Tesla reported Q4 2016 Production and Deliveries after the closing bell today, missing guidance of 25,000 deliveries. The electric car maker reported deliveries of “approximately 22,200 vehicles in Q4, of which 12,700 were Model S and 9,500 were Model X.” The company also reported that it “produced 24,882 vehicles in Q4, resulting in total 2016 production of 83,922 vehicles. This was an increase of 64% from 2015.”
The miss of almost 3,000 vehicles from the expected deliveries was attributed to “short-term production challenges starting at the end of October and lasting through early December from the transition to new Autopilot hardware.”
While several reports from the street were already “expecting” the miss, the stock still shed $4 during the first half hour in after hours trading.
Tesla went into deep details about the miss, reporting that “although we tried to recover these deliveries and expedite others by the end of the quarter, time ran out before we could deliver all customer cars. In total, about 2,750 vehicles missed being counted as deliveries in Q4 either due to last-minute delays in transport or because the customer was unable to physically take delivery. Even where these customers had already fully paid for their vehicle, we still did not count these as deliveries in Q4.”
The number of reported “vehicles in transit” also went up from the 5,500 vehicles reported in the Q3 Production and Deliveries report, to a whopping 6,450 vehicles. Tesla reminds that “these [vehicles] will be counted as deliveries in Q1 2017.”
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The report comes today at a time when Tesla’s Gigafactory is hosting an ‘investor event’ prior to CES. The event may positively affect the stock and offset any negative effect from the announced production miss. One should not discount Elon’s amazing ability to control the media with tweets, events, and scheduled reports.
The full press release is provided here.
