Gary Zhou 
Following a blockbuster quarter that saw Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) post $1.1 billion of GAAP net income and $1.6 billion of non-GAAP net income, Morgan Stanley has published a note outlining its forecasts for the EV maker. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas was bullish in his note, stating that the bigger story in Tesla’s strong quarter was the company’s EBITDA, as well as its battery “skunkworks” flywheel.
With Tesla posting its strongest quarter yet, Jonas opted to make some modifications to Morgan Stanley’s Tesla earnings model. These include a FY21 total delivery estimate of 835k vehicles, up from 832k units prior. For the rest of 2021, Morgan Stanley noted that Tesla would likely deliver 212k vehicles in the third quarter and 236k vehicles in Q4 2011. The investment bank’s 2025 delivery forecast remained at 3.1 million cars, while the 2030 forecast remained at 5.6 million.
Morgan Stanley also shared some forecasts for Tesla’s Cybertruck production, which is expected to enter its beta phase later this year. According to Jonas, Cybertruck volumes would likely start in 2022 and ramp to 15k total units during the year, to 283k units annually by 2030. Morgan Stanley also assumed an ATP of $65k in 2022.
Needless to say, Morgan Stanley’s Cybertruck production estimates are incredibly conservative. An estimate of 15,000 units for 2022 translates to less than 300 Cybertrucks per week, after all, which seems very low. There seems to be a slim chance that Tesla would only be maintaining a production rate of 5,500 Cybertruck’s per week by 2030 as well, especially considering that Giga Texas is a facility built to produce the all-electric pickup truck.
It should be noted that this is not the first time Morgan Stanley has posted a bullish note on Tesla with an incredibly conservative production estimate. Back in 2019, analyst Adam Jonas published a note estimating the output of Gigafactory Shanghai, which was still under construction then. Jonas was quite bullish, stating that Tesla was on track to become China’s “leading luxury EV player.” He did, however, only expect Tesla to produce 35,000 to 40,000 Model 3 for 2020, ramping to 60,000 vehicles per year in 2021.
Tesla’s Gigafactory Shanghai produced a total of 30,896 vehicles in June 2021 alone, comprised of 22,118 Model 3 and 8,778 Model Y.
