By George Glover and Al Root
Tesla and its Chinese rival BYD have reignited their price war, with both EV makers offering big discounts as they battle for supremacy in the world's biggest auto market.
Price wars are generally bad for profit margins. Tesla stock rose early Monday however. Investors are focused on something else.
Tesla said in a recent post on the social-media site Weibo last week that it would be cutting the price of its Model Y car by 10,000 yuan ($1,370) until the end of this month, and offering five-year interest-free loans. BYD is offering discounts of between 1,000 yuan ($137) and 3,000 yuan ($412), Bloomberg reported, citing a post by the auto consultant Sun Shaojun on the same platform.
It's all part of a push by the two companies to meet their end-of-year sales targets. Tesla and BYD are locked in a bruising battle to be the world's top seller of all-electric cars. Over the three months ended Sept. 30, BYD's quarterly revenue passed Tesla's for the first time ever, although it sells both all-electric and plug-in hybrid cars. Tesla only sells all-electric vehicles.
BYD sold more all-electric cars than Tesla is the fourth quarter of 2023, but Tesla retained the full-year sales crown. Through the first nine months of 2024, Tesla sold about 1.3 million all-electric cars. BYD sold about 1.2 million.
It looks as if BYD will outsell Tesla again in the fourth quarter. Sunday, BYD reported November all-electric sales of 198,065 units, up 16% year over year. In October and November combined, BYD sold about 388,000 all-electric cars putting the company on pace to sell about 580,000 in the fourth quarter.
Tesla doesn't report monthly sales. On Tesla's third-quarter conference call, management said that sales should grow in 2024 compared with 2023, indicating fourth-quarter volumes of about 515,000 cars.
Tesla investors don't appear too concerned with the sales competition or price war. Tesla stock was up 1% in premarket trading at $348.75 while S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were down 0.2% and 0.1%, respectively.
Tesla launched an updated version of its autonomous driving software over the weekend. That has the ability to excite investors. Tesla plans to launch a self-driving robotaxi service late in 2025 and improvements to its existing driver assistance software are how the company plans to get there. Tesla CEO Elon Musk believes Tesla's self driving software will be better than humans by early 2024.
Wall Street is also helping. In a Sunday report, Stifel analyst Stephen Gengaro raised his price target for Tesla stock to $411 from $287. He rates shares Buy. Self-driving technology was at the heart of the boost.
"The significant value creation potential from its AI-based full self-driving capabilities and Cybercab ( Robotaxi) underpin our positive outlook," wrote the analyst.
As of Friday's closing bell Tesla's stock had climbed 39% this year, compared with a 26% rise for the benchmark S&P 500 index. BYD's U.S. shares were up 20% since Jan. 1.
BYD stock was up 2.4% in overseas trading following its November delivery release.
Write to George Glover at george.glover@dowjones.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 02, 2024 07:32 ET (12:32 GMT)
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