Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2021 earnings preview: Here’s what people are expecting

Tesla (TSLA) is set to announce its second-quarter 2021 financial results today, July 26, after the markets close. As usual, a conference call and Q&A with Tesla’s management is scheduled after the results.

We’ll take a look below at what both the street and retail investors are expecting for the quarterly results.

Tesla Q2 2021 deliveries

As usual, Tesla’s vehicle deliveries drive most of its earnings results, since vehicle sales represent the automaker’s main revenue stream at the moment.

Tesla already released its Q2 2021 numbers confirming that it delivered just over 200,000 cars and produced more than 206,000 vehicles between April and June 2021.

That’s a new quarterly record – 8% higher deliveries quarter-over-quarter, which is significant considering the prior quarter was also Tesla’s last delivery record.

Year-over-year, the growth is much more significant at 121%, but we also need to account for the impact of the pandemic around this time last year.

Delivery and production numbers are always slightly adjusted during earning results.

Tesla Q1 2021 revenue

Again, for revenue, analysts generally have a pretty good idea of what to expect thanks to the delivery numbers.

The Wall Street consensus for this quarter is $11.532 billion, and Estimize, the financial estimate crowdsourcing website, predicts a slightly higher revenue of $11.615 billion.

That’s roughly $1 billion more than Tesla reported last quarter and more than double the revenue of Q2 last year.

The predictions for Tesla’s revenue over the past two years: Estimize predictions are in blue, Wall Street consensus are in gray, actual results are in green:

Tesla Q1 2021 earnings

Tesla always attempts to be marginally profitable every quarter as it invests most of its money into growth and it has been successful doing so over almost the last 2 years now.

For Q2 2021, the Wall Street consensus is a gain of $0.94 per share, while Estimize’s prediction is slightly higher with a profit of $1.01 per share.

Both predictions are a little more optimistic than last quarter’s, which Tesla managed to beat by a slight margin.

Earnings per share over the last two years: Estimize predictions in blue, Wall Street consensus in gray, actual results in green:

Other expectations for the TSLA shareholder’s letter and analyst call

For investors, the focus is on growth and right now, for Tesla, that means adding production capacity and securing battery supply.

I think investors are going to want more updates on Gigafactory Berlin and Gigafactory Texas.

Both factories are supposed to be producing vehicles by the end of the year and a status update would be appreciated when we are just months away from that goal.

An update on Tesla’s 4680 battery cell production is also critical since Tesla plans to use those cells and its new structural battery pack technology for the new vehicles to be produced at those plants.

CEO Elon Musk also recently confirmed that Tesla plans to open up the Supercharger network to other automakers by the end of the year.

I think investors would appreciate more details on how the company plans to roll that out since it will have a big effect on the Tesla ownership experience and it’s also going to be a new revenue stream.

There are also the usual updates to programs like Full Self-Driving, but Musk has been often just updating people on that via Twitter.

We recently reported that Tesla Semi is nearing production in Nevada and an official update from Tesla on that front would be appreciated.

The same goes for Tesla Cybertruck. The automaker’s official timeline for the electric pickup truck is still “end of 2021”, but that’s looking less likely by the day and an update on the production plan would give us a better idea.

On the Tesla Energy front, Electrek exclusively reported on Tesla’s new 420-watt solar panel and selling more hardware to third-party installers. It would be interesting for Tesla to discuss those plans since they haven’t been made public yet.

What else are you looking for during Tesla’s earnings? Let us know in the comments section below, and join us later today for an extensive coverage of the earnings.

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