One can’t help but notice the irony: amid the hoopla following the Model 3 “launch”, Tesla’s first quarter results were not good.
Specifically, it delivered a total of 14,820 vehicles globally, missing the original forecast of 16,000 units.
It might look like a small difference, but missing the mark resulted in its shared falling 3.5 percent in the stock market, thus cutting on the 4.0 percent earning it had achieved on Monday following the presentation of the Model 3 and the overwhelming number of pre-orders that followed.
Tesla attributed this to parts shortages and “hubris in adding far too much technology on the Model X in version 1”. The issue, which hit the Founder Series last September, was eventually resolved and, by the end of March, production rate increased to 750 units per week.
Yet, as Andrea James, an analyst at Dougherty & Co. commented on Bloomberg, they had “a first-quarter miss in the middle of reservations for the Model 3 going through the roof. Execution matters on an execution story, but Tesla scores points for their honesty about what happened in the quarter.”
Even so, the automaker projects 80,000-90,000 deliveries this year, a huge increase over the 50,658 units it sold in 2015. Additionally, the huge number of people putting down a $1,000 deposit for a Model 3 means Tesla raised almost $300 million in a couple of days – and while it might indeed need much more if it is to bring the car to the market, it’s worth pointing out that it raised $226 million in its June 2010 IPO.
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