Welcome to The Fly’s latest edition of “Charged,” where we look back at some recent analysts’ notes, news and activity in the electric vehicle and clean energy space.
BITCOIN AS A PAYMENT: Tesla’s (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk said via Twitter that, “Tesla only sold ~10% of holdings to confirm BTC could be liquidated easily without moving market. When there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions.”
CHINA DELIVERIES: Tesla’s China deliveries were up 29% in May to 33,463 compared to 25,845 in April, Bloomberg reported, citing data from China’s Passenger Car Association. PCA Secretary General Cui Dongshu said he expects even higher retail sales of Tesla in June.
Commenting on the news, Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives noted that there was “a lot of nervousness on the Street” heading into the CPCA numbers out of China for the month of May after Tesla saw a very soft April performance. The Street was bracing for the worst and instead this morning got a robust 33,463 deliveries including 21,936 sold domestically and 11,527 exported, he adds. Ives pointed out that this was a 29% jump from the month of April and that the domestic cars sold in country were north of 20k as Tesla appears to have handled the shaky China PR issues and turbulence well as demand rebounded well ahead of expectations. The analyst believes starting in the month of June Tesla will be on a 300k run-rate for deliveries in China as the growth story appears back on track in this linchpin region despite “the skeptics and haters piling on from the month of April,” which he continues to view as an anomaly rather than the norm. Ives has an Outperform rating and a price target of $1,000 on the shares.
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