Tesla fell far short expectations in its first-quarter vehicle delivery report, a bellwether for the company’s broader start to 2024 as Elon Musk’s electric vehicle behemoth falls on unusually hard times.
Tesla delivered about 387,000 vehicles over the first three months of the year, the company announced Tuesday morning, coming in far below average analyst forecasts of 457,000, according to FactSet.
That marks a 9% decline compared to Q1 2023’s 423,000 deliveries, which in turn is the first negative year-over-year growth for Tesla since 2020’s second quarter at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when deliveries slipped 4%.
The poor Q1 delivery numbers set the stage for what analysts expect to be the company’s weakest year of growth since at least 2012, the release year for the Model S, as 2024’s consensus deliveries of two million cars would be just 11% year, a full 25 percentage points lower than Tesla’s previous low mark for annual delivery growth.
Shares of Tesla tanked more than 5% in morning trading, having fallen some 29% year-to-date already.
How Tesla’s weak deliveries are reflected in its first-quarter earnings report due April 23. Analysts project Tesla to report 4% annual growth in revenue but a 29% decline in profit.
“Tesla’s currently between two major growth waves,” Musk told investors on a January earnings call.
Tesla’s challenges to grow vehicle deliveries and its top and bottom lines at the same astronomical rate it tallied for much of the last decade perhaps predictably reflect the growing pains of a 21-year-old company moving into its next phase of life. The tepid growth expectations are clear in Tesla’s performance on the stock market, as its market capitalization is down from its late 2021 peak of over $1.2 trillion to about $560 billion, a halving coinciding with a 16% gain for the S&P 500. Tesla was the S&P’s worst-performing stock over the first quarter. “Slowing EV demand and China competition” are among the top factors behind Tesla’s slowing vehicle deliveries, according to UBS analyst Joseph Spak.
