Tesla (TSLA) is expected to report record deliveries

Tesla (TSLA) is expected to release its second quarter 2023 delivery results in the coming days, and Wall Street is expecting yet another record quarter for deliveries.

When it comes to delivering high volumes of electric vehicles, Tesla is the only global automaker in the game, and it keeps growing.

Tesla is currently on a streak of three record quarters in a row; now Wall Street is expecting Tesla to make it four in a row.

The analyst consensus for the second quarter is that Tesla is going to deliver 448,000 vehicles. That’s up 6% from the 422,000 vehicles Tesla delivered last quarter.

The estimate would represent a major year-over-year increase compared to deliveries of 254,000 vehicles, but that’s not a great comparison because Tesla had a forced factory shutdown in China in Q2 of 2022 due to covid restrictions.

The new estimate would put Tesla’s total deliveries in 2023 at around 870,000 units, which would mean that Tesla would need to deliver an average of half a million vehicles per quarter during the second half of the year in order to deliver on its guidance of 1.8 million vehicles.

If achieved, Tesla’s latest delivery record would have been helped by more price cuts and discounts on inventory vehicles.

While Wall Street is generally pretty good at estimating Tesla’s vehicle deliveries, they are having a tougher time at predicting Tesla’s profitability lately due to the price cuts.

Tesla is expected to release its production and delivery results on Sunday.

Electrek’s Take

448,000 units sound achievable for the quarter, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Tesla misses it with more vehicles in inventory/transit.

We have seen more of those from Tesla in recent quarters, and it looks like Tesla still has thousands of vehicles on ships at this time.

It’s unfortunate because it’s a problem that has been expected to be fixed as Tesla improves its production localization, but at the same time, the automaker started to ship more cars from China to far-away markets, like Canada.

Either way, I’m intrigued by Tesla’s results this quarter.