Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) extended a recent pullback on Monday, sliding 2.5% following a 5.4% drop on Friday, as the market absorbed weaker-than-expected first-quarter metrics.
The electric vehicle maker reported delivery of 358,023 vehicles in the first quarter, short of analyst projections of 372,160. The missed target weighed on investor sentiment about the company’s near-term performance.
Energy storage deployments also lagged expectations. Tesla installed 8.8 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of storage in the quarter, a 15% decline from the same period a year earlier - the first year-over-year fall in storage installations since the second quarter of 2022. That 8.8 GWh figure was 39% below the company-compiled consensus forecast of 14.4 GWh.
Market reaction included renewed analyst caution. JPMorgan analyst Ryan Brinkman, long identified as bearish on Tesla, maintained an Underweight rating and kept a $145 price target on the stock. Brinkman revised his first-quarter earnings-per-share estimate down from $0.43 to $0.30, below the consensus EPS estimate of $0.38.
He also trimmed his longer-term EPS forecasts, lowering the 2026 estimate from $2.00 to $1.80 versus a consensus of $1.95, and cutting the 2027 estimate from $2.45 to $2.25 versus a consensus of $2.65.
"We continue to see large -60% downside to our $145 December 2026 price target and advise investors approach TSLA shares with a high degree of caution," Brinkman commented.
Brinkman noted the company’s reported first-quarter deliveries were 7% below his own forecast of 385,000 vehicles. He also observed that the quarter’s deliveries remained substantially lower than the peak consensus figure of 1.366 million vehicles that had been expected on June 9, 2022 - a gap of 74%.
Impacted sectors - Automotive manufacturing and energy storage sectors are directly implicated by the delivery and deployment shortfalls. Broader equity market segments exposed to EV supply chains and battery technology may also be affected by shifts in investor expectations for Tesla.
Market context - The combination of a vehicle delivery miss and a year-over-year decline in storage installations prompted downward revisions to near- and medium-term earnings projections, and reinforced bearish thesis points cited by some analysts.