Tesla stock was rising to start a new week of trading, leaving shares wiping out year-to-date losses.Delivery estimatesare helping.
An electric car charges at a Tesla charger. The EV giant has opened up its network of chargers to other models in recent months.
Shares of the electric-vehicle maker hit $249.08, up 4.5%, in early trading on Monday, while the S&P 500 was up 0.4% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.2%.
That left shares up 0.2% for 2024. Tesla stock ended 2023 at $248.48. Monday’s gain left shares slightly above the level reached just before weaker-than-expected second-quarter earnings sent shares down more than 12% on July 24.
Barclays analyst Dan Levy is helping Monday, writing that he sees third-quarter deliveries coming in at about 470,000 vehicles, which is higher than the roughly 460,000 consensus estimate aggregated by FactSet, and up about 8% year over year.
Beating Wall Street estimates typically helps stocks. So does growth. Tesla shipped about 831,000 vehicles in the first half of the year, down about 7% compared with the first half of 2023. Falling sales is one reason Tesla shares were down about 4% year to date, coming into Monday trading, trailing the S&P 500 by almost 25 percentage points.
Strong sales in China will lead to strong results, wrote Levy, adding that European EV sales have been weak lately.
Total car sales in Europe dropped about 8% year over year in July and August combined, according to industry data provider ACEA. EV sales fell about 23%. Things have been better in the U.S. Total EV sales in July and August combined rose about 14% year over year, according to Ward’s Automotive.
Tesla’s third-quarter delivery results are due on Oct. 2. After that is Tesla’s robotaxi event on Oct. 10, when the company will tell investors how its self-driving technology will be profitable.
Tesla stock added about 3.5% this past week, helped in part by the Federal Reserve Board’s 0.5 percentage point interest-rate cut that gave many stocks a boost.
