Tesla’s deliveries missed analysts’ and its own expectations
The stock is down, so it looks like numbers do matter.
Tesla’s fourth-quarter deliveries missed both its own and analysts’ expectations, with the electric-vehicle company selling 495,570 last quarter. Consensus estimates were 498,000, per FactSet, and 512,277, according to Bloomberg. The “whisper number” — the figure investors actually expected — was about 500,000, according to Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities.
While the numbers marked a quarterly record, they represented Tesla’s first annual sales decline in over a decade. Tesla reported 1.79 million deliveries in 2024 versus 1.81 in 2023. In its last quarterly-earnings deck, Tesla wrote, “Despite ongoing macroeconomic conditions, we expect to achieve slight growth in vehicle deliveries in 2024.”
Some speculated that for Tesla, which has been riding high on the coattails of Donald Trump’s election, numbers might not matter at all. Barclays argued that the company’s delivery numbers were “immaterial to the majority of the current Tesla bull case,” and that a small miss “would likely do little to dampen” Tesla’s rally. So far that doesn’t appear to be the case: Tesla’s stock is down more than 5% in early trading.
The news comes right after Chinese Tesla competitor BYD reported record December sales. It sold 1.76 million vehicles last year — nearly as many as Tesla.
