Replies to post #77332 on Tesla Inc (TSLA)

[Scumbag Fraudsters]

American sales and margins are slumping. :-)

The impetuous CEO says the next 12 months will be "challenging."

April 3, 2023

Tesla sales again fall short of production

Tesla reported a modest 4% rise in sales in the first quarter compared to the final three months of last year, despite a series of price cuts on its lower priced vehicles and talk by CEO Elon Musk about strong demand at those lower prices.

The first quarter also marked the fourth straight quarter that Tesla has produced more vehicles than it has delivered to customers. Some of that may be due to the ramp up in production at two new factories, one in Texas, the other in Germany, which opened last spring, and a lag between that increased production and sales.

Tesla said there was an increase in the number of its more expensive models, the Model S and Model X, in transit to Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as to the Asia Pacific region.

But it does mean that over the last 12 months Tesla has produced 78,000 more cars than it has sold, suggesting that talk of strong demand by Tesla executives may not be backed up by the numbers. That 78,000-vehicle excess production is equal to 5% of the cars it has built. First quarter sales trailed production by 18,000 vehicles, less than the gap in third and fourth quarter of last year, but still equal to 4% of the vehicles it built.

“For four straight quarters, Tesla has produced more cars than they have sold, despite the fact that two of its plants are operating at 20% to 40% utilization, and it shut-down its largest plant, unexpectedly, three times in the first quarter,” said Johnson said, who said he believes Musk has a “pathological problem with the truth.”

“In short, no matter what Elon Musk says, Tesla has a serious/major demand problem,” said Johnson.

April 21, 20323

Tesla stock drops 10% after loss report

Tesla shares fell sharply Thursday after the company felt the sting of numerous price cuts it made across its model lineup this year in hopes of energizing sales.

Tesla is shaving thousands of dollars off the price of its cars as American consumers pull back spending on big ticket items, anxious over elevated inflation and concern about the health of the financial sector after a pair of U.S. banks collapsed during Tesla's first quarter.

Tesla's sales did climb during the quarter, but the amount of money generated per sale fell on price cuts, and first-quarter profit slumped 24%, the company said late Wednesday.

TDCowen analyst Jeffrey Osborne said he's "concerned" about Tesla's strategy of selling as many vehicles as possible at lower profit margins and counting on revenue generated later from "Full Self-Driving" technology. Osborne remains skeptical about when that technology will be available.

"We continue to question whether FSD will ever work on a camera-only based system" with older hardware, Osborne wrote.