2014 1 QTR predictions/results

[vgrinshpun]

The total European deliveries in Q1 are so far 2,751 (conservatively, as not all countries are accounted for yet). Therefore, in order to meet the 6,400 guidance, TM would need to deliver 6,400 - 2,751 = 3,649. To put this number in perspective it is about 12% lower than the worst US quarter in 2013 - Q4, which had 4154 cars delivered in NA. If one assumes that TM deliveries in NA were the same as in Q4, the total would be 4,154 + 2,751 = 6,626.

EV Sales

 

[dirkhh]

The total European deliveries in Q1 are so far 2,751 (conservatively, as not all countries are accounted for yet). Therefore, in order to meet the 6,400 guidance, TM would need to deliver 6,400 - 2,751 = 3,649. To put this number in perspective it is about 12% lower than the worst US quarter in 2013 - Q4, which had 4154 cars delivered in NA. If one assumes that TM deliveries in NA were the same as in Q4, the total would be 4,154 + 2,751 = 6,626.


View attachment 46813


EV Sales

You are missing 26 cars in Austria in March. I assume the Jan/Feb numbers for Austria are included in your Europe total (it's a bit unclear where you have those numbers from)...
You are missing 5 cars in Estonia in March.

 

[vgrinshpun]

You are missing 26 cars in Austria in March. I assume the Jan/Feb numbers for Austria are included in your Europe total (it's a bit unclear where you have those numbers from)...
You are missing 5 cars in Estonia in March.

Thanks for the Austria and Estonia update. Are these official registration data?

The European deliveries for January and February are taken from the website linked in my original post.

Adding Austria and Estonia (and fixing some arithmetical errors), the total for Europe as it stands now is 2,795, so in order to meet 6,400 TM needs to deliver only 3,605 cars in NA, which is 16% lower than Q4 deliveries in NA. Assuming the same NA deliveries as in Q4 yields total of 7,083 deliveries.

Edit: The Q4 NA total that was listed in my post was actually US only. Adding 134 deliveries in Canada yields total NA deliveries of 4288.

 

[dirkhh]

Thanks for the Austria and Estonia update. Are these official registration data?

The Austria number I got directly from the official Austrian government website. I checked the corresponding Swiss website as well but they don't break out Tesla. The Estonia number is from one of the posters here in the forum.

 

[Mario Kadastik]

It's four cars in Estonia as mine was delivered in December. Out of those four two were registered in Q1, but the other two were paid for and handed over for delivery by Tesla in Q1 and count for all purposes as Q1 as transit time is a week. I know all of the owners and timeframes hence certain of it. Of those four one was in February and other three in March.

 

[maekuz]

6,600 cars are expected per Barclays:

Source: Twitter / carlquintanilla: Barclays: US demand for Tesla ...

 

[Mario Kadastik]

So Barclays has bought the plateaued demand.

 

[GravityPull]

So Barclays has bought the plateaued demand.

Hi Mario
I've been struggling with the argument about U.S. demand of Model S having plateaued. If the argument is that Tesla sold about 5k Model S in one quarter while having a 2 month waiting list and in a future quarter sold under 4k while having the same waiting list time isn't that an indication of something negative regarding demand?

 

[surfside]

fwiw (i've read the barclay's report), they indicate that they believe tesla only delivered approximately 700 model s sedans in the US in january, and anticipate 3,800 US deliveries for 1Q2014. they don't provide any evidence as to where they are getting / deriving their numbers from.

surfside

 

[Mario Kadastik]

You are making the assumption that Tesla will firstly serve the US market, then Norway and what's left over with regard to demand is pushed elsewhere. However that doesn't add up. Firstly in any given quarter the order of production is EU first, the US because all EU cars are in transit for at least a month. So how can Tesla know when to stop the EU production and concentrate on US to exactly fill demand? The only practical alternative is that Tesla is prioritizing markets leaving a pre-determined portion to be picked up by specific regions and then moves a certain percentage around based on changing conditions (i.e. Denmark changing subsidy at end of year required a pull of cars there dropping some others back). They know that any end of quarter push at the very end will get shipped closer and closer to home finally with only factory deliveries in the end. They can easily prioritize as they know the US demand is robust.

