On January 30th, Tesla guided to 1Q S&X deliveries of "slightly below Q1 2018" , that is, slightly below 21,815. Actual deliveries for the quarter were 12,600. That was not a production constrained problem. By the way, Tesla never updated guidance, even though they had to know they would be way below, which is why the final figure came as such a surprise.
This is the problem with credibility. As I vividly remember a judge once saying from the bench (fortunately not directed at me) "Credibility is like virginity. Once you lose it, you can never get it back."
So it goes with comments like "We had more orders for Model 3 than we could deliver." I really want to believe that is true. That way we can blame Panasonic, or parts shortages or wrong paperwork or other logistical problems for shortfall in deliveries." But something inside me fears that that they were including orders for the SR Model 3 that weren't even in production (even though delivery dates had been assigned). Hard not to have more orders than you can produce if you aren't making any effort to produce that variant.
Or I could be completely mistaken and "More orders really does mean more orders".
That's the problem when you lose credibility.
On a more positive note, the potential for an upside surprise could hardly be greater than it is right now. Biggest downside risk is that margins were worse than expected (in part due to deep discounting or incurring greater expense to maximize deliveries) that they make this a kitchen sink quarter to flush everything out. Also, store closings/severance would have been one time charges but operating costs will now be almost fully integrated into expenses. That may hurt EDITDA as well.
