Tesla Stock Beat the Market in April
Tesla investors got some good news from China that had nothing to do with Full Self Driving.
April Chinese electric-vehicle sales look solid—a good sign for all auto makers selling vehicles in the world’s largest new-car market.
Wednesday, Chinese EV leader
reported April passenger vehicle sales of 312,048 units, up 49% year over year. All electric vehicle sales came in at 134,465 units, up 29%. Plug-in hybrid sales came in at 177,583 up 69%.
April deliveries from all-electric vehicle makers
NIO
,
XPeng
,
and
totaled 50,800, up about 29% year over year.
Battery-EV sales in China rose about 10% year over year in the first quarter. The second quarter is off to a solid start. Those four EV makers can account for about one-third of all battery-EV sales.
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Tesla doesn’t report monthly sales or sales by region. Insurance registration data traced by Citi analyst Jeff Chung show Tesla on pace to sell about 28,000 EVs in China in April. That is down from almost 40,000 a year ago, but the most recent weekly registration number was large—almost 15,000 units.
exchange-traded fund co-founder, and Tesla shareholder, Gary Black calls the recent insurance registration data positive for Tesla.
Tesla stock isn’t getting a bump from early sales data. Shares are down 0.9% in early trading at $181.69. The
and
were down 0.2% and 0.1%, respectively.
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It’s hard to pin the drop on Chinese sales data. Telsa shares have been on a wild ride lately. Through early trading, Tesla stock is still up about 28% from the 52-week closing low reached on April 22, just before first-quarter earnings were reported the next day.
Better-than-feared first-quarter earnings help propel shares higher. So did other news out of China.
Over the weekend, Tesla won approval to sell its highest-level driver-assistance product it calls Full Self Driving, or FSD, in the country. That sent shares up 15.3% on Monday.
When it was all said and done, Tesla stock rose about 4% in April, beating the
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by about 8 percentage points.
BYD shares fell 0.4% in overseas trading on Tuesday. NIO stock jumped 8.8% after its delivery results were released. XPeng and Li shares were both down slightly.
Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com
