Tesla Q1 Deliveries To Beat Street Estimates, Says Wedbush

Tesla Inc TSLA will beat Wall Street expectations of 170,000 deliveries for the first quarter and restore momentum for the company’s stock and electric vehicle sector, according to Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives.

The Tesla Analyst: Ives maintained his $950 price target and Neutral rating on the Elon Musk-led automaker.

The Tesla Thesis: The analyst said in a note Tuesday that Wedbush has updated its delivery model to reflect increased confidence in the first half of this year.

For the first quarter of 2021, Wedbush is raising Model 3/Y estimates to 160,000 units from 132,000 units. For Model S/X vehicles Wedbush revised estimates to 14,000 units from 12,500 units.

Ives revised the total Automotive delivery revenue to $8.79 billion from $7.67 billion.

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For the second quarter of 2021, Wedbush expects Model 3/Y deliveries to be 166,000 units compared to the earlier estimated 144,000.

For the Model S/X, Wedbush expects approximately 14,000 deliveries compared with the previous estimate of nearly 13,000 units.

Wedbush expects total deliveries in the FY 21 to be 830,000 compared with the prior estimate of 774,000 units.

Total automotive delivery revenue for FY 21 will be $42.7 billion compared with the previous estimate of $39.7 billion, as per Ives.

The revision of the Wedbush Delivery Method is a reflection of the firm’s belief based on its checks that despite the noise and chip shortage Tesla saw strength in China and the U.S. “with EV consumer demand patterns that continued to improve discernibly.” 

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The improvement, according to Wedbush, was seen since the beginning of January with strength seen for Tesla in the months of February and March, particularly in China.

From the point of view stocks, Ives wrote that the recent sell-off in EV shares “creates a massive buying opportunity in our opinion to own the Chinese EV players as well as the leader of the pack Tesla heading into this golden age of EVs.”

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