Tesla Beats Estimates With Less-Drastic Drop In EV Sales

(Bloomberg) -- Tesla Inc. reported its second consecutive drop in quarterly deliveries, despite measures Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk took to stem the decline.

The carmaker said Tuesday that it delivered 443,956 vehicles in the second quarter, better than the 439,302 average analyst estimate. While sales were down 4.8% from a year ago, Tesla improved on a sequential basis from the 386,810 vehicles delivered in the first three months of the year.

The company produced 410,831 vehicles during the quarter, 14% fewer than it made during the same period a year ago. Tesla didn't offer an explanation for the sales and output dip, but is likely to go into more detail when it reports second-quarter results on July 23. Its shares climbed 6.7% at 9:52 a.m. in New York.

Tesla has had a tumultuous year. Musk announced major staff reductions in April and pushed internally to reduce headcount by as much as a 20%. The job losses have included sales employees, which may have played a role in weaker delivery figures. The EV maker's first new model in years, the Cybertruck, also has been slow to ramp up.

Tesla blamed its first quarter slowdown on a suspected arson attack at its vehicle factory near Berlin, as well as shipping diversions from the Red Sea. While there were fewer external disruptions to the business during the last three months, the company is struggling to grow with an older lineup of vehicles.

Musk ordered price cuts across Tesla's lineup over the past year and a half, but those measures haven't done enough to sustain momentum. The Austin-based carmaker delivered 422,405 of its top-selling Model 3 and Model Y vehicles in the second quarter, down from 446,915 a year ago.

The company still hasn't broken out sales for the Cybertruck, the pickup that it began delivering late last year. Two recall campaigns in June suggested Tesla has handed over more than 11,000 of the trucks to customers. During the company's annual shareholder meeting last month, Musk said the automaker had produced 1,300 of the pickups in a week, though he didn't specify when or speak to whether Tesla would maintain that pace.

Tesla did note a record in its energy storage business for the second quarter in a row. Tesla said it deployed around 9,400 megawatt hours during the last three months, up from 4,053 megawatt hours in the first quarter. This means the company almost topped the amount of energy storage products it deployed all of last year in the first half of 2024.

While the unit, which deploys Powerwall batteries for homes and Megapacks for commercial customers, has provided a glimmer of hope to Tesla amid a vehicle-sales decline, the challenge has been to convert those gains into meaningful revenue. The company usually brings in more sales from its “services and other revenue” segment than from energy generation and storage.

Musk has said Tesla will roll out new and more affordable models by early next year, though the company has provided few details beyond saying they'll be produced on the same manufacturing lines as its current lineup. The CEO has also prioritized building a fully autonomous robotaxi and plans to hold an event to unveil the vehicle on Aug. 8.

(Updates with additional information, share price starting in third paragraph.)

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