More Bad News For Tesla

Tesla had a really rough first quarter of 2024, and unfortunately for Elon Musk’s automaker, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be an isolated incident. Industry analysts are now expecting deliveries for the entire 2024 calendar year to be noticeably down when compared to 2023.

The Hype Behind Tesla Stock Success In 2023

One analyst at Piper Sander expects the Austin, Texas-based automaker to deliver 0.5 percent fewer cars than they did last year. That’s good for 1.8 million sales, according to Bloomberg. Admittedly, that’s still a fairly strong number. Another analyst from Jeffries sees sales dropping a bit more – roughly 3 percent to 1.77 million vehicles.

Because of these estimates, both analysts dropped their stock price targets. The Piper Sandler analyst dropped his to $205 and the Jefferies analyst put the number even lower at $165. Right now, Tesla’s stock is sitting at about $172, and it’s down 30.5 percent on the year. Ouch.

Here’s more of what Piper Sandler analyst Alexander Potter and Jefferies analyst Philippe Hochois said to Bloomberg:

“Growth is slowing, and there’s no quick fix,” Potter wrote in an April 9 report. Tesla should be able to overcome demand issues by 2026, he said, anticipating a lower-cost vehicle and scaled-up production of the Cybertruck, and more than half his price target stems from bullishness on the company’s driver-assistance software.

Houchois is relatively pessimistic about Tesla’s ability to deliver on its self-driving ambitions. “Unveiling a robotaxi on Aug. 8 may help sentiment but not address the time frame and investment needed to render the technology and business model viable,” he said in a note to clients Wednesday. Jefferies cut its full-year earnings estimates by about 30% and its revenue projection by 15%.

This all started when Tesla reported a fairly dismal first-quarter sales report. The automaker sold just 386,810 vehicles in the first three months of 2024. Meanwhile, it produced 433,371 vehicles. That means Tesla built nearly 50,000 more cars than it was able to sell. On top of that, higher-dollar cars barely made a dent in sales and production. We previously reported that Model 3 and Model Y represented 369,783 sales and 412,376 deliveries. Do a little math and you come to realize that the Model S, Model X and Cybertruck only represented 17,027 deliveries and 20,995 units made. It’s not a great look, folks.

Bloomberg says the sales number missed consensus estimates by the biggest margin ever (that’s only like seven years, but still). In order to overcome some of the stock shock, Musk once again teased his soon-to-be-coming-for-real-this-time-he-swears Robotaxi.

No matter how you slice it, Tesla is starting to feel the heat from other automakers who are finally getting serious about EVs.