Near-future quarterly financial projections

[luvb2b]

Anyone put together a model for Q1/Q2 with the latest pricing in mind?

i'm not closely involved with the stock these days, but my preliminary run at s/x deliveries is indicating a number between 14-15k for s/x.

there's very little to work with on model 3 deliveries but i feel like even 50k maybe a stretch. the numbers tend to matter less because the incremental units are probably lower price variants that come at lower (or negative gross margins).

not a lot of work into eps but it looks f'ugly to me. if i get something that i think is worthy of posting i'll put it up for people to dismantle.

 

[mrdoubleb]

i'm not closely involved with the stock these days, but my preliminary run at s/x deliveries is indicating a number between 14-15k for s/x.

there's very little to work with on model 3 deliveries but i feel like even 50k maybe a stretch. the numbers tend to matter less because the incremental units are probably lower price variants that come at lower (or negative gross margins).

not a lot of work into eps but it looks f'ugly to me. if i get something that i think is worthy of posting i'll put it up for people to dismantle.

One thing I am a little worried about is S/X quarter end deliveries. We only have 2 weeks left, but looking at the Norway data I don't see the usual push.

 

[neroden]

Chowdhry and Jonas have very bad records, so I would ignore them.

AlphaHat is suggesting US Model 3 numbers higher than 30K, and Euro/Asia numbers are obviously at least 24K just based on shipments (probably higher) ; anything less than 50K worldwide is flatly impossible, and 60K worldwide is more plausible, but still a lowish estimate. US S/X numbers may be as low as 6000, so world totals may be as low as 12000 there, but I would expect closer to 18000 on the S/X front. The tax credit expiration *did* leave a two-month "hangover", but Chowdhry and Jonas's numbers are bogus.

 

[neroden]

i'm not closely involved with the stock these days, but my preliminary run at s/x deliveries is indicating a number between 14-15k for s/x.

Seems possible. The wild card is probably Chinese shipments. US sales should start recovering in March based on my standard tax-credit-hangover model (though the price cuts will boost that).

there's very little to work with on model 3 deliveries but i feel like even 50k maybe a stretch.

I don't see how they get below 50K, given the number known to have been shipped to Europe and China (which looks like more than 40K). Doesn't seem possible.

the numbers tend to matter less because the incremental units are probably lower price variants that come at lower (or negative gross margins).

Incremental units in the US are low-margin, yes.

not a lot of work into eps but it looks f'ugly to me. if i get something that i think is worthy of posting i'll put it up for people to dismantle.

 

[Doggydogworld]

Chowdhry and Jonas have very bad records, so I would ignore them.

They're both goofballs, but Jonas usually nails delivery counts. I don't know how he does it.

That said, 48k S/X/3 is impossible. Tesla would run out of cash. Even with the expanded ABL.

 

[neroden]

I honestly can't come up with less than 50K by the most pessimistic estimation methods I can devise.

 

[Doggydogworld]

I honestly can't come up with less than 50K by the most pessimistic estimation methods I can devise.

I have not seen the actual report from Jonas. The intro text said 48k in Q1 and 362k total vehicles for the full year. That seems to say 48k for all vehicles and others claim the report says that. But at least one person claims the report says 48k is Model 3 only. That's below guidance, but not absurdly so as Trip's 30k Model 3s + 18k S/X.

My default is to use Tesla's guidance of 20k S/X plus 55-60k Model 3s as a starting point. If pressed I'd guess they come in a little below that.

 

[anthonyj]

Since they are probably releasing some FSD features (NoA without confirmation, advanced summon) before the quarter ends, maybe they can pull the FSD revenues in? Would make Q1 profitable?

 

[Doggydogworld]

Since they are probably releasing some FSD features (NoA without confirmation, advanced summon) before the quarter ends, maybe they can pull the FSD revenues in? Would make Q1 profitable?

I'm pretty sure Highway NOA was originally part of EAP, so I can't see them recognizing deferred FSD revenues for that. Maybe a little for advanced summons, but it's still in beta so probably not.

 

[tk7979]

Since they are probably releasing some FSD features (NoA without confirmation, advanced summon) before the quarter ends, maybe they can pull the FSD revenues in? Would make Q1 profitable?

a little bit of a bump to earnings but not much....Lots of moving parts this quarter with FSD revenue recognition, less GHG and ZEZ credits due to more international sales and complicated in transit figures.

 

[heltok]

APH4 delivery seems like a major release, worth a few percent of FSD revenue right?

 

[Doggydogworld]

APH4 delivery seems like a major release, worth a few percent of FSD revenue right?

I can't see how releasing HW3 (for some reason abbreviated APH4) in new cars would affect FSD revenue recognition for old cars.

IMHO they can only recognize FSD revenue based on features delivered. If it was based on h/w they'd have recognized revenue from day one, since the cars always had "all the h/w needed for FSD".

