Morgan Stanley analysts believe that Tesla's inventory is still increasing and prices will continue to drop. Tesla will become the ultimate winner in the electrification of the American automotive market, while other traditional car manufacturers will suffer a heavy blow.
Tesla's price war may not be over yet, and if it continues to spread, domestic gasoline car manufacturers in the United States will be heavily impacted. A recent research report by Morgan Stanley even pointed out that Tesla is expected to deliver 1.9 million vehicles this year, and the delivery volume will exceed 7.9 million vehicles by 2030.
Inventory is still increasing, Tesla's price reduction is only a matter of time
On Sunday local time, Tesla announced record-breaking second-quarter sales data, with quarterly deliveries of 466,000 vehicles, exceeding Wall Street's expectations by 24,000 vehicles.
In a report released on Monday, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas pointed out that Tesla's second-quarter delivery volume exceeded market expectations, thus raising Tesla's future delivery expectations. It is expected that Tesla will deliver 1.9 million vehicles in this fiscal year and 7.9 million vehicles in the fiscal year 2030.
Huawei Wall Street previously pointed out that Tesla's production has exceeded its delivery volume for the fifth consecutive quarter, indicating that its inventory is still increasing. Therefore, it is necessary for Tesla to continue to offer discounts to stimulate demand. For example, Tesla's official website in the United States announced a promotional policy in June, stating that all Teslas ordered before the end of this quarter will come with three months of free charging.
Previously, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has stated that in the long run, a 20% gross margin is still the performance bottom line that Tesla must adhere to, but in the short term, scale is more important to Tesla than profit.
In response to this, many Wall Street analysts believe that Tesla's automotive gross margin will inevitably fall below 20% by the end of this year. Deutsche Bank analysts wrote in a report:
"We still believe that there is a possibility of further price reductions for Tesla in the remaining time of this year and 2024."
Adam Jonas, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, also believes that Tesla must further reduce its vehicle costs in the face of competition from Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers. He pointed out that Tesla will choose to further reduce prices and launch models priced below $25,000, further squeezing the survival space of gasoline car companies.
Tesla will become the ultimate winner of the electrification of the US car market
In addition, Adam Jonas is quite optimistic about Tesla's future.
He pointed out that from the current perspective, the pace of popularization of electric vehicles in the US domestic market is much slower than Wall Street expected, which means that Tesla will maintain a leading advantage in the US electric vehicle market for a long time.
He pointed out that compared with market expectations, the transformation of the US car market to new energy sources will proceed at a "lower speed" before 2030, and the overall scale of electric vehicles may be smaller than originally expected by Wall Street. However, Tesla, with its first-mover advantage, "has secured a larger piece of the smaller cake." In 2022, Tesla's market share in the entire US electric vehicle market exceeded 60%. With economies of scale and years of meticulous cultivation of the supply chain, this star automaker has sufficient profit margin to engage in price wars, while latecomers in the industry are suffering. The cost of their car production is usually much higher than Tesla's, so engaging in a price war with Tesla is equivalent to selling cars at a loss.
Taking the Detroit automotive giant Ford Motor as an example, in 2022, Ford Motor's losses in the electric vehicle sector expanded to $2.1 billion. In the first quarter of this year, the electric vehicle business continued to lose $700 million. Looking ahead to the full-year performance in 2023, Ford Motor expects the losses in its electric vehicle business to expand to $3 billion.