Why Tesla Stock Popped Thursday

Tesla (TSLA +3.44%) stock jumped 4.5% through 1:45 p.m. ET Thursday on some apparently bad news — that might turn out to be good news for Tesla stock, and for SpaceX stock, too (once SpaceX IPOs).

As EV news specialist Electrek reports, deep in the heart of Texas, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is snapping up tens of millions of dollars’ worth of Tesla Cybertrucks to work at its Starbase spaceport.

How is this bad news?

Electrek explains: Tesla originally planned to build 250,000 Cybertrucks a year, ramping as high as 500,000 units per year if the demand justified it.

But demand didn’t justify it.

Crunching the numbers on Tesla’s non-Model 3 and non-Model Y sales (Tesla groups S, X, and Cybertruck sales all together), Electrek calculates Tesla sold perhaps 20,000 Cybertrucks this year, turning Cybertruck into a gigantic “commercial flop.”

Except for one thing: SpaceX.

Squeezing corporate lemons and turning them into lemonade, Musk’s SpaceX rode to the rescue of Musk’s Tesla, buying between 1,000 and 2,000 Cybertrucks for SpaceX’s work fleet. At $80,000 per unit, that’s $80 million to $160 million in revenue for Tesla.

Turning bad news into good news

Electrek sees this as bad news and a potential concern to investors in an upcoming SpaceX IPO. Viewed another way, though, if SpaceX needs trucks for its ground operations, why wouldn’t it buy Cybertrucks from another Musk-owned company, if the alternative is giving money to a Musk competitor like Ford Motor Co. (F 0.04%) or General Motors (GM +0.84%)?

Seems to me, keeping the money in the family (so to speak) is actually a bright idea.

And if it means Tesla now has a captive customer in SpaceX, which can help Tesla make its sales numbers when it needs to, that’s probably a good thing for Tesla stock.