JPMorgan Ends 10-Year Tesla Sell Call While Working on SpaceX IPO

JPMorgan just ended an 11-year sell call on Tesla.

The flip came the morning after Jamie Dimon hosted Elon Musk on stage at JPMorgan headquarters to pitch SpaceX shares to thousands of livestreaming clients.

JPMorgan's New Autos Analyst Lifts Tesla Target

The call came from Rajat Gupta, JPMorgan's new lead autos analyst, who took over Tesla coverage from Ryan Brinkman - one of Wall Street's most stubborn Tesla bears.

Brinkman's sell rating had stood since February 2015, a stretch during which Tesla's stock climbed 2,850% as Musk turned a niche EV maker into one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Gupta's first move was to upgrade Tesla to a hold and raise the price target from $145 to $475 - a 228% jump.

His pitch is that Tesla's vertical integration is still underrated and misunderstood by the market.

He admitted the stock looks expensive and a real jump in earnings could be years away, but said Tesla "deserves the benefit of the doubt."

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JPMorgan Is Working On the SpaceX IPO

JPMorgan is one of the banks working on SpaceX's IPO, which is expected to be the biggest of all time.

The night before Gupta's note went out, Dimon interviewed Musk from a stage at JPMorgan's new Park Avenue headquarters, where he called Musk "the Edison of our time" in front of thousands of livestreaming clients.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are leading the SpaceX deal, and both of their Tesla analysts have neutral ratings on the stock.

Banks are required by law to keep their research teams walled off from their investment banking business, and JPMorgan's own policy calls managing those conflicts "critical."

Worth Noting

Tesla's stock is down 13% this year, trailing the S&P 500's more than 8% advance, even as investors keep betting on Musk's pivot toward AI, robotaxis, and humanoid robots.

Across Wall Street, analysts are getting more bullish on where Tesla's stock should go - and more bearish on what Tesla will actually earn.

Over the past 12 months, the average Wall Street price target on Tesla has climbed more than 40%, while the average 2026 profit forecast has dropped 35%.

For every $1 Tesla is expected to earn next year, investors are paying $198 for the stock, compared with about $26 for the rest of the Magnificent Seven - roughly 8 times more expensive.

Price targets keep climbing while earnings forecasts keep sinking - and both can't be right forever.

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