By Yasin Ebrahim
Investing.com – Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) on Wednesday reported mixed fourth-quarter as earnings fell short of Wall Street estimates on weaker margins. The company said, however, it expected a faster pace of growth for 2021.
Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) fell 5% in after-hours trade following the report.
Tesla announced earnings per share of 80 cents on revenue of $10.74 billion. Analysts polled by Investing.com anticipated EPS of $1.04 cents on revenue of $10.47 billion.
"After Tesla’s unprecedented run in 2020, investors are showing great faith in the company’s ability to consistently beat expectations. If that happens, it will justify a strong bull case for Tesla, but that has been built into the stock price," said Investing.com analyst Haris Anwar. "What investors are really looking for is another big target for car deliveries in 2021, that will show that demand for EV is accelerating globally and Tesla has the manufacturing capability to fulfil it even during the pandemic."
Margin growth fell short of estimates even as vehicle average selling prices declined 11% compared with the same period last year.
Automotive margin grew to 24.1% from 27.7% in Q3, missing consensus of 27.2%.
Total deliveries were up 71% to 179,757, driven by a sharp increase in model 3/Y deliveries.
Model 3/Y deliveries rose 88% to 163,660 and Model S/X deliveries fell 10% to 16,097 for the quarter from a year earlier.
Looking ahead, Tesla said that over a multi-year horizon it expected to achieve faster than 50% average annual growth in vehicle delivers, though expected even faster growth in 2021.