Tesla Q1 2025 Update [pdf]
digitalassets.tesla.com
digitalassets.tesla.com
"On stage at the Tesla Autonomy Investor Day in Palo Alto, California, Musk boasted about Tesla’s self-driving technology, predicting his company will have more than 1 million robotaxis on the road next year." CNBC, 2019
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/23/elon-musk-any-other-car-than...
- Q1 EPS $0.27, Est $0.43, wow, hard to remember a fumble this large for such a big company. This is a big canary in the coal mine for US markets earning season, things are going to get really ugly.
- Q1 Revenue $19.3B, Est $21.7B
- Model 3 deliveries down 12%,
- Model Y deliveries down 12%
- CyberTruck deliveries down 24%
- production of Model 3 down 16%
- production of Model Y down 18%
- regulatory credits $600M for Q1
- powerwall passed 1GW in deliveries for the first time, that's positive
- Q1 gross automotive margins are at 12.5%
Notes:
- could Elon announcing he's leaving TSLA be the biggest single personal catalyst for a companies stock price, since Balmer announced he was leaving MSFT?
- They are providing guidance that tariffs will affect the power business more than the automotive business, which makes sense as North America makes up 5% of global Lithium-ion battery production and China makes up 84% of it
- Cybercab status is now "in construction"
- dropped their old sales guidance
- dropped their prediction that sales would grow on the year
- nothing in the deck about Elon staying on, but they did add a new risk about the changing political climate may affect their sales
- New Texas Lithium refining and cathode production plants are on track to start production next year Watch For:
- Does Elon provide a hard target for when he starts working again?
- Energy storage has been growing, but batteries will be hit hard by tariffs, rare earths, does that hit energy storage yet? or do we see a pump from pulling forward demand to beat tariffs?
- Any tie ins with xAI? Elon seems to be throwing everything he can to pump up xAI's valuation, he clearly has some loans now tied to its price
- Tone of earnings call, Typically earnings calls have been essentially blowing smoke up Elon's ass with no tough questions asked/answered at all.
Even one hard question would indicate that wall street has shifted from the Elon can do no wrong mindset
- Will TSLA blame tariffs for bad sales like other companies have?
- What will they say about a new Tesla models?
- China sales will dominate what the market thinks, Therefor Tesla will almost certainly not break them out,
For example:
Q4-2024 495,570 Q1-2025 336,681
That's down 32%.
A company is not required to update any previously given guidance and can just let their quarterly reporting speak for itself.
The reason why most companies give guidance, which they re not required to and many companies don't, is to manage wall streets expectations.
So given that, you can see why they'd update their guidance for material changes, though under REG FD they are not required to update guidance once they learn its incorrect.
They do modify their guidance so as to not surprise analysts on earnings releases and again as a way to manage expectations.
But as to the question asked, no they are not required to modify their guidance, even if they learn its not true.
For that reason I think this being a canary is not quite accurate because there's literally no other company with as much self-inflicted brand damage. What will be interesting to see is the delta between Tesla's poor performance and the other mega caps because you'll able to somewhat infer how much of the damage to Tesla is due to the brand/Elon issues (i.e., if Tesla is down 20% on revenue/earnings and the others are down less, on average, then that gap could be a backhand way to quantify the brand damage).
Of course all that said there is quite a significant amount of brand damage to go around for every well-known American company at the moment due to guilt by association. International sales will be very interesting to see with Apple, imo, likely being the most high-profile casualty of "don't buy US" (other than Tesla, I mean).
edit: added qualification about Tesla at very end
Tesla has some unique features with the nazi salute and cars getting torched. I don't think it's a good guide to other companies earnings.
Like, historically, "state backed car company" tends to mean "struggles to keep existing while protectionist policies last, then implodes messily once they lapse."
anecdotally, two people, who don't have EVs, reacted negatively to me renting a model 3 recently.
this was definitely not the case last year.
tesla has a reputation problem. they need to admit it.
i agree with the hivemind that this is 100% the reason behind the massive drop. given that they still have the best EVs on the market with the best EV supercharging network on the market, this is the only possible reason.
Nah. The build quality continues to disappoint and the number of recalls is high. Chinese manufacturers have been leading the way for a while now. They're just banned from major countries.
It's more than a matter of people disapproving of his antics.
Here in Australia the sentiment is that they're just Tesla cars, people don't care its tied to Elon "or some guy that did a salute".
Does certainly seem to be a hivemind.
Either way, pretty happy to not have the political divide the US does
I really don't think so. Chinese, Korean, and even European cars have caught up and in some cases surpassed Tesla in both price and quality.
This is a very "Blackberry still has the best smartphone on the market" in 2008 take.
Anyone who's seen the Chinese EVs released in the past year can see that they're building iPhones, Tesla is still building Blackberries, and the only thing keeping Tesla as a going concern in 2026 will be iron-fisted protectionism.
How so? i.e. What do you envision a Chinese EV will look like in 10 years compared to what I can buy today in North America?
I’m not saying you won’t be able to get this in North America eventually, but it’ll be licensed from Chinese companies the same way Tesla is doing with CATL LFP batteries right now.
As-is, super-fast charging hardly matters because you only really save money by charging at home where super-fast doesn't matter - for people who can't do most of their charging at home, the incentives for EVs (or disincentives for gas) mostly aren't strong enough for faster charging to tip the scales.
I don't know about the pricing situation - the average new car in North America costs $50k, so I don't know if the incentives are lined up right to sell entry level cars that are much better than today's entry-level cars.
For touch screens, we probably need safety regulation - it just doesn't seem like people care about everything being moved to touch screens enough to vote with their wallets.
The autonomous driving to me is a big unknown, timeline-wise. It's certainly the most obvious candidate for a real difference in car functionality.
When the auditors come in EOFY they look at the various accounts and their opening/closing balances year on year and look to explain at a high level what has impacted the increase and decrease of those accounts in the current FY. They will certainly pick up on reputational and political reasons.
> This dynamic, along with changing political sentiment, could have a meaningful impact on demand for our products in the near-term.
Also Trump's comments about not having intentions to dismiss J. Powell + trying to save face on tariffs cave (which affected ES futures as a whole, not anything specific to Tesla).