What happened
Shares of electric-car maker Tesla (TSLA 2.03%) fell as much as 6.1% on Wednesday after Goldman Sachs analyst David Tamberrino expressed a bearish outlook for the stock. Shares are down 4.3% at the time of this writing.
Now what
Tamberrino said he is concerned with the plateauing nature of Tesla's combined Model S and Model X deliveries. In Tesla's second quarter, the electric-car manufacturer's vehicle deliveries were up 53% year over year, but they were down 12% sequentially. Further, while Tesla said it expected Model S and Model X deliveries in the second half of the year to be higher than the first half, management doesn't seem to expect this growth to be very meaningful.
Tesla Model X. Image source: Tesla.
"Provided global economic conditions do not worsen considerably, we are confident that combined deliveries of Model S and Model X in the second half of 2017 will likely exceed deliveries in the first half of 2017," Tesla said in its second-quarter update on vehicle deliveries (via CNBC).
Taberrino also believes Tesla's profit margins in the second half of the year will disappoint and that Tesla's Model 3 production ramp-up will be slower than expected.
Tamberrino has a $180 price target for the stock, which nearly cuts Tesla stock's Monday closing price in half.
So what
While investors shouldn't rely on analyst opinions for their own due diligence, Tamberrino brings up a solid point about Tesla's combined Model S and Model X vehicles sales trajectory. Further, it's true that the stock market has already priced in significant growth expected from Tesla's Model 3. So, a worse-than-expected production ramp-up for Model 3 would likely be bad news for the stock.
