Tesla Reports Q3 Deliveries in Early October. Here's the Number That Would Send the Stock Soaring.
Key Points
Wall Street analysts are divided on what to expect from Tesla's third-quarter deliveries.
Investors can estimate a reasonable delivery number based on production estimates and an assumption about inventory days at quarter-end.
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Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is expected to release its third-quarter delivery numbers on Oct. 2. As always, they will be closely watched. Tesla's electric vehicle (EV) deliveries are its EV unit sales, allowing investors to plug the numbers directly into their assumptions.
What the market is expecting
The Wall Street consensus is for 454,000 deliveries, according to the latest figures from Visible Alpha. However, Wall Street isn't unanimous, with a Goldman Sachs analyst recently forecasting 435,000 and a Barclays analyst recently predicting 475,000.
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You could start by assuming that anything between the consensus and Barclays' target is a "good" number, but there's another way to look at it.
Focus on inventory
Tesla's global vehicle inventory data refers to how many EVs it has in inventory relative to its sales, measured in days. A high number implies it has a lot of vehicles in inventory (not good, as it ties up cash in assets unnecessarily), and a low number is usually seen as good for the same reason.
The chart below shows how Tesla reduced the metric in the second quarter. This was arguably due to bumper sales that also, unfortunately, came with margin pressure, partly from the cost of incentives to generate sales.
Data source: Tesla presentations. Chart by author.
The number that would send Tesla stock soaring
The Wall Street consensus for Q3 production is 487,000. Starting with that assumption and assuming global vehicle inventory remains at 15 days, we can determine Tesla's deliveries needed to meet those conditions.
Tesla delivered 480,126 EVs in Q2 and had 15 days of inventory, implying 480,126*15/75 = 96,025 vehicles in inventory at the end of the quarter.
Image source: Tesla.
Adding 96,025 to the forecast of 487,000 in production brings the total to 583,025 EVs. Consequently, 583,000-deliveries = 15/75*deliveries. Simplifying gives 583,000 = 1.2*deliveries, resulting in 485,833 deliveries in Q3 with 97,171 in inventory.
Maintaining production growth while keeping inventory days would be a strong result for Tesla, and a figure above 485,000 could send the stock higher, in my opinion.
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Lee Samaha has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Goldman Sachs Group and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends Barclays Plc. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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