Musk’s Big Tesla Growth Target Is a Problem
The company’s forecast for vehicle production falls short of estimates and its focus on compound annual growth obscures 2023’s sharp slowdown.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been testifying in a lawsuit over 2018 tweets saying he was taking Tesla private with funding secured.
Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North AmericaIt pays to parse the language of any company’s earnings report, but perhaps more so for Tesla Inc. You could say it’s in the corporate genes. After all, Chief Executive Elon Musk has spent much of the past several days trying to convince a jury that he really did have “funding secured” in 2018. That’s despite his mooted multi-billion dollar take-private deal seeming to have had less in the way of documented pre-approvals than your average household mortgage application.
The line that caught my eye on Wednesday evening concerned guidance, with Tesla aiming to produce 1.8 million vehicles this year and, thereby, “remain ahead of the long-term 50% CAGR,” or compound annual growth rate. For a couple of years, Tesla has said it aims to grow annual production by half, on average, over a “multi-year horizon.” Compare that 2023 target with 2020’s output of just over half-a-million and you do indeed get a compounded growth rate of more than 50%. But actual growth this year looks set to be 31%