Photo: @TheTeslaLife/Twitter

RBC Capital Markets has published a preview of Tesla's (NASDAQ: TSLA) Q1 2021 deliveries, according to which the company could deliver 170,000 units, an absolute record for Q1 of any year.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Joseph Spak, in his note to investors, gave Tesla's Q1 2021 deliveries forecast, which has historically been the weakest for the company. Based on checks and regionally reported data, the firm forecast a total of 170,000 units, which will correspond to an increase of + 92% y/y and a decrease of -6% q/q. This forecast is based on the lapping initial of Model Y and the continued ramp-up of Model 3 production in China.

"Based on checks/regionally reported data, we forecast a total of 1Q21 deliveries of 170k units, which would be +92% y/y (lapping initial Model Y qtr and still ramping China Model 3 production) and -6% q/q."

Under this model, RBC Capital Markets predicts 164,800 Model 3/Y deliveries and only 5,300 Model S/X deliveries, as production lines for these models are currently in the process of upgrading to produce refreshed versions. Thus, the firm thinks that Tesla is likely to produce 170,000 vehicles, of which ~ 96 are from Fremont and 74,000 from Shanghai.

"By model, we forecast 164.8k Model 3/Y and only 5.3k Model S/X deliveries (undergoing a changeover)."

Source: RBC Capital Markets

According to RBC Capital Markets, the consensus looks mostly reasonable. Their prediction is about ~1% below Visible Alpha consensus. The firm believes that more Model 3/Ys were built than expected (RBC + 2.6% higher), but much fewer Model S/Xs (RBC -54% lower).

At the moment, the firm believes that consensus is looking for ~831,000 deliveries in 2021, but there could be some downside risk, particularly to Q2 2021, given the semiconductor chip shortage.

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