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Tesla Deliveries Are Down 31% From Last Quarter -- But Up 110% From Last Year (forbes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Forbes:
Tesla's stock dropped 8% Thursday on the news that Q1 deliveries fell 31% from the previous quarter. However, being a seasonal business, car companies usually compare their results against the same quarter from the previous year. On that basis, virtually all of the major car companies have said Q1 sales will be flat to 7% lower than last year. In contrast, Tesla's deliveries are up 110% from last year. From the one year perspective, Tesla is the only car company that is growing...
Yesterday's headlines which focused on the 31% decline are factually correct but misleading. Moreover, Tesla said that delays in deliveries to Europe and China caused "a large number of vehicle deliveries to shift to the second quarter. At the end of the first quarter, approximately 10,600 vehicles were in transit to customers globally..." Had Tesla managed the increased deliveries in Europe and China a little better, they might have come close to Wall Street's expectations.
On Friday, Tesla's stock bounced up 2.68%.
Yesterday's headlines which focused on the 31% decline are factually correct but misleading. Moreover, Tesla said that delays in deliveries to Europe and China caused "a large number of vehicle deliveries to shift to the second quarter. At the end of the first quarter, approximately 10,600 vehicles were in transit to customers globally..." Had Tesla managed the increased deliveries in Europe and China a little better, they might have come close to Wall Street's expectations.
On Friday, Tesla's stock bounced up 2.68%.
As I've said before, the hundreds of thousands of people on the Model 3 waitlist means you can't view an increase in deliveries as an equivalent increase in customers. They're simply backfilling orders that already existed, so the 110% growth is just measuring increase in production. Depending on the rate that people on the waitlist are giving up and moving on, net customer demand could actually be decreasing.
The real test will come when the waitlist is eliminated -- then QoQ or YoY will actually measure deltas in customer demand.
Apparently the general understandment you are citing is not so general at all, or it doesn't influence buyer's opinion that much. Tesla sells more Models S than BMW sells 7 Series, Mercedes-Benz sells S class, or Lincoln sells cars at all. The appeal of a Model S has to be greater than that of other similarly priced cars, quality issues be damned. I don't force you to buy a Tesla yourself. And you won't force me to buy a BMW. To me the appeal of a BMW is close to zero. And I don't own a Tesla either. I use whatever car my company provides. Currently, it's a Skoda (Volkswagen subsidary), in the future, it will probably be a car from Peugeot-Citroen. Neither of them are in any way luxury cars, but they get me from A to B. Your mileage may vary.