Tesla set to report Q3 deliveries ahead of robotaxi event

Published

2 months ago

October 1, 2024

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Tesla is set to report third-quarter vehicle production and delivery numbers on Wednesday.

Analysts are expecting Elon Musk‘s automaker to report about 463,310 deliveries, according to estimates compiled by FactSet StreetAccount. That would include about 435,900 of Tesla’s Model 3 sedans and Model Y SUVs.

Tesla reported deliveries of 435,059 and production of 430,488 vehicles for the same period a year ago, before it was selling the Cybertruck. More recently, Tesla reported deliveries of 443,956 and production of 410,831 vehicles for the second quarter of 2024.

If Tesla meets analysts’ expectations that would represent a 6.5% year-over-year increase for deliveries after declines in the first and second quarters of 2024.

Deliveries are not defined in Tesla’s financial disclosures, but they are the closest approximation to units sold reported by the company.

In the third quarter, as it did earlier this year, Tesla continued to offer a variety of incentives and financing plans to drive sales volumes, particularly in the largest market for EVs in the world, mainland China.

Tesla hasn’t given specific guidance for the full year of deliveries in 2024, but the company has said it expects a lower delivery growth rate this year versus last. Wells Fargo, pointing to this lack of guidance, said in a note that it’s expecting 1.63 million full-year deliveries for Tesla and third-quarter deliveries at around 440,000, below consensus.

Goldman Sachs last week said it expects Tesla deliveries and production “to come in-line with consensus, largely driven by the strength in the China market.” Goldman Sachs recommended buying call options ahead of the Wednesday report.

Robotaxi day in focus

Shares in the EV maker are up more than 20% over the past month, in anticipation that deliveries could improve year over year and sequentially in the third quarter, and ahead of the company’s robotaxi day on Oct. 10.

Tesla plans to host investors and fans at its “We, Robot” marketing event at a Warner Bros. Discovery movie studio in Los Angeles.

The automaker is expected to show off the design of a “dedicated robotaxi,” which Musk has referred to previously as the CyberCab. Tesla may also provide updates on its humanoid robotics project “Optimus” and other automotive and AI-driven products and services.

Tesla EV sales and revenue fell in the first half of 2024, and the company still has yet to deliver a self-driving system that can function as a robotaxi without a human driver at the wheel ready to steer or brake at any time. Tesla also renamed its premium driver assistance option to Full Self-Driving Supervised, tacking on a disclaimer-style term at the end.

Meanwhile, several rivals in the autonomous vehicle industry have begun producing robotaxis, and operating commercial robotaxi services. Rivals include Alphabet-owned Waymo in the U.S., and Pony.ai and Baidu in China. Amazon-owned Zoox is preparing a launch of a commercial robotaxi service in the U.S. as well.

Tesla brand erosion

Some customer interest in buying Tesla vehicles has been chilled by the brand’s strong association with Musk.

The company’s favorability among both liberal and conservative consumers fell in July, according to CivicScience. Tesla favorability dropped with Democrats to 18% in July, down from 39% in January, and it declined among Republicans to 22%, down from 36% in January.

Musk — who also leads SpaceX, X and xAI — has long shared provocative posts on social media, but in recent years, he’s become less filtered and more vociferous online about his right-wing political beliefs.

In July, he publicly endorsed former President Donald Trump, and he frequently posts screeds on X concerning illegal immigration, election fraud, crime, violence and other flashpoint issues.

He has shared political misinformation and deepfakes with his massive online following on X, according to reports by The Associated Press, CNN, NBC News, The New York Times and others. Before Musk acquired Twitter, now known as X, his feed focused more on Tesla and SpaceX, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.

Among the posts Musk recently spread on X were false claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pets. The Springfield Police Division, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and other local groups have all said the claims were baseless.

It remains to be seen whether left-leaning customers’ view of Musk will weigh on deliveries this year. Pew Research has found that Democrats have a much more favorable view of battery-electric vehicles and are more likely to buy them than Republicans in the U.S.

Technology

Intuit shares drop as quarterly forecast misses estimates due to delayed revenue

Published

7 hours ago

November 21, 2024

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Intuit shares drop as quarterly forecast misses estimates due to delayed revenue

Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi speaks at the opening night of the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles on Aug. 15, 2024.

Rodin Eckenroth | Filmmagic | Getty Images

Intuit shares fell 6% in extended trading Thursday after the finance software maker issued a revenue forecast for the current quarter that trailed analysts’ estimates due to some sales being delayed.

Here’s how the company performed in comparison with LSEG consensus:

Earnings per share: $2.50 adjusted vs. $2.35 expected
Revenue: $3.28 billion vs. $3.14 billion

Revenue increased 10% year over year in the quarter, which ended Oct. 31, according to a statement. Net income fell to $197 million, or 70 cents per share, from $241 million, or 85 cents per share, a year ago.

While results for the fiscal first quarter topped estimates, second-quarter guidance was light. Intuit said it anticipates a single-digit decline in revenue from the consumer segment because of promotional changes for the TurboTax desktop software in retail environments. While that will affect revenue timing, it won’t have any impact on the full 2025 fiscal year.

Intuit called for second-quarter earnings of $2.55 to $2.61 per share, with $3.81 billion to $3.85 billion in revenue. The consensus from LSEG was $3.20 per share and $3.87 billion in revenue.

