With Q3 drawing to a close, it's interesting to complete what Tesla will do for Q4. It's pretty obvious they've pushed through a lot of their backlog and price sensitive demand, so there's a few approaches they could take to keep the growth going in Q4 (or not):
1) End Discounting - If Tesla reverts to full pricing they'll see margin improvements but the combo of reduced backlog + higher prices would likely result in a big drop in deliveries in Q4. If Tesla delivers 24K in Q3 it would look pretty bad to sell 18k in Q4, and it would start the ugly narrative that sales are tanking and will continue to drop until M3. The Seeking Alpha bears are already pushing the "big Q4 drop" narrative.
2) Continue Discounting - Tesla could continue with pricing as is. I suspect we'd still see a small drop in deliveries with the reduced backlog, but it's possible a few good points of publicity for the X (e.g. SUV of the year) would boost demand enough that Tesla could repeat ~24k deliveries in Q4.
3) Introduce Something Big - Tesla might be taking the opportunity with the plant shut down next week to introduce some major upgrades. If they start equipping AP2 software and make a big deal about it, then it would reframe all the recent discounts as a one time thing to purge inventory, rather than the new norm. Combine this with #2 and we could see a rise in deliveries.
4) Accept Flat Deliveries and Boost Revenue via Tesla Energy
Tesla could continue with approach #2 and have automotive flat Q/Q but still boost revenue via a nice quarter with Tesla Energy. It's hard to know where they are on the ramp, but I assume they'll use 2170 cells for the big SoCal project that will be installed in Q4, so I think they're close to major production. The narrative of flat automotive revenue until M3 but rapidly growing TE might be a good enough story to support the stock until M3.
I think we'll see a lot of "sizzle" between now and the M3 launch (e.g. SCTY roof, M3 Pt 2, Model Y launch, Tesla Semi) but Tesla also really needs to keep revenue growing pretty steadily or the narrative will become "osborneing". Hopefully Tesla has something planned for Q4. Then again, maybe Tesla is just expecting flat or declining automotive until M3 and that's why they're doing an equity raise now before the decline starts.
