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Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives maintained an Equal-Weight rating and $1,000 per share price target on Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) heading into its earnings release Wednesday after the close.
Ives said the Street is “laser-focused” on delivery and production commentary from the company, although deliveries will be soft this quarter due to China’s COVID-related shutdowns.
“Tesla’s ability to preserve margins this quarter will be front and center for investors while all focus now shifts to the outlook for the rest of the year,” wrote the noted Tesla Bull.
“Deliveries for the quarter which came out in early July were 255k which were in-line with lowered Street whisper numbers as we estimate roughly 70k units were wiped out of the quarter with the China shut down for 2 months in the quarter,” he added.
Ives continued that the “elephant in the room” for Tesla and the broader market is the dark economic storm clouds on the horizon.
“This will be a key topic on the conference call this week with the Street trying to peel away the onion on the demand picture for Tesla and the broader EV sector. We believe based on reservation orders globally and wait times, demand is still outstripping supply by ~15%-20% for Tesla on the Model Y front,” explained Ives. “We believe Tesla has ample demand capacity to hit ~2 million units in 2023 globally with production capacity that can exceed this number when factoring in Austin and Berlin to a normalized China production target.
He concluded that while June delivery numbers were “ugly,” earnings will be “nothing to write home about,” while the focus will be on the trajectory for the second half of the year.
