 production and deliveries report, down from 1,789,226 in 2024.
Has Tesla stock split?
Twice: 5-for-1 on August 31, 2020 and 3-for-1 on August 25, 2022. All prices here are adjusted for both, as our stock split page describes.
Is Tesla one of the Magnificent Seven?
Yes. Our Magnificent Seven page compares all seven with the S&P 500 from 2015, including each one’s deepest fall.
Related
The arithmetic behind the ratios is on earnings per share and free cash flow. For how far TSLA swings next to the market, see beta and volatility, and for bets against it, short interest.
This page is educational, not financial advice. Test every idea on your own charts before risking money.