Tesla stock (TSLA) skidded to start 2025 following a big fourth quarter delivery miss and an overall down year for the electric vehicle maker.
For the quarter, Tesla said it delivered 495,930 vehicles globally, missing analyst estimates of around 510,400 as compiled by Bloomberg. This figure is above the 463,000 delivered last quarter and the 484,500 delivered a year ago.
For 2024, Tesla delivered 1.78 million vehicles, missing analyst estimates for 1.8 million and resulting in a total below 2023’s 1.8 million vehicles delivered. This is the first year-over-year decline for Tesla, hinting that new competition, demand, and global economic conditions may be hurting the company
Tesla stock fell over 6% on Thursday.
Tesla reporting a year-over-year delivery decline is likely a shock to investors, as it was only a short time ago the company was reporting a 50% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Though Tesla warned last year that its “vehicle volume growth rate may be notably lower than the growth rate achieved in 2023,” due to preparations to launch its next-generation vehicle at Gigafactory Texas, investors most likely were not expecting an annual delivery decline.
Meanwhile, China’s BYD (BYDDY) reported global deliveries of approximately 4.3 million passenger cars in 2024. Though Tesla’s main rival in China said 2.5 million of those were hybrids, a reversal of years past, the deliveries still bring BYD’s pure EV total to around 1.76 million — knocking on Tesla’s door.
Tesla bulls, however, see this as a short-term blip.
“Looking to FY25, we remain highly confident in Tesla’s ability to accelerate delivery growth into FY25 with 20%-30% delivery growth targets the focus for the Street as TSLA is also expected to launch its lower-priced EV in early 2025 to spur growth for vehicle deliveries,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote in a note to investors Thursday morning.
In addition to the vehicle growth rate accelerating in 2025, Ives believes increasing uptake of Tesla’s FSD (full self-driving) software, the rollout of robotaxi testing, and products like the Cybercab will take Tesla’s market cap to $2 trillion and beyond.
“The laser focus for Tesla is the 2025 reaccelerated delivery growth story and FSD penetration with autonomous the grand vision for Musk & Co. Any sell off today on weaker 4Q delivery numbers we are strong buyers,” Ives wrote.
Correction: This story originally stated Tesla’s Q4 delivery total was 471,930; this figure has been updated. We regret the error.
Pras Subramanian is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on Twitter and on Instagram.