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Canaccord Genuity managing director George Gianarikas joins Market Domination hosts Josh Lipton and Julie Hyman to discuss Tesla's (TSLA) current market dynamics.
Gianarikas believes that it is still unclear whether Elon Musk has negatively impacted Tesla's brand, as the company's recent sales fluctuations may be due to supply issues and consumer anticipation of new models.
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here.
So, George, let's then take a step back and look at the the bigger picture as you did in a recent note after you uh had a recent visit to one of um Tesla's facilities uh outside Austin. Um, and you know, you acknowledge some of the brand issues that the company has had, but you think they can come back from them. Um, I guess my question is how and are they even trying from an image perspective?
Great question. So, first and foremost, there have been a ton of headlines this quarter that would suggest that Tesla sales are tanking. And our view is that it's not time yet to determine whether or not there's been a brand impact. I'll tell you why. When the company first reported its fourth quarter earnings, they were very specific in telling Wall Street that, look, we're going to take down our lines this quarter because we're getting ready for the new Model Y and other vehicles that we'll announce this year. And so some of the stuff that you're seeing in headline sales from Europe, maybe some sales from the US impact. That's been due to the supply issues that they talked about on their fourth quarter call. In addition to that, if you're going to buy a new Model Y, which is really nice by the way, you're not probably going to buy the old Model Y. So there's been an element of people waiting. Now, to the extent there is some brand impact, we'll see. It'll happen if it's going to happen at all in Q2, Q3, Q4, as these dynamics wane, the first quarter dynamics. So we're not so sure if this is the quarter where people can determine if there's been a material huge brand impact here. We'll wait and see with the rest of the market and to the extent there are other new vehicles in the lineup that get introduced, we as bulls are hoping that will outweigh the impact of any brand damage.