Research archive for TSLA

The Tesla share price has had a torrid time lately. That's not surprising when you consider the first quarter vehicle delivery numbers they reported yesterday. For the first three months of 2024 Tesla delivered 387k vehicles, far below the expected 454k. This compares very poorly to the final quarter of 2023 when 485k vehicles were delivered.

I've written a few times grumbling about excessive executive remuneration. I think in some cases the remuneration doesn't reflect the economic value created by the executive team. In my view, Elon Musk's $55 billion payday is not one of those cases. Yesterday, a court voided the incentive scheme, calling it flawed, and ordered Musk to return his share options.

On Wednesday night, Tesla reported their quarterly numbers, and the market was not impressed, sending the stock back below $200 a share for the first time since May 2023. Tesla has fallen out of favour with traders since September last year when it became evident that higher interest rates were having a serious impact on vehicle sales.

Tesla had results out last week, which were somewhat underwhelming. The company is the leading maker of electric vehicles by far, and has achieved a great deal in the last decade. However, its current stock market valuation requires that it continue to grow very fast.

Tesla just issued its latest production update. In the third quarter, they manufactured over 430 000 vehicles. This was a slight decline from the prior three months, although still much higher than the same period in 2022.

Tesla's Cybertruck has garnered an impressive 2 million pre-orders, showcasing significant interest in this electric pickup. The vehicle had a rocky start – at its 2019 premiere, there was a mishap with its "unbreakable" window glass. Despite that, Tesla received a whopping 250 000 reservations within the first week.

Tesla has decided to licence their self-driving software for installation on other cars. Tesla Full Self Driving (FSD) is their beta assistance system that can automate some driving tasks. Unfortunately, it is not completely autonomous just yet.

Tesla had results out last week, which looked pretty good to me. The market thought differently, and the stock price fell 10% on Thursday. To be fair, the stock has had a good year. The all-time high price was reached in late 2021, followed by a nasty slump in 2022, and a surge in 2023.

On Saturday, Tesla announced that the first Cybertruck had rolled off its Austin, Texas gigafactory assembly line. Delivery to customers should start in the next few weeks, but scaling up of production is only expected early next year.

Just weeks after Tesla signed a groundbreaking charging network deal with Ford, a similar arrangement has been struck with General Motors (GM). GM has agreed to adapt their cars to the Tesla charging stations, allowing GM vehicles to use the network to fill up their batteries.

Ben Evans said the following in his latest newsletter about self-driving cars. "There was a period five years ago when it looked like machine learning might mean we could have fully autonomous cars pretty soon, but the last 20% turned out to be 80% of the work and we're in something of a winter now."

The Tesla Model Y is cooking in China. Despite the big competition, the Model Y was the best-selling model in China in the first quarter of 2023. According to data from London-based research firm JATO, 94 469 units were sold during the period. That shows a 26% year-on-year gain and beats the next best-selling model by more than 20 000 units. It looks like the recent price cuts have been working.

You should not invest in Tesla if you can't handle asset price volatility. It's a high risk holding, run by a crazy genius who is changing the world. I just wanted to say that upfront.

Tesla is back at it again with another round of price cuts. This time, the company has reduced the cost to consumers of its popular Model 3 and Y electric vehicles by at least $1 000, as well as knocking $5 000 off the prices of its more expensive Model S and X models.

Tesla announced that it had delivered a record 422 875 vehicles in the first quarter of 2023, a 36% increase from the same period last year, but only a 4% increase from the previous quarter.