Montage: EV

Credit Suisse says Karpathy’s departure “possibly reflects challenges” to FSD progress

Written by Cláudio Afonso | info@claudio-afonso.com | LinkedIn | Twitter

Credit Suisse analyst Dan Levy reaffirmed the firm’s $1,000 price target on Tesla and the Outperform rating saying the GigaShanghai shutdown during the second quarter will pressure margin in Q2 results but also expecting a margin recovery in the second half as Tesla ramps on volume.

“We [Credit Suisse] are below consensus into 2Q22 EPS for Tesla ($1.31 vs. consensus $1.86), likely reflecting below-consensus margins, as well as a Bitcoin impairment. Margins and the path to 2H volume growth will likely be the primary areas of focus,” Levy wrote. The analyst concluded saying expects Tesla to benefit from favorable fundamentals in the coming years and remains structurally positive despite a “challenged” Q2.

In a reaction to the AI Director’s departure from Tesla on Wednesday, the analyst said it “possibly reflects challenges to Tesla’s progress in FSD/ Robotaxi” adding that continues to “view Tesla efforts in AV/robotaxi as ‘show me'”.

Karpathy joined Tesla in June 2017 as senior Director of AI to lead the computer vision team of Tesla Autopilot and started, in March, a “~4 month sabbatical” being expected to return to work this month. At the time, Karpathy said on Twitter he was “taking some time off to rest & travel after almost 5 years at Tesla”.

Written by Cláudio Afonso | info@claudio-afonso.com | LinkedIn | Twitter

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