Al Root

Tesla stock rose in early trading Thursday.

Shares are bouncing back after another tough week. First-quarter earnings are due in a few days. After that, investors should start thinking about China.

Shares of the electric-vehicle maker were up 1% in premarket trading at $243.92, while S&P 500 futures were up 0.7% and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were down 1.3%. The Dow was hurt by a weak earnings report from UnitedHealth Group.

Shares dropped 4.9% on Wednesday, leaving them down 4.2% for the week. Yesterday's decline didn't have much to do with Tesla. Instead the trade war and inflation weighed on investor sentiment.

Nvidia stock dropped 6.9% on Wednesday, helping send the Nasdaq Composite down 3.1%, after the White House "essentially blocked Nvidia from selling its key H20 chips to China," wrote Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.

Comments from Fed Chair Jerome Powell didn't help. "Tariffs are highly likely to generate at least a temporary rise in inflation," Powell said in prepared remarks on Wednesday. "The inflationary effects could also be more persistent."

Tesla-specific news should take over soon. First quarter earnings are due on April 22. Wall Street expects earnings per share of 43 cents, according to FactSet, down from 45 cents a year ago.

A reason earnings are down is falling sales. Tesla delivered about 337,000 cars in the first quarter, down from 387,000 a year ago.

The Street sees a big rebound coming in the second quarter. Analysts project 444,000 cars delivered. "Consensus is modeling a miraculous recovery in Tesla's second-quarter [deliveries] despite the fact we are in the middle of the worst trade war the world has seen since the Smoot-Hawley tariff act of 1930," wrote GLJ Research analyst Gordon Johnson in a Thursday report. "Wall Street is making a grave error in assuming Tesla will be unaffected by the current U.S.-China trade war."

Johnson believes Chinese car buyers will avoid American products. He isn't the only one. Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Andres Sheppard feels similarly.

"You're seeing some consumers in China now choosing BYD [vehicles] over Teslas," he tells Barron's. "There's now the sentiment in China that they're essentially encouraging the consumer to purchase non-American products, or in this case, Chinese products."

Johnson is Tesla's biggest bear. He rates shares at Sell and has a $24.86 price target. Sheppard rates shares Buy with a price target of $425. The two couldn't be further apart on the stock, but they see the same risk -- another tough quarter of sales.

While Johnson believes Tesla is essentially a car company with slowing sales growth. Sheppard says Tesla is more than a car company. He believes robotaxis, robots, and eventually more EV models can help the stock.

Coming into the week, Tesla stock had fallen for 10 of the past 12 weeks. Slowing sales growth, the impact of CEO Elon Musk's politics on brand perception, tariffs, and the escalating trade war have all taken their tool.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

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April 17, 2025 09:10 ET (13:10 GMT)

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