Investors think that Tesla Inc. will report third-quarter deliveries, which are a proxy for sales, sometime next week. In recent days, Wall Street analysts have raised their hopes for the report.
It’s been a long time habit for Tesla TSLA 2.45% not to set a firm date for the quarterly deliveries and production statistics.
The numbers are given by car model, but they are not broken down further by area or any other way. As of late, the data has only been grouped by sales of the Model 3 and Model Y, along with “other models.”
No matter what, the data is carefully looked at, and Tesla stock usually responds to it.
Joseph Spak at UBS thinks that about 470,000 Tesla cars will be delivered this quarter. This is more than the 421,000 cars he thought would be delivered as a placeholder in his model.
“From talking to investors, we think the buy-side expectation range is between 465 000 and 480,000 vehicles,” Spak wrote in a recent note. “This puts us in the lower end of that range.”
According to FactSet, the general opinion is that 462,000 cars will be sold. The number of EVs sold in the third quarter of 2023 was 435,000, so that’s a 6% rise.
Spak said that Tesla is running financial deals in the U.S. to help move its cars.
Recently, analysts at Piper Sandler, led by Alex Potter, raised their quarterly sales expectations for Tesla as well. They now expect the company to deliver about 459,000 cars.
Their new estimate is that Tesla will sell about 1.75 million cars this year, which is about 23,500 more than their old estimate.
The Piper Sandler analysts said, “In China, Q3 seems likely to be Tesla’s best quarter ever. Sales in Europe are weak, but Cybertruck deliveries are supporting demand in the US.”
Weekly registration data in China is used to make the predictions, so there is “high conviction” that Tesla will have delivered about 175,000 cars in the quarter.
Even though the sales trends are “material” for Tesla’s profits, “robotaxi discussions between now and Oct.” are expected to take more attention.
10, when Tesla holds its long-awaited event to show off the Robotaxi, Potter said.
Deutsche Bank analysts said that at the event, a “CyberCab” or “some type of robotaxi demo” will be shown off. They also expect to hear more about how the system works, including the cost per mile, the size, and the timeline. Also, they think Tesla will show off a cheaper EV called “Model 2.2.”
“On the whole, our attitude toward the event has been positive.” But after the event, they said, “We would be cautious because the bar seems quite high, and we could see a’sell the news’ type of market reaction.”
Analysts at RBC Capital, led by Tom Narayan, recently raised their sales forecast for Tesla to 460,000 cars, which is 1.3% more than their previous forecast.
Also, they hope for a good show in China. They expect sales to be 24% higher in the third quarter than in the second. In China, Tesla sales went up in July and August, and the weekly insurance figures for September shows that sales may go up again, they said.
Most of the time, Tesla also announces the date of its quarterly earnings at the same time. Stock is up 2% so far this year, but not as much as the S&P 500 index SPX -0.13%, which is up 20% in the same time frame.