 

[Todd Burch]

I can't see how releasing HW3 (for some reason abbreviated APH4)...

For general info:

AP 1.0 = APH1
AP 2.0 = APH2
AP 2.5 = APH3
AP 3.0 = APH4

 

[NannerAirCraft]

My estimate for Q1. Obviously we will need actual delivery numbers to make a more accurate estimate.

 

[defc0n]

My estimate for Q1. Obviously we will need actual delivery numbers to make a more accurate estimate.View attachment 391601

Hopefully you’re a little light on model 3 deliveries. Everyone is having a tough time estimating this quarter.

 

[Doggydogworld]

My estimate for Q1. Obviously we will need actual delivery numbers to make a more accurate estimate.View attachment 391601

Good work, and thanks for posting it. I'd put S/X ASP higher by 5-10k, Model 3 lower by 2-3k. That should mostly balance out. I'd guess Automotive sales margin more like 20-21%. It was 23.2% last quarter, but they cut prices a lot, rolled out SR+ and won't get GHG credits on half their sales this quarter.

Energy storage will hopefully be closer to 400 MWh, but near-zero margin so it won't affect the bottom line.

 

[NannerAirCraft]

Good work, and thanks for posting it. I'd put S/X ASP higher by 5-10k, Model 3 lower by 2-3k. That should mostly balance out. I'd guess Automotive sales margin more like 20-21%. It was 23.2% last quarter, but they cut prices a lot, rolled out SR+ and won't get GHG credits on half their sales this quarter.

Energy storage will hopefully be closer to 400 MWh, but near-zero margin so it won't affect the bottom line.

With all the high ASP deliveries in Europe and China I would assume they would balance out the lower ones in the US enough but your probably right they should be a couple thousand lower. The S&X prices and options keep changing so quickly this quarter I'm not sure what they should be at.

 

[neroden]

I predict that energy storage will have a noticeable positive margin this quarter. It's still too small in volume to make a big difference though. (A really ultra-optimistic number would be $32 million in profits from it.)

 

[smorgasbord]

Trip Chowdhry says 30k Model 3s and 18k S/X for 48k total. Apparently Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley also says 48k total deliveries.

I think they're both wrong, and by a lot. Wrong as it's been in the past, the Bloomberg tracker is now showing over 79K Model 3s produced in Q1 (versus 63,150 in Q4 last year). And thanks to Tesla's overseas plan for the quarter (same as for Models S and X), the number of in transit vehicles won't be huge. This is Tesla producing vehicles for overseas the first half (or so) of the quarter, and then switching back to production for the US market. This gives time during the second half of the quarter for the overseas vehicles to reach their happy buyers, which reduces the total in-transit reported at the end of each quarter. Overall, I think Tesla would be better off just smoothing things out, but they'd have to bite that in-transit bullet once to get there, and they seem unwilling (understandable) to do that.

Anyway, there were 8.4K in-transit Model 3s at the end of Q3 (I couldn't find Q4 stats). Tesla itself said another 10K for overseas in transit (Q4 shareholder statement). So, assuming the US in-transit says pretty constant, we're looking at a delta of 10K in transit vehicles. But, with production up 16K compared to last quarter, that's a net available of 6K additional vehicles. My guess is Tesla saw their demand problem in the US and so fixed it by making SR/SR+ available in Q1 instead of Q3, and that worked, which means there won't be another 6K vehicles sitting unsold in inventory.

So, assuming US in-transit is the same, overseas takes away 10K in transit, vehicles in inventory rises a bit due to the end of year push, with 16K more vehicles being made in Q1 versus Q4 I don't see how deliveries in Q1 can be less than Q4 last year. Saying 30K Model 3 deliveries for Q1 is probably wrong by almost double.

 

[Doggydogworld]

I think they're both wrong, and by a lot. Wrong as it's been in the past, the Bloomberg tracker is now showing over 79K Model 3s produced in Q1 (versus 63,150 in Q4 last year).

I agree the analysts are wrong, but Bloomberg has also been way off the past three quarters until making last minute "adjustments to their model". If Tesla really announces 80k production it'll be a big feather in their cap, that's for sure.

I think Tesla would be better off just smoothing things out, but they'd have to bite that in-transit bullet once to get there, and they seem unwilling (understandable) to do that.

They've been saying they'll smooth it out for a year now, but they keep backsliding. This stop/start crap is wildly inefficient. ​

Anyway, there were 8.4K in-transit Model 3s at the end of Q3 (I couldn't find Q4 stats).

They had 1010 in transit on 12/31 and another 7k unsold inventory. I agree SR+ and the price cuts were enough to keep US inventory from growing. Might even shrink a bit. China is a wild card, though. The tariff situation gave them a huge incentive to get as many cars through customs as possible by 3/31, regardless of whether they had orders for them or not. 5 or even 10k of inventory in China is possible. No way to guess, we'll just see what they say this week.​