Home / Markets News & Opinions / Elon Musk’s Tesla (TSLA) is Leading Pre-Market Losers; Here’s Why

Elon Musk’s Tesla (TSLA) is Leading Pre-Market Losers; Here’s Why

Last Updated September 23, 2020 1:06 PM
Mark Emem
Last Updated September 23, 2020 1:06 PM

Tesla’s stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) is leading the pack of pre-market losers in Thursday’s trading session. Ahead of the opening bell, the electric carmaker’s stock is down nearly 5%. After closing Wednesday at $243.13 per share, the stock of the Model 3 maker is now trading below the $232 level after falling by 4.79%.

Tesla
Tesla price chart | Source: Yahoo Finance

This comes after Tesla released its third-quarter results . The results revealed that the electric car firm fell short of its forecast delivery target by roughly 2,000 cars. Interestingly, this was despite the period between July and September beingTesla’s best quarter ever in terms of deliveries.

CEO disappoints Wall Street

As previously reported by CCN.com, Wall Street had been expecting the electric car maker to deliver 99,000 units in the third quarter. Tesla, however, only managed to deliver 97,000 units beating the previous record of slightly over 95,000 reached in the previous quarter.

Model 3
Tesla’s deliveries in Q3, 2019

Musk, who has a knack for setting production and delivery targets that are routinely missed, had projected  deliveries of 100,000 units.

Elon Musk 

Per CNBC , Tesla CEO Elon Musk had projected deliveries of between 360,000 and 400,000 this year. With the electric carmaker having delivered 63,000 vehicles in the first quarter and 95,356 in the second quarter, Tesla will need to break another quarterly record in order to meet the upper band of its target.

Is Tesla over-relying on the Model 3?

As has been the case since Tesla released its lowest-priced car (but which is still categorized as a luxury car), the uptick in deliveries has been largely due to a rise in orders for the Model 3. In the third quarter, Tesla delivered 79,600 Model 3 units which is 82.07% of the vehicle deliveries the electric car maker made in the third quarter.

This was a slight increase  from the second quarter when Model 3 deliveries constituted 81.4% of the total number of cars Tesla delivered in the April to June period. During the first quarter, this figure was 80.8% showing that the sedan is increasingly contributing more and more to Tesla’s revenues as the Model S and Model X, which predated the Model 3, fall in significance.