Tesla Q4 & 2023 Sales Expectations

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The year is drawing to a close, and Tesla will surely break some more sales records. It is sure to have its best quarter for deliveries ever, and its best year ever, and the Tesla Model Y is sure the be the best selling vehicle in several markets. But there’s a big lingering question — how many vehicles will Tesla actually deliver in 2023?

For those who follow the company but not the stock, it doesn’t really matter. We know that Tesla is going to deliver a lot of vehicles and will be one of the leading forces getting people out of climate-destroying fossil-powered cars and SUVs. However, many people follow Tesla now to see what is happening and going to happen with the stock.

Elon Musk’s original goal for 2023 was to deliver 2 million vehicles. Those who track the company’s movements closely, including Wall Street analysts, see the company falling well short of that.

“Tesla likely delivered 1.82 million vehicles globally in 2023, up 37% from 2022, with about 473,000 units in the fourth quarter, according to 14 analysts polled by LSEG,” Reuters reports.

The analysts/numbers tracker I trust the most is Troy Teslike. (He’s not a Wall Street suit.) His expectation from 3 weeks ago was that Tesla would deliver 1.8 million vehicles this year. (Frankly, I think several Wall Street analysts just copy his homework and change things up a bit, but we won’t dive into that today.)

Tesla Delivery Estimates for Q4 were as follows on 8 Dec:

• My Estimate: 477K (was 482K on 29 Nov)
• Analyst Consensus: 481K (was 483K)

I just posted a new update on Patreon: https://t.co/YwxQ9IVV5n It includes a calculation for the potential impact of incentive cuts on EPS. pic.twitter.com/rI9iCuxBlE

— Troy Teslike (@TroyTeslike) December 17, 2023

Troy’s 4th quarter expectation is 477,000 deliveries, with the majority of those being deliveries of the Model Y. Interestingly, also, for the first time ever, the expectation is that Tesla will see higher sales in China than in the USA — notably higher sales.

Troy’s estimate, as you can see, is a bit below the Wall Street consensus. If that remains the same and Troy is more accurate, one could expect a stock price hit when the official numbers come out. We’ll see soon. Tesla is expected to announce official numbers on Tuesday.

One more thing of note on this matter, though: If Tesla doesn’t hit 2 million sales, it’s not from lack of trying. Prices of Tesla models have come down significantly this year. In fact, Tesla’s industry-leading gross margins took a huge hit from this. All of that dampens stock bullishness and expectations a bit. I think many are on the edge of their seats not just about this quarter and year, but also about what’s to come in 2024. Let us know your thoughts down in the comments!