Tesla Says It Delivered 90,650 Vehicles In Q2, Beating Estimates

Tesla stock is up 10% premarket this morning – helped along by an upgrade, furious call option buying over the last several sessions and the fact that with its main factory shut down for mostly all of Q2, the company has said this morning it has produced 82,272 vehicles and delivered 90,650 vehicles in the quarter. 

The company beat its Q2 estimate of estimate 83,071 deliveries. It’s production was down 20% Q/Q and Model S and X production, which are now being grouped together, made up just 6,326 of the company’s deliveries.

 

Everyone seems optimistic about Tesla except for that pesky Gordon Johnson over at GLJ Research, who once again offered his clients a dose of much needed Tesla reality this morning with a report on Tesla’s deliveries. 

Johnson noted that total 2Q20 deliveries were down 4.8% even with the addition of Shanghai and the Model Y. He wrote that Fremont deliveries could be down as much as 37% year over year: 

If we assume China delivered ~30K made-in-China (“MIC”) Model 3s, this implies Fremont deliveries of ~60K cars, down -37% YoY. Model S/X deliveries down 40% YoY, and down 13% QoQ.

But, they did beat the (in our view) highly managed Cons. estimate (TSLA IR sends a delivery sheet with numbers included to analysts towards the end of each quarter). Keep in mind, TSLA cut the price of its cars sharply several times in 2Q20, and this means they have to ship 160.7K cars in both 3Q20 and 4Q20 to hit their year-end 2020 guidance of 500K cars delivered.

In additional Tesla news, it hit the wire this morning that:

1. Tesla is cutting prices by an average of 4.5% in Europe to help spur demand, while at the same time becoming the highest market cap company in the world, surpassing Toyota.
2. Elon Musk, apparently still and expert at everything has said that Tesla is building RNA microfactories for CureVac, a company that is trying to create a vaccine for the coronavirus in Germany. Musk disclosed the “microfactories” in a Tweet where he, of course, offered no elaboration on his plans.

Meanwhile, we are still waiting on those Tesla branded ventilators…