Tesla Inc on Friday said it has built a little over 145,000 vehicles and delivered nearly 140,300 vehicles in the third quarter this year for a global record performance.
The Palo Alto, California-based maker of high-performance battery-powered vehicles slightly surpassed market estimates of 134,720 deliveries. Tesla's previous record delivery was 112,000 in the final quarter last year.
The company rolled out 124,100 units of its latest Model Y SUV and Model 3 vehicles in the third quarter as U.S. manufacturing bounced back following a suspension from the end of March to May because of pandemic-triggered lockdown.
In a media release, Tesla said their delivery tally should be seen as moderately conservative, as the company only counts a vehicle as delivered if it's taken to the client and all documents are complete. Tesla has kept its superiority in electric-vehicle orders, making a strenuous year-end revenues target just a bit more reachable.
Tesla shares, which have so far climbed over five-fold this year, were down 7.5 percent to settle at $415.09 on Friday. The drop was part of a huge stock sell-off after U.S. President Donald Trump announced he had tested positive for coronavirus.
The company continues to hike its production and vehicle turnout. Now with a price reduction in China - and a bigger Gigafactory Shanghai, the current year's final quarter looks set up to hit another milestone. Tesla's Shanghai facility is capable of manufacturing up to 200,000 vehicles annually, Grace Tao, Tesla vice president of foreign affairs in China, said in a media briefing with Xinhua News in May.
According to Cowen & Co analyst Jeffrey Osborne, they believe the bulls were expecting vehicle orders to be from 140,00 to 150,000 in the latest quarter. Osborne, who gave Tesla stocks a "market perform" rating, project's the group's annual orders will hit 462,000 units.
Tesla expects to deliver 500,000 cars this year, which is a 36 percent rise from the previous year, and has not revised its guidance. The delivery figures were disclosed a few days after the company's battery event, in which chief executive officer Elon Musk bared the group's plans to make its own batteries and cut manufacturing cost in order to produce a $25,000 battery-powered car.
With a potential excess capacity at its Shanghai plant, Tesla is currently proposing to start exporting some of the group's China-built cars to Europe. Historically, Tesla has exported only vehicles it built in the United States to the region.
