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Tesla Earnings Show Record Revenues With Record Losses (techcrunch.com)
TechCrunch reports of Tesla's recent Q1 2018 earnings: Tesla reported its Q1 2018 earnings today, posting adjusted losses of $3.35 per share with revenues on $3.4 billion. This is technically a beat, as analysts expected Tesla to report a loss of $3.48 a share with revenues of $3.22 billion, up from $2.7 billion a year ago. Tesla also ended Q1 with $2.7 billion in cash, down from $3.4 billion in cash at the beginning of the year. This quarter, Tesla's net losses were a record $784.6 million ($4.19 per share). So, while it's revenue was higher than ever before, it also reported record losses. At market close today, Tesla was trading at $301.15. In after-hours, Tesla is trading around $287. In its letter to investors, Tesla provided some updates to its Model 3 production, noting it hit 2,270 cars produced per week for three straight weeks in April. Tesla said demand for the Model S and Model X is still quite strong as it hit its highest order number in Q1. "Tesla said it produced 24,728 Model S cars and X vehicles, while delivering a total of 21,815 of them," reports TechCrunch. Tesla also went on to say that they expect to be profitable in Q3 once they reach their 5,000 Model 3 cars produced per week goal.
CEO Elon Musk said the automaker will launch production of the Tesla Model Y crossover in 24 months, which Musk claims to be a "manufacturing revolution." Additionally, Musk said Tesla will publish quarterly reports about the safety of its Autopilot driver assistant feature following a high-profile Autopilot crash in March.
CEO Elon Musk said the automaker will launch production of the Tesla Model Y crossover in 24 months, which Musk claims to be a "manufacturing revolution." Additionally, Musk said Tesla will publish quarterly reports about the safety of its Autopilot driver assistant feature following a high-profile Autopilot crash in March.
https://ycharts.com/companies/GM/
Revenue: $36.1 billion
Net income: $1.05 billion
Yet GM has a *lower* market cap.
Only a fucking moron would be disappointed by 3.5 years of pre-ordered backlog, demonstrated profitability, a sustained business model with no expected future borrowing, and a new vehicle announcement.
You, sir, are a fucking moron of the highest caliber.
You have been predicting Tesla failure for years, any day now, and the only consistency is that you are constantly wrong. Over and over and over.
Only a fucking moron would be disappointed by 3.5 years of pre-ordered backlog, demonstrated profitability, a sustained business model with no expected future borrowing, and a new vehicle announcement.
I'm not sure how more than $700 million lost for the quarter is "demonstrated profitability", especially in light of the fact that this quarter and last quarter are the two largest losses it's ever had. Tesla's had some people waiting more than two years for the cars they placed deposits for, and one can count the number of profitable quarters in the company's 15-year history on one hand. 3.5 years of backlog isn't anything to be cheerful about either - eventually people are going to lose patience and demand those deposits back if the company can't deliver the cars, and those deposits are the only reason Tesla's ever been able to post a profit. Money talks and bullshit walks, and Musk continues to fall well short of the promised production targets. New vehicle announcements don't mean much if they can't even build their current offerings.
Once Fords, GMs, Toyotas seriously push electric then Tesla will be a niche player ... or purchased by one of the aforementioned in a liquidation sale
Musk is not in it for the miney.
Holy shit, how far up his ass do you have to be to believe that a multi-billionaire capitalist and CEO of a corporation worth (allegedly) $50 billion isn't "in it for the money"?
If the investors propping up this money-toilet believed for a second that he wasn't "in it for the money" Musk would be bankrupt and on the street by lunchtime.
And judging by the numbers disclosed by Tesla the shorters might actually be on to something.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Wow, a guy worth 20 billion dollars spending $700 million on himself, with the rest tied up in change-the-world type companies. What a selfish prick.
Meanwhile, Sergei Brin is having a one of the largest airships ever made built for him, to serve as his private flying yacht.
"WANTED: Sinking ship seeks rats."
Maybe where you live. But even in Europe, in 2017 while 10,5% of European BEV sales were i3s, 11,5% were Model S. Nissan was barely ahead of Model S, at 12,9% (Zoe had the lead at 22,7%), which I'll never understand.
As for the UK specifically, in 2017, 41,1% of BEV sales were Leafs, but Model S was #2 at 17,9%. i3 was 5th place at 8,3%.
"WANTED: Sinking ship seeks rats."
The reason that EVs have been more common at taking over the higher end has nothing to do with "who's producing them". It's because - opposite of gasoline cars - adding range is expensive but adding power is cheap. You need a roughly constant amount of batteries whether you're going for the high end or the low end, and those batteries cost money that makes it hard to compete at the low end. So you might as well start at the high end and work your way down.
And capital costs do not stem from "who's making it". They stem from "how much you invest in making it". Historically, Tesla has invested far more in capex than the major automakers, and that puts the latter in a competitive disadvantage from an economics situation - either having to make less competitive vehicles, or having to subsidize them (and thus limit total production to keep costs down).
This situation looks to be changing (e.g. VW's capital plans are no slack, for example), and I look forward to a more competitive market a few years from now. But you can't make up this sort of deficit overnight.
"WANTED: Sinking ship seeks rats."
Meanwhile in the real world, even with the delays, from the start of tooling, Tesla made its first 10k vehicles faster than GM made the first 1k Bolts.
Tesla sets absurdly fast timelines for itself relative to normal product development timelines. That they frequently miss those timelines doesn't mean that they've done a bad job, it means that the company's employees aren't magicians.
"WANTED: Sinking ship seeks rats."
there's few people waiting for a Bolt, while Tesla has half a million people waiting for the Model 3.
GM sold all the Bolts they chose to make last year, an order of magnitude more than Tesla sold Model 3's.
GM is still in what Musk likes to call the "capex" phase of electric car production, that's true.They won't ramp up production until the cost of production justifies it.