Why Wall Street Isn’t Buying Tesla’s 5000 Car/Week “Milestone”

Tesla, now the most valuable American automotive company, has a record during its short history of ambitious benchmarks and missed targets. Elon Musk, Tesla’s Chief Executive,  set the 5,000 cars a week production goal on its Model 3 car— touted as the first affordable, yet luxurious, electric vehicle to hit the market— for the end of 2017. After running into a number of assembly lines issues, Tesla struggled to meet the target, delaying thousands of buyers who placed preorders on the Model 3. Musk reportedly has spent the last several months working directly on the assembly line in an attempt to correct its structural issues, with employees reporting an “all hands on deck” effort to meet the ambitious goal.

While hitting the 5000/week target is certainly good news for Tesla, Wall Street is concerned about the sustainability of its production methods. What is unclear is whether Tesla will be able to maintain this level of production going forward.  

Demonstrating Wall Street’s uncertainty, TSLA shares dipped 6.29% Monday after news broke over the weekend that Tesla had hit its 5000 car target. Moreover, Tesla has a track record of producing seemingly good news in the weeks leading up to earnings reports, leaving many wondering whether production during the past week was due to a sustainable restructuring of its production lines or merely stunt to prove to investors that their vehicles can be mass produced.

Tesla promises to further ramp up production to 6,000 cars per week later in the month. Musk seems to be confident in Tesla’s ability, touting in an internal email following the achievement that Tesla “just became a real car company.” Whether or not this milestone represents a shift in the American automotive industry—singling the advent of mass-produced electric vehicles—is yet to be seen.

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The Estimize Community predicts a sharp uptick in deliveries during the second quarter, predicting the company will roll out 42,509 vehicles— a projected growth of 93% YoY. The Estimize consensus has been highly accurate in predicting Tesla vehicle deliveries for the past several quarters, and Tesla seems to be on pace to reach 40,000+ deliveries for the 2nd quarter. Moreover, the Estimize Community expected deliveries to reach 65,082 by the fourth quarter— while Wall Street may not believe in the sustainability of Musk’s production rollout, the Estimize community seemingly does. Perhaps the lack of trust in Musk among Wall Street stems from his fiery relations with analysts ever since his outburst on an earnings call at the beginning of the year.

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Tesla is set to report FQ2’18 on August 1st— The Estimize Community predicts a stronger quarter with an EPS of -$2.59, while Wall Street predicts an EPS of -$2.68. The Estimize consensus has been more accurate on TSLA five out of the last six quarters. As the FQ2 ’18 report nears, Wall Street will be focusing less on Tesla’s EPS and more on whether it can truly deliver its vehicles at such an ambitious rate. 

Disclosure: There can be no assurance that the information we considered is accurate or complete, nor can there be any assurance that our assumptions are correct.

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