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Tesla Posts Earnings Loss But Claims Model 3 Production Will Start In July (bgr.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader shares a report from BGR: Tesla on Wednesday released its earnings report (PDF) for the company's recent fourth quarter. When the dust settled, Tesla posted revenue of $2.28 billion and a loss of 69 cents per share. By way of contrast, Tesla during the same quarter a year-ago posted a loss of $0.87 per share on the back of $1.75 billion in revenue. Notably, Tesla notes that its cumulative 2016 revenue checked in at $7 billion, a 73% increase from 2015. As far as the Model 3 is concerned, Tesla's press release relays that the company is still on track to begin production in July ahead of volume production in September.
Tesla notes in its press release: "Our Model 3 program is on track to start limited vehicle production in July and to steadily ramp production to exceed 5,000 vehicles per week at some point in the fourth quarter and 10,000 vehicles per week at some point in 2018. To support accelerating vehicle deliveries and maintain our industry-leading customer satisfaction, we are expanding our retail, Supercharger, and service functions. Model 3 vehicle development, supply chain and manufacturing are on track to support volume deliveries in the second half of 2017. In early February, we began building Model 3 prototypes as part of our ongoing testing of the vehicle design and manufacturing processes. Initial crash test results have been positive, and all Model 3-related sourcing is on plan to support the start of production in July. Installation of Model 3 manufacturing equipment is underway in Fremont and at Gigafactory 1, where in January, we began production of battery cells for energy storage products, which have the same form-factor as the cells that will be used in Model 3."
Tesla notes in its press release: "Our Model 3 program is on track to start limited vehicle production in July and to steadily ramp production to exceed 5,000 vehicles per week at some point in the fourth quarter and 10,000 vehicles per week at some point in 2018. To support accelerating vehicle deliveries and maintain our industry-leading customer satisfaction, we are expanding our retail, Supercharger, and service functions. Model 3 vehicle development, supply chain and manufacturing are on track to support volume deliveries in the second half of 2017. In early February, we began building Model 3 prototypes as part of our ongoing testing of the vehicle design and manufacturing processes. Initial crash test results have been positive, and all Model 3-related sourcing is on plan to support the start of production in July. Installation of Model 3 manufacturing equipment is underway in Fremont and at Gigafactory 1, where in January, we began production of battery cells for energy storage products, which have the same form-factor as the cells that will be used in Model 3."
All this earnings losses doesn't mean anything to a expanding company like Tesla. Do we really want them to stall their growth just to be little bit profitable? They have the advantage with big car companies dragging their feet. They have to do everything they can to gain marketshare now before others catch up.
There was a big stink about Amazon during the late 90s and early 00s about how they are posting losses. Where are all those shortsighted investors now.
The amount of Tesla disinformation in the financial news is staggering.
I read an article three weeks ago that said that 38% of Tesla stock was shorted, with a due date a couple of weeks from then. I then read another mainstream financial media was reporting that Tesla was expected to hit zero by the middle of the summer, and you should sell your stock right now!
Sure enough, Tesla inked a deal to sell electric cars to the middle East, and its stock jumped 10% on that news and has held relatively steady.
One financial news report suggests to sell your Tesla stock and take the profits and invest in Twitter. Of course, Twitter has yet to make a profit and no *clear* way to do so, but hey... Tesla will be burning through cash and be bankrupt real soon now - take your profits out of Tesla and run!
I think there's a lot of "self interested" reporting going on. Most analysts want to bring Tesla down because a) they've bet heavily on the stock dropping, or b) have clients who would benefit from the stock dropping, or c) have clients heavily invested in oil and natural gas.
Tesla has been laying a firm foundation on which to build its future, and is posed to dominate a very big section of the economy. It shows every indication of being the next Microsoft or Apple.
If only those pesky financial analysts would stop and look at it objectively.
Owned a Tesla X for a couple of months.
It has many nice features that other cars should catch up.
However, it also has tons of issues. As a car manufacturer and dealer, I feel that their service level is below the industry average. Any main stream car dealers have more professional on servicing its customer.
And, everything to this car is way more expensive than others. And body collision, even small will cost you $5K+ ~ $10K.
Musk spent too much time on other things. He needs more focus on this factory.
The list of Tesla's enemies is long. It's very difficult to find a dispassionate analysis of their situation because you have several state governments, possibly the federal government (with it's anti-EPA EPA chief), dozens of state automobile dealership associations, the Big 3 automakers, practically the entire oil and gas industry, hydrogen fuel cell purveyors, wall street short sellers and generally a chunk of uninformed alt-right types -- all with vested interests in seeing it fail.
Then you have those who believe that the stock is already worth buying at practically any multiple, Musk can make no mistakes and builds golden space chariots.
The reality is they have a big set of tasks ahead of them, and they've made their share of mistakes along the way, but on the big items, they've proven themselves several times over. Long-term, I think they're in pretty good shape, assuming they can achieve volume manufacturing of the Model 3 (~5k cars per week) within the next 12 months.
At this point in its history, anyone offering unqualified strongly positive or negative sentiment regarding Tesla's position have vested interests in play or else are simply trolls not to be taken seriously.