Tesla reports global electric-vehicle deliveries on Thursday, with the company trying to return its car business to growth for the first time in 2025.
It's going to be close. The company-compiled Wall Street consensus number is 443,000 deliveries. That would be about 4% fewer than the 462,890 delivered in the third quarter of 2024.
Tesla stock was rising 1.4% to $466 in premarket trading, before results were released, while S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were up 0.2% and down slightly, respectively.
Others have issued higher estimates. Future Fund Active ETF co-founder Gary Black estimates deliveries of 470,000 vehicles, citing Ford Motor's strong EV sales.
Ford sold 11,712 EVs in September, up 85% year over year. Some EV buyers are rushing to beat the expiration of the federal $7,500 purchase tax credit, eliminated at the end of September after being cut in President Donald Trump's tax and spending bill passed on July 4.
A Tesla researcher referenced by Wall Street, Troy Teslike, projects deliveries of 481,000 vehicles. Strong U.S. sales and improving European sales data have caused him to increase his estimates by some 40,000 units over the past few weeks.
Investors would welcome a beat, but predicting the stock move isn't easy. Tesla stock dropped 6.1% on Jan. 2, after the company reported fourth-quarter deliveries of 495,570 vehicles, a record for the company. Tesla stock had risen more than 60% in the two months leading up to the delivery report.
Shares gained 5.3% on April 2, after the company reported first-quarter deliveries of 336,681. That number missed analysts' estimates by a wide margin, sparking fears that Elon Musk's close association with Republican President Donald Trump was turning off core Tesla buyers -- politically left-leaning people looking to go green. But that was also the day reports surfaced that Musk would leave his position in the administration.
Tesla stock rose 5% on July 2, after the company reported deliveries of 384,122 vehicles. The number was close to the analyst consensus, but the 13.5% year-over-year decline was the largest in the company's history. Tesla delivered about 721,000 cars in the first half of 2025, down 13% from the year-ago period.
Coming into Thursday trading, Tesla stock has risen 52% over the past three months, 14% this year, and 78% over the past 12 months. EV deliveries aren't responsible for the rally. Instead, investors are increasingly focused on the company's artificial-intelligence opportunities. Tesla launched an AI-trained robo-taxi service in Austin, Texas, in June, and plans to expand it across the country as quickly as possible. It also plans to start selling significant quantities of AI-trained humanoid robots in 2026.
The AI potential has driven several price target increases on the Street, including hikes from RBC, Baird, and Wedbush. The average analyst price target for Tesla stock is about $347 a share, up $33 since the end of August, according to FactSet.
AI might be the future, but the car business still pays the bills, allowing Tesla to spend billions of dollars buying Nvidia chips. Investors will welcome a solid report.
After the third-quarter numbers, investors' attention will turn to the fourth quarter. How that will turn out without the $7,500 federal EV purchase tax credit is anyone's guess. The current consensus estimate is 465,000 vehicles sold, according to FactSet, down from the 495,570 sold in the final quarter of 2024.