NEW YORK, December 31, 2025, 11:55 ET — Regular session
- Tesla shares edged lower in late morning trade as investors sized up fresh signals ahead of the company’s quarterly deliveries update.
- Tesla this week posted a company-compiled analyst consensus that points to a year-on-year drop in fourth-quarter deliveries.
- A key battery-material supplier also flagged sharply lower business tied to Tesla’s in-house battery program.
Tesla shares were down about 0.2% at $453.58 in late morning trading on Wednesday, extending a muted move as investors focused on near-term demand signals into year-end. The stock traded between $452.42 and $458.39 in the session.
The market’s attention is on Tesla’s fourth-quarter and full-year production and delivery report due Friday, a closely watched update that investors use as an early read on demand before earnings. Analysts polled by Visible Alpha expect Tesla deliveries of about 432,810 vehicles for the quarter, down roughly 13% from a year earlier after U.S. EV tax credits expired in September, Reuters reported. Reuters said Tesla has also rolled out cheaper “Standard” versions of the Model 3 and Model Y and faces rising competition, including lower-priced models expected from Chevrolet and Ford over the next two years. 1
Deliveries — the number of vehicles handed over to customers — tend to move the stock because they can flag shifts in demand and pricing before margins show up in quarterly results. A wide miss against expectations can revive concerns about incentives and inventory, while a beat can ease pressure even without new guidance.
Tesla on Monday published a “company-compiled delivery consensus” of sell-side analysts, saying it does not endorse analysts’ views but sharing the range ahead of its report. The consensus called for total fourth-quarter deliveries of 422,850 vehicles, including 388,002 Model 3/Y deliveries and 34,848 from other models, with full-year 2025 deliveries forecast at 1,640,752. The same release showed a consensus estimate for fourth-quarter energy storage deployments of 13.4 gigawatt-hours (GWh), a unit of stored electricity. 2
Publishing the consensus narrows the target the market is likely to trade against and can reduce the risk of a surprise “miss” driven by outlier estimates. It also puts more weight on the magnitude of any deviation from the company-posted baseline, rather than debate over which spreadsheet set the “right” expectation.
Investors have also been digesting a separate demand signal from the supply chain. South Korea’s L&F said it cut the value of its battery-material supply deal with Tesla to $7,386 from an earlier projection of $2.9 billion, without giving a reason, Reuters reported. “There (is) anxiety about the battery sector overall,” Cho Hyun-ryul, a senior analyst at Samsung Securities, said, pointing to slower EV demand growth and production-yield issues tied to Tesla’s in-house batteries. 3
The supplier reset adds another data point for traders tracking Tesla’s production plans and the pace of its battery build-out. It also puts a spotlight on how much demand Tesla can sustain as the market adjusts to the loss of U.S. incentives.
The near-term question for equity investors remains straightforward: whether deliveries stabilize after the tax-credit pull-forward that buoyed third-quarter demand. Pricing — and the need for discounts — will be the next layer of scrutiny once the delivery number is known.
Tesla’s long-term valuation still leans heavily on the company’s autonomy and robotics ambitions, but the market continues to treat vehicle demand as the core bridge between that story and near-term cash generation. That keeps quarter-end delivery prints in the driver’s seat, even when the stock trades on big-picture themes.
Energy storage deployments are another swing factor investors are watching alongside vehicle deliveries. Stronger deployments can help cushion volatility in the auto business, while weaker numbers can reinforce the view that consumer and industrial demand is slowing.
For now, Tesla’s trading has stayed restrained into the final session of 2025, with the stock moving in a tight range as investors wait for the hard data. The delivery report will likely set the tone for how traders position into the first sessions of 2026.
