Institutional and retail investors have different expectations from Tesla's Q3 2023 earnings call later today. While Wall Street wants to know about financial data, retail investors are more interested in products like the Cybertruck, 4680 cells, Model 3 Highland, and the Optimus robot.
Tesla expects a tough earnings call this evening as it will undoubtedly have to answer questions about lower deliveries and declining profit margins. The latter is the most serious concern among institutional investors, as Tesla went through a fresh round of price cuts a couple of weeks ago. Unless Tesla shows how it improved the cost structure of its operations, the Wall Street crowd will not be satisfied.
And yet, retail investors, which hold nearly half of Tesla's stock (probably more than any other company), have shrugged off these concerns. Margins or financial results are nowhere to be seen among the top shareholder questions compiled by third-party platform Say in the name of Tesla. Instead, the most-voted questions are about Tesla products, manufacturing facilities, and advertising.
The most voted question that will be asked during the earnings call conference today is, "How many Cybertruck deliveries do you anticipate for 2024?" This got 4.5K votes, representing 4.5 million shares, highlighting how important the Cybertruck is considered for the success of Tesla. Similar questions are in the 7th position (1.1k votes/0.5 million shares) and the 19th position (550 votes/300K shares).
The Model 3 Highland launch in the US is almost as important to retail investors, with the second most-voted question (2.4K votes/3.3 million shares). The 4680 battery cell progress follows closely with 2K votes (3.8 million shares), although the eighth most voted question was also about the 4680 cell production ramp (1.1K votes/1.3 million shares).
Another pressing question investors are asking concerns the possibility that the Optimus bot will work in the Tesla factories next year. As preposterous as this sounds, 1.5K people upvoted this question, representing 1.8 million Tesla shares. More serious questions are about Tesla's expansion plans, particularly at Giga Berlin and Giga Austin, and the opening schedule of Gigafactory Mexico. These questions are also related to the production ramp at these factories and the Tesla Semi production at Giga Nevada.
Tesla Full Self-Driving software is on many people's minds, especially as Elon Musk hyped the FSD V12 throughout this year. Somehow related are the questions about the robotaxi Tesla plans to develop alongside the mass-market compact EV. And some also want to remind Elon Musk that he promised Tesla would do advertising. Still, we haven't seen anything on this front, at least not in the US. If you want to find the answers, watch the earnings call livestream below at 2:30 PM PT / 5:30 PM ET / 9:30 PM UTC.
After his childhood dream of becoming a "tractor operator" didn't pan out, Cristian turned to journalism, first in print and later moving to online media. His top interests are electric vehicles and new energy solutions. Full profile
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