For the full year, Intuit expects $19.16 to $19.36 in adjusted earnings per share on $18.16 billion to $18.35 billion in revenue. That implies revenue growth of between 12% and 13%. Analysts polled by LSEG were looking for $19.33 in adjusted earnings per share and $18.26 billion in revenue.

Revenue from Intuit’s global business solutions group came in at $2.5 billion in the first quarter. The figure was up 9% and in line with estimates, according to StreetAccount. Formerly known as the small business and self-employed segment, the group includes Mailchimp, QuickBooks, small business financing and merchant payment processing.

“We are seeing good progress serving mid-market customers in MailChimp, but are seeing higher churn from smaller customers,” Sandeep Aujla, Intuit’s finance chief, said on a conference call with analysts. “We are addressing this by making product enhancements and driving feature discoverability and adoption to improve first-time use and customer retention.”

Better outcomes are a few quarters away, Aujla said.

CreditKarma revenue came in at $524 million, above StreetAccount’s $430 million consensus.

At Thursday’s close, Intuit shares were up about 9% so far in 2024, while the S&P 500 has gained almost 25% in the same period.

On Tuesday Intuit shares slipped 5% after The Washington Post said President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed “Department of Government Efficiency” had discussed developing a mobile app for federal income tax filing. But a mobile app for submitting returns from Intuit is “already available to all Americans,” CEO Sasan Goodarzi told CNBC’s Jon Fortt.

Goodarzi said on CNBC that he’s personally communicating with leaders of the incoming presidential administration.

On the earnings call, Goodarzi sounded optimistic about the economy.

“Our belief, which is not baked into our guidance, is that we will see an improved environment as we look ahead in 2025, particularly just with some of the things that I mentioned earlier around just interest rates, jobs, the regulatory environment,” he said. “These things have a real burden on businesses. And we believe that a better future is to come.”

WATCH: H&R Block, Intuit shares fall after report Trump administration is considering a free tax-filing app

H&R Block, Intuit shares fall after report Trump admin considering a free tax-filing app

Technology

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber says X rival is ‘billionaire proof’

Published

10 hours ago

November 21, 2024

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Bluesky CEO Jay Graber says X rival is 'billionaire proof'

Bluesky has surged in popularity since the presidential election earlier this month, suddenly becoming a competitor to Elon Musk’s X and Meta’s Threads. But CEO Jay Graber has some cautionary words for potential acquirers: Bluesky is “billionaire proof.”

In an interview on Thursday with CNBC’s “Money Movers,” Graber said Bluesky’s open design is intended to give users the option of leaving the service with all of their followers, which could thwart potential acquisition efforts.

“The billionaire proof is in the way everything is designed, and so if someone bought or if the Bluesky company went down, everything is open source,” Graber said. “What happened to Twitter couldn’t happen to us in the same ways, because you would always have the option to immediately move without having to start over.”

Graber was referring to the way millions of users left Twitter, now X, after Musk purchased the company in 2022. Bluesky now has over 21 million users, still dwarfed by X and Threads, which Facebook’s parent debuted in July 2023.

X and Meta didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Threads has roughly 275 million monthly users, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in October. Although Musk said in May that X has 600 million monthly users, market intelligence firm Sensor Tower estimates 318 million monthly users as of October.

Bluesky was created in 2019 as an internal Twitter project during Jack Dorsey’s second stint as CEO, and became an independent public benefit corporation in 2022. In May of this year, Dorsey said he is no longer a member of Bluesky’s board.

“In 2019, Jack had a vision for something better for social media, and so that’s why he chose me to build this, and we’re really thankful for him for setting this up, and we’ve continued to carry this out,” said Graber, who previously founded Happening, a social network focused on events. “We’re building an open-source social network that anyone can take into their own hands and build on, and it’s something that is radically different from anything that’s been done in social media before. Nobody’s been this open, this transparent and put this much control in the users hands.”

Part of Bluesky’s business plan involves offering subscriptions that would let users access special features, Graber noted. She also said that Bluesky will add more services for third-party coders as part of the startup’s “developer ecosystem.”

Graber said Bluesky has ruled out the possibility of letting advertisers send algorithmically recommended ads to users.

“There’s a lot on the road map, and I’ll tell you what we’re not going to do for monetization,” Graber said. “We’re not going to build an algorithm that just shoves ads at you, locking users in. That’s not our model.”

Bluesky has previously experienced major growth spurts. In September, it added 2 million users following X’s suspension in Brazil over content moderation policy violations in the country and related legal matters.

In October, Bluesky announced that it raised $15 million in a funding round led by Blockchain Capital. The company has raised a total of $36 million, according to Pitchbook.

Technology

Alphabet shares slide 6% following DOJ push for Google to divest Chrome

Published

10 hours ago

November 21, 2024

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Alphabet shares slide 6% following DOJ push for Google to divest Chrome

Jaque Silva | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Alphabet shares slid 6% Thursday, following news that the Department of Justice is calling for Google to divest its Chrome browser to put an end to its search monopoly.

The proposed break-up would, according to the DOJ in its Wednesday filing, “permanently stop Google’s control of this critical search access point and allow rival search engines the ability to access the browser that for many users is a gateway to the internet.”

This development is the latest in a years-long, bipartisan antitrust case that found in an August ruling that the search giant held an illegal monopoly in both search and text advertising, violating Section 2 of the Sherman Act.

The potential break-up would include preventing Google from entering into exclusionary agreements with competitors like Apple and Samsung, part of a set of remedies that would last 10 years.

CNBC’s Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.