Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) shares rose about 3% in premarket trading after the electric car manufacturer exceeded Wall Street’s expectations for third-quarter deliveries.
The company reported delivering a record 497,099 vehicles, surpassing the Bloomberg consensus estimate of 439,600. Production for the quarter totaled 447,450 vehicles, slightly below the projected 450,313 and down 4.8% compared with the same quarter last year. Deliveries, however, were up 7.4% year-over-year.
Model 3 and Model Y deliveries reached 481,166 units, marking a 9.4% increase from a year ago and exceeding the Bloomberg estimate of 424,828 units. Production of these models totaled 435,826 vehicles, down 1.8% year-over-year.
Other Tesla models contributed 15,933 deliveries, slightly below the expected 17,184, but representing a 53% rise from the previous quarter. Production in this category was 11,624 vehicles, a 13% drop from the prior quarter.
The company also set a quarterly record for its energy business, deploying 12.5 GWh of energy storage products.
Commenting on the results, Gene Munster, co-founder and managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, said on social media platform X, “the central debate today is how much of the upside was driven by tax credits.”
“Shares of $TSLA are up 3% today (and 40% over the past month) because investors believe the delivery improvement is sustainable,” Munster added. “In other words, those investors would say a large part of the upside was NOT driven by the tax credit (i.e., improvements in China).”
He noted, however, that he believes “the vast majority (90%+) of the upside was from the credit.”
“Yes, outside of the U.S., deliveries improved meaningfully quarter over quarter because of China. But I believe that improvement would have still left deliveries down ~5% y/y, compared to -13.5% in June and -13% in March,” Munster concluded.
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