Tesla (TSLA) shares edged lower Wednesday despite data from China showing a solid rebound in June sales, following on from a record month of production for the carmaker in the world's biggest auto market.
Tesla sold 78,000 China-made cars last month, the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) said Wednesday, up from 32,165 in May and the highest on record for clean-energy carmaker. Tesla sold just 1,152 China-made cars in April -- the lowest in two years -- when the group's Shanghai gigafactory was closed for 22 days amid the city's strict Covid lockdown.
Tesla had noted in its second quarter delivery report that June "was the highest vehicle production month in Tesla’s history", but the Shanghai shutdown, as well as supply chain disruptions and chip shortages clipped their overall delivery total to a weaker-than-expected 254,695 new cars.
Production fell to 258,580 vehicles, from the 305,407 made in the first quarter and the 305,840 tally recorded over the final three months of last year, Tesla said, but plans to idle factories in Shanghai and Berlin for upgrade work will test the clean-energy carmaker's ability to ramp-up output over the September quarter.
Tesla shares were marked 1.5% lower in early Wednesday trading to change hands at $688.80 each, a move that would leave the stock with a year-to-date decline of around 42.6%.
Tesla will publish its second quarter earnings on Wednesday July 20, with analysts looking for a bottom line of $1.89 per share on revenues of $17.35 billion.
Reports of layoffs of its salaried employees in north America, following CEO Elon Musk's early-June comments regarding a "super bad" feeling about the global economy, are likely to weigh heavily on the group's near-term outlook.
Tesla is also facing a significant writedown on its $1.5 billion holding in bitcoin, which has fallen some 60% since the end of March.
Estimates of Tesla's bitcoin carrying costs vary, but the timing of the purchase suggests a level of around $32,600. That value, of course, surged in the latter half of 2021, when bitcoin hit an all-time high of around $67,000, but now looks far more fragile after crashing below the $20,000 level late last month.
Bitcoin prices were last seen trading 1.2% lower on the session at $20,084.65 each, a move that leaves the world's biggest cryptocurrency down 58% for the year.