Now the reason the US numbers have leveled out or started to slowly drop while total production increases is that Tesla wants to really get a global presence. They ship cars further and further out expanding markets etc. Norway in March is the only fluke I see though Elon did promise last year that Norway would get some true love in Q1 and Q2 due to them being so revolutionary in policy and acceptance. So basically Elon remembers those who supported the company well. He wants to make Norway a PR case, a country where Teslas make up 10% of total sales and will probably soon make up even more. This is a true big PR case for EVs and can be sold globally. It's definitely worth sending 500-1000 more cars to Norway at cost of US deliveries.

Now when Tesla expands production rapidly to 8k, 10k, 13k cars a quarter and the US numbers remain ~4k, THEN I will start to think there may be a level there. But at 6-7k it just means that Elon's keeping the US level at 4k and getting EU to the other 4k. It'll become even tougher with China and others being added that probably also want 4k or more per quarter. So in fact we may very well see the whole year with limited US production just because Tesla needs to send cars also to EU and Asia in respectable numbers to feed in the market and create the exponential growth effect for the future by cars driving around. Also it's kind of hard to facilitate major supercharger expansion in EU without cars in EU, hence draining US production in favor of EU one is indeed a logical thing to do as local cars explain better the financing of the network.

 

[sub]

I'm not sure why people think that sales are plateauing in the US based on DELIVERIES! Is it possible that this is the case, of course, but there is no data to come to this conclusion imo. The same could have been said for Norway until 2 weeks ago, oops. I see others are now picking up on the Bloomberg article and repeating it. Is it that hard to understand that Deliveries do not equal sales?

 

[Todd Burch]

When you're production-constrained and you expand to other markets outside of the US, OF COURSE the US delivery rate is going to decrease (unless the increase in production rate can overcome this).

How do they not understand that? I assume they're not quite THAT stupid...so what data are they using to substantiate the claim?

 

[Mario Kadastik]

When you're production-constrained and you expand to other markets outside of the US, OF COURSE the US delivery rate is going to decrease (unless the increase in production rate can overcome this).

How do they not understand that? I assume they're not quite THAT stupid...so what data are they using to substantiate the claim?

They are that stupid. They also use the argument that the delivery times don't go up in the US and even come down to as low as 3-4 weeks using anecdotal evidence from TMC orders and deliveries threads.

 

[maoing]

LA times reports 4,700 Q1 sale in US, assume ~150 in Canada, so total NA Q1 sale might be ~4850. If add up the ~2800 EU Q1 sale, total Q1 delivery # could reach 7600, is that possible?

[Tesla sold about 1,600 of its Model S sports sedans in the U.S. in March, just slightly more than it sold in the same month a year earlier, according to AutoData Corp. Through the first three months of this year, the Palo Alto car company has sold 4,700 cars in the U.S., up not quite 1% from the same period a year earlier.]

http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...s-slow-20140408,0,4757765.story#ixzz2yJwKdDVj

Thanks for the Austria and Estonia update. Are these official registration data?

The European deliveries for January and February are taken from the website linked in my original post.

Adding Austria and Estonia (and fixing some arithmetical errors), the total for Europe as it stands now is 2,795, so in order to meet 6,400 TM needs to deliver only 3,605 cars in NA, which is 16% lower than Q4 deliveries in NA. Assuming the same NA deliveries as in Q4 yields total of 7,083 deliveries.

View attachment 46814

Edit: The Q4 NA total that was listed in my post was actually US only. Adding 134 deliveries in Canada yields total NA deliveries of 4288.

 

[Todd Burch]

LA times reports 4,700 Q1 sale in US, assume ~150 in Canada, so total NA Q1 sale might be ~4850. If add up the ~2800 EU Q1 sale, total Q1 delivery # could reach 7600, is that possible?

[Tesla sold about 1,600 of its Model S sports sedans in the U.S. in March, just slightly more than it sold in the same month a year earlier, according to AutoData Corp. Through the first three months of this year, the Palo Alto car company has sold 4,700 cars in the U.S., up not quite 1% from the same period a year earlier.]

http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...s-slow-20140408,0,4757765.story#ixzz2yJwKdDVj

I believe AutoData values have been pretty wrong in the past. The fact that this article compares US sales for '14Q1 to US sales from '13Q1 is silly...

