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Wall Street is projecting another record quarter for Tesla deliveries.
Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images
Second-quarter delivery results are coming for many auto makers. None will be watched more closely than the numbers from
Tesla
,
the leader in electric vehicles.
It’s easy to see why that’s the case. Tesla (ticker: TSLA) is the most valuable car company on the planet. And shares of Elon Musk’s company are often the most heavily traded of any in the market.
Expectations are high. A strong result is needed to keep the stock from tanking, given that Tesla stock is up about 32% since the company disclosed its deliveries for the first quarter in early April. The
S&P 500
and
Nasdaq Composite
are up about 7% and 13%, respectively, over the same span.
The second-quarter numbers are expected on Sunday, Wall Street is looking for deliveries of about 445,000 cars, according to
FactSet
.
That would be a quarterly record, up from about 423,000 delivered in the first quarter of 2023, and about 255,000 in the second quarter of 2022, when much of China was locked down to fight Covid-19.
Tesla stock dropped about 6% the trading day after the first-quarter deliveries were released in early April. Shares fell another 7% heading into the April 19 earnings report.
The drop after seemingly fine numbers was a little confusing. Tesla, after all, delivered a record number of vehicles and more than the roughly 421,000 consensus estimates compiled by both Bloomberg and Tesla itself. The consensus estimate on FactSet, however, was closer to 430,000 units, so Tesla posted a miss based on that figure.
Different data providers have different methodologies. The company-compiled consensus, for instance, was an average of 28 analysts’ calls. The FactSet number averaged forecasts from 18 analysts.
For the second quarter, the company-compiled consensus call is about 447,000 units, close again to the Bloomberg number. The consensus estimate on FactSet is about 445,000 units.
The fact that the figures are bunched closer together this time should make interpreting results easier. With Tesla stock up so much lately, investors will probably need to see a beat, something north of 450,000 units, for the price to head higher.
Barron’s finds that if Tesla’s deliveries come in higher than expected, the stock outperforms the market roughly two-thirds of the time between the report and when the quarterly earnings are announced.
Not surprisingly, it doesn’t always happen that way. In January, Tesla reported weaker-than-expected numbers for the fourth quarter of 2022, but the stock rallied between that disclosure and the quarterly earnings release. And the first-quarter delivery numbers disclosed in April looked fine, but the stock dropped heading into earnings anyway.
Tesla’s next profit report is due in a few weeks. Wall Street is looking for second-quarter earnings per share of about 77 cents from sales of almost $24 billion. Operating-profit margins, which fell to 11% in the first quarter from 19% a year earlier, will be in focus.
Vehicle price cuts are the main reason margins are lower. For the second quarter, analysts project operating profit margins of about 11%, similar to the first quarter and down from about 15% reported in the second quarter of 2022.
The first half of the year isn’t done quite yet, but investors are happy. Tesla stock will likely finish up more than 100%, which would be the third-best start to a year in the history of Tesla stock. Shares gained about 158% in the first half of 2020 and about 217% in the first half of 2013.
Write to Al Root at [email protected]
Source: https://www.barrons.com/articles/tesla-ev-deliveries-stock-q2-590a22ce?siteid=yhoof2&yptr=yahoo