Tesla could have the best quarter buoyed by strong deliveries: Analysts

With EV giant Tesla going all in in terms of delivers for the quarter ending September, analysts at Wall Street have predicted that the company could deliver its best quarter even as the auto sector reels under the unprecedented shortage of semiconductor parts.

Earlier this month, CEO Elon Musk had asked employees to "go super hardcore" for the third quarter ending to make up for production challenges faced early in the quarter. The EV maker had flagged an unusually high end-of-quarter wave of deliveries in a staff memo.

While analysts at Piper Sandler and RBC estimated that Tesla could go about delivering 233,000 vehicles for the third quarter, those at Credit Suisse's estimated the figure to be somewhere between 225,000 and 230,000. Earlier this week, analysts expected Tesla to deliver 222,700 electric vehicle by September end, as per market data provider Visible Alpha data.

Further, analysts observed that while the global shortage of semiconductor chips may have majorly hit production activities of various other car manufacturers around the world, it may not have been that big a deal for Tesla. "Tesla appears to have been less impacted by the shortage than other (automakers)," Credit Suisse's Dan Levy said in a report.

Piper Sandler's Alexander Potter has estimated that the third quarter will likely be Tesla's "strongest" ever, also noting that the reason could be an increase in adoption of electric vehicles in Europe and China, as well as Tesla's rising market share in those countries. He also raised the estimates of Tesla's annual deliveries to 894,000 units from earlier estimation of 846,000 vehicles. If achieved, this figure would be nearly double of last year's deliveries of 499,550 units.

A recent Reuters report also reported that Tesla's factory in Shanghai is expected to reach 3,00,000 electric cars by September end (Read full report).

(with inputs from Reuters)