In other news, apples are different than oranges!

 

[justdoit]

LA times reports 4,700 Q1 sale in US, assume ~150 in Canada, so total NA Q1 sale might be ~4850. If add up the ~2800 EU Q1 sale, total Q1 delivery # could reach 7600, is that possible?

[Tesla sold about 1,600 of its Model S sports sedans in the U.S. in March, just slightly more than it sold in the same month a year earlier, according to AutoData Corp. Through the first three months of this year, the Palo Alto car company has sold 4,700 cars in the U.S., up not quite 1% from the same period a year earlier.]

http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...s-slow-20140408,0,4757765.story#ixzz2yJwKdDVj

Yea this is interesting. 7600 just seems absurd to me. Seems like the Europe numbers are fairly accurate so it's the 4700 number that is up in the air. How have Auto Data's estimates been in the past? Have they over or under estimated deliveries?

 

[adiggs]

I agree. Even though guidance was for lower numbers in Q1, the market would still hammer TSLA if they don't have higher numbers than Q4, especially with current market conditions. I can only imagine the bear FUD that would come out if numbers are lower in Q1 than Q4 (demand sinking for Tesla, Tesla production declining, etc.) despite this being guided by the company with reasons given. Showing improvement Q on Q maintains the overall positive momentum.

I believe that this sentiment is widely held in this community, and more broadly in the investment community. In fact, I even believe that it's true myself.

My question though is does it matter? And what does "hammered" actually mean?

If Tesla reported lower deliveries due to lots of cars in transit and being delivered early in Q2, and that the pipeline will be filling as the company won't be wasting resources cramming deliveries into the end of the quarter (details of verbiage aren't my point - it's the sense I'm going after), might we see $150? And if we did, does that really matter?

My point here isn't that Tesla should be ignoring the quarterly results - just that we've seen historical evidence that the company has been managing to quarter end results. I even believe that was important for the last year to show growing and improving results. I also believe that the long term success of the company includes a shift away from managing for quarter end results. That might take a year to avoid any particularly large shocks to the system, but it helps level out the system and puts it on a more sustainable basis. As an investor in the company, this is a behavior shift that I'm looking for to support the long term health of the company.

I actually don't care about quarter end focus, quarter to quarter, this year. I'm thinking further out - I don't want to continue seeing this behavior being readily visible and apparently part of Tesla's corporate culture in several years, and I particularly don't want to see it when Gen 3 is shipping. I believe (and recognize that I could be wrong) that the value of the quarter end focus is no longer needed (Tesla is a going concern and has other problems to tackle), and further believe (but could be wrong) that it will be easier to start shifting away from the behavior pattern now than it will be in a few years when there are more employees, bigger company, and more time for the pattern of behavior to become accepted as normal and reasonable.

 

[uselesslogin]

Yea this is interesting. 7600 just seems absurd to me. Seems like the Europe numbers are fairly accurate so it's the 4700 number that is up in the air. How have Auto Data's estimates been in the past? Have they over or under estimated deliveries?

I can tell you that for the 1H 2013 they were under estimated.

 

[pz1975]

To answer the question of US demand, isn't there some way to determine current waiting time for cars delivered now? Is there somewhere on this site where US owners are posting when they ordered/finalized and when they got their car? I don't use other parts of the site so I don't know, but I will take a look. The tricky part is that because it looks like deliveries are made in batches to each region, some people may have waited longer (ordered way before the US delivery batch period) and some shorter (ordered closer to the delivery batch period). I guess we would need an average wait time for all cars delivered in the quarter.

 

[uselesslogin]

To answer the question of US demand, isn't there some way to determine current waiting time for cars delivered now? Is there somewhere on this site where US owners are posting when they ordered/finalized and when they got their car? I don't use other parts of the site so I don't know, but I will take a look. The tricky part is that because it looks like deliveries are made in batches to each region, some people may have waited longer (ordered way before the US delivery batch period) and some shorter (ordered closer to the delivery batch period). I guess we would need an average wait time for all cars delivered in the quarter.

The now inaccurately named "Model S Order Delivery Tracker Q1 2014" will do the job. The general answer seems to be the wait is 2 months from order confirmation.
Model S Order Delivery Tracker - Q1 2014