A row of Tesla Superchargers at a Supercharger site in Los Angeles on June 5, 2024.
Mike Blake | Reuters
Tesla Shares continued to gain in premarket trading on Wednesday, after rising 10% in the previous session following the release of second-quarter vehicle production and deliveries figures that beat analysts' expectations.
The company's shares were up 3.07% at 6:54 a.m. ET, but are down 6.93% year to date.
Tesla's total deliveries reached 443,956 vehicles in the second quarter, with total production of 410,831 vehicles during the period. Analysts had expected Tesla deliveries — the closest approximation of sales disclosed by the automaker — to reach 439,000 in the three-month period ended June 30, according to a consensus of estimates compiled by FactSet StreetAccount.
Tesla does not provide detailed figures for individual car models or specific regions.
Citi analysts said in a note Tuesday that they expect a “favorable stock price reaction” following the release.
“Going forward, the focus will be on Tesla’s automotive gross margins in Q2 to determine price-cost performance,” they added, stressing the importance of further updates from the company on future product launches.
Tuesday’s delivery report follows an 8.5% drop in deliveries in the first quarter, to 386,810 in April, the first annual decline since 2020.
Some of Tesla's Chinese rivals, Geely-owned Zeekr and Nio, reported record deliveries in June. The growth prospects of the EV sector in the world's second-largest economy were thrown into sharp relief last month, when the EU announced higher tariffs of up to 38% on Chinese EVs that it said “strongly benefit from unfair subsidies.” Tesla, which has a gigafactory in Shanghai, could “receive an individually calculated tax rate in the final phase” following a “substantiated request,” the European Commission said at the time.
In May, the US administration of Joe Biden also quadrupled tariffs on imported Chinese electric vehicles, from 25% to 100%, in an attempt to prevent discounted Chinese products from flooding the market.
Energy storage
Tesla also said it has deployed 9.4 gigawatt hours of energy storage products in the second quarter, which the company described as its highest quarterly performance to date.
“Tesla sold ~15GWh in 2023, out of a global annual sales market of ~100GWh. In Q2/24 alone, Tesla sold 9.4GWh of battery storage globally. Historically, management has said that these sales tend to be erratic, but that Q2 level alone represents nearly 10% of the entire 2023 global annual sales market,” RBC analysts said in a Tuesday note.
“The implication here is that Tesla either gains market share or the entire market grows dramatically by 2024. More likely, it’s a combination of both,” they added.
Tesla will report second-quarter financial results on July 23 and is expected to unveil a design for a robotaxi next month.
— CNBC's Lora Kolodny and Ganesh Rao contributed to this report.
