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Talk about stepping on your own news. Tesla put out an unusual statement on Tuesday, detailing the number of cars that 20 Wall Street analysts expect the electric vehicle maker will deliver annually through 2029. Tesla said it “does not endorse” any of the information, mind you, which raises the question why it bothered to publish the summary. We can guess why: Tesla doesn’t want anyone to be shocked by the magnitude of the sales decline it’s on track to report for the fourth quarter of 2025. If the company follows past practice, it will release the quarterly report on Friday.
The group of esteemed analysts thinks deliveries will fall 14.6% to 422,850 by the time the quarter wraps up tomorrow. That’s not that surprising. The September 30 expiration of a federal government tax credit for electric vehicle purchases was expected to dampen fourth quarter sales, after a year in which Tesla’s business had already been depressed by Elon Musk’s polarizing political activities. But as analyst Gary Black pointed out in a post on X, an earlier estimate compiled by Bloomberg showed an estimate of 445,000, which implied a decline of about 10%. Black interpreted the company’s missive as a sign the actual number will be closer to the 420,000 range than the Bloomberg-calculated estimate.
It doesn’t seem that anyone on Wall Street was shocked by Tesla’s veiled warning. Even before trading opened on Tuesday, Tesla stock had fallen 6% in the past week, a sign investors were preparing for a downbeat sales report. After the report came out on Tuesday, the stock only fell another 1.1%. It would make sense that investors already had a clue what a bunch of Wall Street analysts were expecting, given that analysts don’t keep their estimates a secret! Tesla’s statement simply drew more public attention to the bleak estimates, which seems a bit of overkill.
Perhaps more interesting than the fourth quarter projection is what analysts are projecting for Tesla deliveries in the next few years. With deliveries expected to drop 8.3% in 2025 to 1.64 million, the lowest since 2022, it’s notable the 2026 estimate is expected to be still below both 2023 and 2024 deliveries. Analysts don’t expect Tesla’s sales to really recover until 2027 (see chart below). By then, of course, we should have a better idea of how Tesla’s Robotaxi business is faring. So far, the rollout of Robotaxi is well behind Musk’s optimistic predictions, as my colleague Theo Wayt wrote on Sunday. Investors don’t seem to care: Even after the recent slight selloff, Tesla stock is still trading close to all-time highs.
A Trifold Phone? No Thanks
The Consumer Electronics Show is just around the corner and we’re sure to see plenty of fancy gadgets in Las Vegas, as always. But there’s already signs that what could have been a hot new thing in phones—a trifold—won’t take off.
Samsung released its new trifold, the Galaxy Z Trifold overseas a few weeks ago, although it won’t be available in the U.S. until the first quarter of 2026. Will anyone want it? Fully unfolded, it has a 10-inch screen (the iPhone 17 Pro, by comparison, has a 6.3-inch display.) You can imagine some uses for a big screen. Then again, a Bloomberg review of the Trifold published Tuesday called it “expensive and half-baked.”
And perhaps the design could cause unexpected problems. Samsung’s official announcement said “the folding mechanism has been precisely engineered for easy opening and closing, with an auto-alarm alerting the user of incorrect folding through a series of on-screen alerts and vibrations.” Just imagine that—you try to close the phone and it sets off an alarm!!
In Other News
• Meta Platforms’ deal to acquire the Singapore-based startup behind Manus, a popular AI agent, values it at more than $2 billion, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deal. This gives the startup’s venture capital backers an exit with handsome returns less than a year after the product was launched.
• Citigroup will lose $1.1 billion on the sale of its remaining operations in Russia, the bank said in a securities filing Monday.
Today on The Information’s TITV
Check out our latest episode of TITV in which we unpack Meta's Manus acquisition with our AI reporter Stephanie Palazzolo.
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