Wall Street Doesn’t See Tesla Reaching Model 3 Production Target

Wall Street analysts don’t think that Tesla will have reached its goal of manufacturing 5,000 Model 3s per week by the end of June, according to a Bloomberg survey of eight analysts.

Since 2017, Tesla has already pushed back twice that coveted 5,000-a-week Model 3 production rate, with the latest deadline set for the end of June, tomorrow.

In early June, Elon Musk told the annual stockholders’ meeting that it was “quite likely” that Tesla could start building 5,000 Model 3s a week by the end of this month.

Tesla is expected to report production and delivery figures before the July 4 holiday. Wall Street analysts and a Tesla Model 3 production tracker set up by Bloomberg don’t see it making the 5,000 number. As of June 28, Bloomberg Tracker’s Trend forecast for next week a Model 3 weekly production rate at around 4,500 vehicles.

Out of the Wall Street firms Bloomberg polled about Tesla’s production rate, only Evercore ISI gave a weekly estimate—at 4,600 in the final week of June—400 short of Musk’s target.

Earlier this week, Goldman Sachs analyst David Tamberrino, who has been bearish on Tesla for years, wrote in a note to clients that the EV maker might once again fail to meet its production deadline for the Model 3.

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Commenting on the Goldman note, Musk wrote in a companywide email to Tesla employees that “They are in for a rude awakening :)”, according to a copy of the email that Bloomberg News has obtained.

Not all analysts polled by Bloomberg were bearish on Tesla like Goldman Sachs’s Tamberrino.

According to Robert Cihra at Guggenheim, who has a ‘buy’ rating and a $430 price target on Tesla, “While 6 months later than projected, we continue to estimate that 5,000/week bogey then setting up Tesla’s overall model to flip from sizable cash burn in first half of 2018 to profitability in second half, as Model 3 volumes drive big revenue, margin and free cash flow leverage off the big fixed-cost structure Tesla has been building.”

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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