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Tesla shares have dropped to their lowest level since Nov. 8, 2024. Meanwhile, Tesla bulls are already warning that sales trends predict demand could prove significantly weaker than anticipated.
With Tesla crashing below $1 trillion for the first time since election week, Wall Street may finally be waking up to the likelihood of a weak first quarter for Elon Musk’s electric-car company.
Even diehard bulls have been warning in recent days that deliveries could fall well short of current consensus when Tesla reports vehicle sales in early April—and potentially below last year’s 386,000 vehicles as well.
Elon Musk’s prescient bet on a Trump presidency launched the stock into the stratosphere after the November election, with Tesla briefly becoming more valuable than the rest of the auto industry put together. But its capacity to decouple itself from fundamentals and trade on momentum appears to have come to an end as reality hits.
“It’s very clear Tesla 1Q deliveries are going to miss [Wall Street] expectations,” wrote Future Fund managing partner Gary Black, estimating just 380,000 vehicles versus the current consensus of 422,000.
After successfully defending its February low of $325 on Monday, losses accelerated after the stock broke below the support early in Tuesday’s session. As of press time, it’s down 8% at $304 per share, the lowest level since November 8, 2024. It helped shave $16 billion off of Musk’s personal fortune.
Gary Black’s forecast is substantially lower than the sub-400,000 number estimated by Troy Teslike, one of the most accurate analysts who tracks vehicle production and deliveries. Teslike had more bad news on Tuesday.
“Based on the latest DMV vehicle identification numbers, Cybertruck production this quarter is lower than any of the last three,” he wrote. That would mean output is dropping after little more than a year, a major disappointment for the prestigious yet expensive model.
It’s easy to see why bulls are concerned. Data published Tuesday showed the full extent of Tesla’s European sales crash in January. After two straight years of soaring growth, registrations nearly halved year on year, reducing Tesla’s share of the European EV market to just 6% last month; it was 15% in January 2024.
Then there’s Tesla’s own branding problem, since Musk is the face of the company. His attempt to radically shrink the federal government through mass layoffs and numerous political conflicts of interest have sparked controversy. But critics on both sides of the aisle have been stunned by reports of Musk having another out-of-wedlock child with a different mother, a bizarre feud with three astronauts that prompted him to call for the early destruction of the International Space Station, and his admission he even strangely lied about how good a gamer he is.
Even in China, where it’s unclear if any of these scandals are even known of, volumes are so far tracking 11% lower than the same period a year earlier, according to the latest weekly China insurance data.
A big reason for this weakeness, bulls argue, is not Musk’s recent controversies but rather Tesla’s decision to temporarily shut down all four vehicle manufacturing plants simultaneously for retooling. Next month comes the launch of a newer version of the Model Y, which accounts for two out of every three vehicles.
Last month, finance chief Vaibhav Taneja warned the change would result in “several weeks of lost production” during the first quarter.
“While we feel confident in our teams’ abilities to ramp production quickly, note that it is an unprecedented change, and we are not aware of anybody else taking the bestselling car on the planet and updating all factories at the same time,” he said.
Halter Ferguson Financial equity strategist Matt Smith argues that the market isn’t sufficiently factoring in the resulting disruption to Tesla’s operations. This kind of wide-scale shutdown is indeed unusual.
Tesla did not respond to a Fortune request for comment.
Given all the viral images of vandalized Tesla property spreading online, Smith fears seemingly poor sales could unfairly fuel fears the decline in its core auto business accelerating. That’s why Halter Ferguson is ready to manage expectations so early into the quarter.
“If you couple these anecdotal stories like that with a massive miss on deliveries,” said Smith, “it will get misunderstood.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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