Tesla reports earnings on Wednesday — here's what to expect

Emily McCormick breaks down what the Street is expecting ahead of Tesla’s third-quarter results, which the electric automaker is set to report after the bell on Wednesday.

Video transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: All right, from crypto to Tesla. All eyes are now going to turn to Tesla reporting earnings after the close. Yahoo Finance's Emily McCormick is here with a preview. Emily.

EMILY MCCORMICK: Well, Brian, Tesla is set to report third quarter results on the heels of record quarterly deliveries. And that's really left investors optimistic that the company has been able to successfully navigate the supply chain disruptions and continue to grow profits, despite some of these concerns. But taking a look at some of the key metrics that investors will be watching here, third quarter revenue expected to grow to $13.9 billion. That's compared to $8.8 billion in the same quarter of last year. And adjusted earnings per share are expected to rise to $1.67 versus the $0.76 posted, again, in the third quarter of 2020.

Now, already a lot of optimism is baked into these forecasts when we heard earlier this month that Tesla announced that it handed over 241,300 of its electric vehicles globally in the three months ended in September. This was in about 73% increase over the same period last year. And it represented a new all-time high for quarterly deliveries. So, so far, for the year to date, Tesla has delivered more than 627,000 vehicles, already well above the nearly half million deliveries that the company posted in all of 2020.

Now, of course, as we compare to Tesla to some of the legacy automakers, should note that it has been encouraging to see Tesla continuing to post these year over year increases in deliveries. We got sales figures from the other automakers for the third quarter as well that largely disappointed compared to Wall Street's estimates. General Motors, for example, saw a plunge of 32.8% in sales over last year, as chip shortages resulted in multi-week production delays at that company specifically.

But of course, Tesla has also had to contend with these supply chain disruptions. CEO Elon Musk has been highlighting the impact of these chip shortages and most recently said during the company's annual investor day earlier this month, quote, "We're just basically limited by multiple supply chain shortages, like so many supply chains of so many types, not just chips."

Now he also added that he believes that we should be through our severe supply chain shortages in 2023. And he noted that he was optimistic that that will be the case. So, a lot of things here for investors to really be focusing on for Tesla's third quarter, but again, a lot of optimism here because of these record deliveries that we saw heading into these results. Guys.

BRIAN SOZZI: Emily McCormick, thanks so much.