Tesla (TSLA) surges on delivery number from China amid confusion

Tesla’s stock (TSLA) is surging by over 3% in pre-market trading today, and it appears to again be due to delivery numbers in China, which seem to be confusing for the market.

Over the last few weeks, Tesla’s stock has had some wild swings, and it has mostly been related to news coming out of China.

First, the delivery numbers for the month of April confused people with a drop from ~35,000 vehicles in March to ~25,000 vehicles in April based on data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).

Furthermore, the CPCA seemingly started including exports in their delivery numbers for the country, which makes no sense and brings confusion.

Now the CPCA came out with the data from May and reported that Tesla sold 33,463 China-made electric car last month.

However, the number includes 21,936 Tesla vehicles delivered in the country in May and 11,527 electric vehicles that Tesla built in China and exported to other countries in the same period.

The news sent Tesla’s stock rising more than 3% in pre-market trading.

It comes after Tesla’s stock took a hit just last week over a report that claimed Tesla’s net new orders in China were slashed in half in May.

Electrek‘s take

First off, I see a lot of people claiming that it proves the report from The Information was wrong about Tesla’s orders falling in China last week.

While I noted that the report should be taken with a grain of salt, this new data from CPCA doesn’t disprove the report.

CPCA is about Tesla vehicles delivered and produced in China in May while the report from last week discussed net new orders coming in.

Net new order is a better indication of demand since it is not constrained by production, but most of the new orders coming in May would most likely not appear in CPCA data until next quarter when they are delivered.

That said, it doesn’t mean that the report was accurate either.

Again, I don’t think the market should place too much value of Tesla’s month-to-month performance in specific markets because they are just too many variables that don’t mean much on a short-term basis.

At the very minimum, I would stick to quarterly trends.