January 28, 2025 at 7:33 AM Tesla’s (TSLA) upcoming fourth quarter earnings report, slated for release on Wednesday after the bell, comes at a time when investors are looking for a new catalyst to jump-start the stock. Tesla stock closed out 2024 on a Trump-fueled election win, but the post-hype reality could be setting in with a 5% loss to start the year. Tesla is expected to report revenue of $27.21 billion (per Bloomberg estimates), an 8.1% rise from a year ago. From a profitability standpoint, the Street is expecting adjusted EPS of $0.75, translating to an adjusted net income of $2.67 billion. Earlier in the month Tesla said it delivered 495,930 vehicles globally, missing analyst estimates of around 510,400, as compiled by Bloomberg. This figure is above the 463,000 delivered last quarter and the 484,500 delivered a year ago. Tesla delivered 1.78 million vehicles in 2024, missing analyst estimates for 1.8 million and resulting in an annual total below 2023’s 1.8 million vehicles delivered. It was Tesla's first year-over-year decline, hinting that new competition, demand, and global economic conditions may be hurting the company. Cheaper prices are still key for electric vehicle sales to rise, and Tesla has promised to launch a lower-priced EV in early 2025, along with other new vehicles that the company said would allow it to return to a 50% growth rate compared to 2023. Investors and Wall Street analysts are expecting an update on the timeline for these new vehicles. Delivery issues aside, Tesla stock surged late in 2024 after President Donald Trump’s election win, with some investors believing Tesla would benefit from CEO Elon Musk’s close relationship with Trump. Initial reports that suggested the Trump team would ease self-driving rules were seen as boosting Tesla’s Full Self-Driving and Robotaxi efforts. “We estimate the AI and autonomous opportunity is worth at least $1 trillion alone for Tesla and we fully expect under a Trump White House these key initiatives will now get fast tracked,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote in a note in December. Not everyone on Wall Street is convinced, however. Ron Jewsikow of Guggenheim Securities believes “bottlenecks” still remain. “The vast majority of the bottlenecks on Tesla's kind of pathway to robotaxis and self-driving vehicles is going to come in the form of state and local regulators that have the ability really to control what goes on the road in their jurisdictions,” Jewsikow said in an interview with Yahoo Finance. And not all Trump moves in the auto space are seen as positive for Tesla. The White House’s scrapping of a carbon dioxide emissions target and supposed plans to eliminate the $7,500 federal EV tax credit have some analysts concerned EV sales will plummet. Tesla Founder Elon Musk walks on stage with his son, X, beside President-elect Donald Trump during a rally at Capital One Arena in Washington, on Jan. 19, 2025. (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post via Getty Images) (The Washington Post via Getty Images) To stem product concerns, Tesla launched an updated version of the Model Y in the US and Europe late last week, bringing some new excitement to its product portfolio, which had been getting long in the tooth. While a new Model Y may help Tesla boost sales for its top-selling model, its more controversial offering, the Cybertruck, is facing its own difficulties. Tesla started offering discounts for Cybertrucks in its inventory, meaning demand could be waning for the EV pickup. In addition, Tesla furloughed Cybertruck line workers at its Giga Austin factory in early December, telling them to take a few days off. Interestingly, it was not the first time Cybertruck workers were pulled off the line. Last October, four factory workers told Business Insider that several times they'd either been “sent home or given additional training exercises or cleaning duties to fill their scheduled work hours.” StockStory aims to help individual investors beat the market. Pras Subramanian is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on X and on Instagram.