Key Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) analysts and influencers are out with their takes on the company's fourth-quarter delivery figures, which missed analyst consensus estimates.
Here's a look at what they are saying and why 2025 could be a make-or-break year.
Daniel Ives on TSLA: Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives, who is one of the biggest Tesla bulls on Wall Street, shared his take on Tesla's fourth-quarter delivery figures.
"TSLA announced its Q4 delivery numbers of 495.6k vehicles, below the Street's whisper number of ~500k. While knee jerk stock will be down, we view these as respectable numbers with all of our focus on the 2025 growth story and autonomous vision. Buyers today on any sell-off," Ives tweeted.
Ives maintained an Outperform rating on Tesla with a $515 price target, as shared by Sawyer Merritt on X.
"We remain highly confident in Tesla's ability to accelerate delivery growth into FY25 with 20%-30% growth," Ives wrote in a new note.
Ross Gerber on TSLA: Tesla investor and Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management CEO Ross Gerber took exception to the tweet from Ives above.
"Excuses. They used every discount they had to move vehicles and still couldn't. These Tesla numbers suck. No spin. Sorry," Gerber tweeted while sharing Ives' post.
Gerber went on to criticize Tesla's FSD v13 in another post and said the self-driving technology doesn't come close to Waymo's technology.
"No excuses FSD is not close."
Responding to a user who replied to Gerber's FSD post, the investment manager said, "close means nothing when it's people's life at risk."
"One can make excuses all day for Tesla but 2025 will be the prove it year… Can they grow sales? Can they grow profits ? Can they solve FSD? Can they make a new vehicle that is successful?” another Gerber post said.
Gerber recently took exception to news that Tesla CEO Elon Musk backs the elimination of the $7,500 EV tax credit, calling it "insanity."
Gene Munster on TSLA: Deepwater Asset Management co-founder Gene Munster said the "small" miss by Tesla Thursday doesn't matter to the long-term investment case for the stock.
"While Elon is focusing investors on autonomy, EV's still matter given those cars are the foundation of autonomy," Munster said.
The investor said the deliveries figure missed the Street consensus by around 1%.
"All eyes now shift to Tesla earnings on Wednesday, Jan. 29. Besides the usual focus on margins, investors will be listening for updates to Musk delivery expectations for CY25."
Munster said one of the key questions is what Tesla and other EV companies' demand will look like outside of tax credits.
"I believe we'll be exiting the EV winter in 2025, and the segment will grow around 15% in 2025."
With Tesla shares falling Thursday, Munster suggested that part of the three-month rally in the stock’s price may have been driven by emotion. Similarly, he attributed Thursday’s decline to emotional reactions as well.
"While I'm bracing for a further pullback going into the January 29th earnings, I continue to believe that shares are undervalued over the long-term given Tesla's doing more in AI than any non-native AI company."
The Delivery Figures: Tesla produced 459,445 vehicles and delivered 495,570 vehicles in the fourth quarter.
The delivery figure missed a street consensus estimate of 506,763 units, which Tesla shared ahead of the report.
Tesla had deliveries of 484,507 in last year's fourth quarter.
With the new report, Tesla's full-year delivery total is now 1.79 million units for 2024, down from a record 1.81 million in 2023. Tesla needed to report fourth-quarter deliveries of around 515,000 units to beat the 2023 full year total.
Thursday's report was the first time Tesla's annual delivery total has declined on a year-over-year basis.
Tesla previously said it expected to post growth in vehicle deliveries in 2024 and fell shy of that mark.
The comments from Ives, Gerber and Munster highlight the importance of 2025 in getting the company back on track with vehicle growth and other upcoming catalysts.
TSLA Price Action: Tesla stock was down 6% to $379.28 on Thursday, versus a 52-week trading range of $138.80 to $488.54. Tesla stock was up around 62% in 2024.
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