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Tesla Posts Second Profitable Quarter Ever (bgr.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the spare-some-change dept.

anderzole writes from a report via BGR: Tesla on Wednesday posted its earnings report for the quarter gone by and investors will have a lot to cheer about. While analysts on Wall St. were expecting Tesla to post a loss, Tesla during its September quarter actually posted a profit, and an impressive profit at that. When the dust settled, Tesla posted a quarterly profit of $22 million and EPS of $0.71. Revenue for the quarter checked in at $2.3 billion. Illustrating how impressive Tesla's performance was this past quarter, Wall St. was anticipating Tesla to post a loss amid $1.9 billion in revenue for the quarter. As far as deliveries are concerned, Tesla during the quarter boasted that it achieved record vehicle production, deliveries and revenue. More importantly, Tesla reaffirmed via a shareholder letter that the Model 3 is still on track for a late 2017 release. You can read Tesla's shareholder letter here.

2 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. Re:That is not actually very good news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    A profit for one quarter where you consolidated revenue and withheld ongoing cost payments isn't that impressive. Keep doing it for consecutive months then call us. Next quarter will be a larger loss than the previous.

  2. The real story: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Tesla changes their accounting methods. Dumb money is excited that TSLA is profitable. Smart money has no idea what to make of these numbers but know something smells musky.

    As far as I can tell (Yes, I am a forensic accountant) they sold a lot of now-obsolete cars at a big discount and did some other tricks to prop up sales and push Q4 revenue into Q3, Q3 expenses into Q4, etc.

    Now, it really doesn't matter if they're profitable or not because they have plenty of money in the bank and $22 million is a rounding error. Except Tesla is trying to buy Solar City. Why? Basically to bail out Elon Musk since Solar City is a turd circling the drain and Elon has a lot of money tied up in it (directly and indirectly through his other company, Space X). A lot of Tesla stock holders recognize this shit for what it is. But if Tesla can eek out a profit, dumb money thinks Elon is a fucking genius and let him buy up Solar City.