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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%.
And the only non-factual part of this post. Speculation: Tesla may be deliberately trying to slow down production, so they can push more of those preorders into later years when the ZEV mandated percentage is higher. They may be hoping that the other companies will have a harder time hitting the higher quota percentages, which would make Tesla's ZEV credits more valuable. Right now, once all the automakers hit their ZEV quotas, the ZEV credits for any additional cars Tesla sells that year are worthless.
Yeah, that's a bit of unpleasant economic reality I hadn't yet factored in, and would be par for the course for a business model that's been dependent on various streams of OPM from day 1.