Tesla Sets New Record For Delivery Of Vehicles In A Quarter

In a regulatory filing this week, Tesla announced a record-setting number of vehicles delivered during its second quarter of 2015 that ended in June. The Palo Alto-based company said that it delivered 11,507 Model S vehicles during the April-through-June period, according to an official company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

“This was a new company record for the most cars delivered in a quarter,” said Tesla in the SEC filing.

Ambitious Tesla CEO Elon Musk has promised to deliver 55,000 cars in the 2015 calendar year, and the company expects the launch of its next all-electric vehicle, the SUV-like Model X, to help in achieving this goal. The company said in its first quarter earnings report that it delivered 10,045 cars in the first three months of the year, giving it a total of 21,552 through the end of June, which is less than 40 percent of Musk’s target for the year.

Tesla explained that the delivery levels represent an approximately 52 percent increase in deliveries in comparison to the second quarter of the previous year.

“There may be small changes to this delivery count, usually well under 1 percent, as Tesla only counts a delivery if it is transferred to the end customer and all paperwork is correct,” the company explained.

Tesla stressed the delivery levels are only one measure of its financial performance and therefore should not be relied upon as an indicator of its financial results for the second quarter. According to figures posted at the Yahoo Finance site, Tesla lost $398.2 million on revenue of $3.52 billion over the 12 months that ended in March.

“The cost of sales, foreign exchange movements and mix of directly leased vehicles” are among the various factors that are affecting quarterly results, the company said.

Tesla has most likely become the biggest seller of electric vehicles in the United States, although the company’s obscure sales reporting methods, which don’t typically break out monthly or regional results, make it difficult to determine this for sure.

Analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch raised their price target on Tesla’s share price to $180 from $65. The bank has long struck a cautious note on Tesla, and had been the last to place a two-digit price target on the stock. According to FactSet, the average price target on Tesla is $276.37, which represents a 3 percent upside from Wednesday’s close. However, Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts kept their rating unchanged at underperform, saying that the company’s shares are overvalued.

The analysts noted that while Tesla could be successful in the long term as a niche company, in the near term the push for car-fuel efficiency will be met “primarily with downsized, turbocharged, internal-combustion engines on lighter vehicles.”