Tesla delivered a fifth straight quarterly profit in the three months to the end of September, as the electric vehicle maker recovered from a coronavirus-induced shutdown in March and reiterated its goal to deliver a record-breaking 500,000 cars in 2020.
The company led by Elon Musk described its results as “a record quarter on many levels”, with revenues jumping 39 per cent from a year ago to $8.77bn, beating analysts’ estimates of $8.3bn. Net profit rose 131 per cent to $331m.
The sale of regulatory credits — in which Tesla sells zero-emission credits from various governments to other carmakers — accounted for $397m in revenue, buoying its top line. In the previous quarter, $428m in revenue from such credits were the primary reason it ended up in the black in spite of widespread expectations for a loss.
The Fremont, California-based company also said gross margins rose 4.62 percentage points from a year ago to 23.5 per cent, ahead of estimates of 19.75 per cent. It recorded $579m from energy storage sales — up 44 per cent from a year ago — while services revenue grew 6 per cent to $581m.
Tesla stock gained 2.5 per cent in after-hours trading on Wednesday.
“The market was expecting substantial growth in earnings per share and free cash flow and Tesla has delivered on both,” said Nicholas Hyett, analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, referring to the company’s free cash flow of $1.4bn.
Asked in the earnings call if Tesla was now on track to build between 840,000 and 1m vehicles in 2021, Mr Musk responded: “It’s in that vicinity, you’re not far off.” An official forecast is due in three months.
The ramp-up is the expected result from Tesla implementing “more ambitious architectural changes” to both its products and factories, in an attempt to “improve manufacturing cost and efficiency”, Tesla said.
Still, critics are likely to point out that in 2016 Mr Musk had announced plans to produce half a million cars in 2018 and up to 1m in 2020.
Despite missing these goals Mr Musk reiterated hopes to build 20m cars a year by 2030, twice that of the biggest carmakers right now, Volkswagen and Toyota. Mr Musk said there were 2bn cars on the roads today, and asked: “Are we really changing the world if we’re not switching out 1 per cent of the global fossil fuel vehicles [a year]?”
Tesla’s stock price had a wild ride during the quarter running from July to September. On July 1 it overtook Toyota by market value to become the world’s most valuable carmaker at $205bn, baffling many analysts given that the Japanese group builds 20 times as many vehicles a year. By the end of August Tesla’s share price had again more than doubled to give it a valuation of $465bn. By quarter-end it had fallen again to $400bn — up 452 per cent up from the start of the year.
Mr Musk offered investors more reasons to be hopeful that it could sustain these valuations, saying the margins Tesla just reported “are going to look pretty comically small” versus where they will be once it is selling fully-autonomous vehicles.
The chief executive has long promised a robotaxi network in which Tesla owners would enter their cars into a driverless Uber-like service. Many have called the idea dangerous and far-fetched given the state of Tesla’s current “autopilot” offering, but Tesla started beta-testing a “full self-driving” option this week and Mr Musk said he planned a wider release by the end of this year.
“As the system collects more data, it becomes more robust,” he said. “How does Google, as a search engine, get better? It’s because everyone is programming it by asking it questions all the time ...
“I mean, if you’re an Uber or Lyft driver, you could be managing a fleet of 10 cars — sort of like a shepherd tending the flock type of thing. You’d just get way more leverage.”
Tesla had already reported third-quarter vehicle deliveries of 138,300, a company record that marked a gain of 43 per cent from the previous year and was slightly ahead of estimates. The vast bulk of vehicles were its less expensive Model Y and Model 3, as the premium Model S and X accounted for just 15,200 of the total.
Alyssa Altman at Publicis Sapient said the 44 per cent leap in energy storage sales — which include the sale of battery power packs for the home that connect to solar panels — offered hope to investors that Mr Musk could deliver on his long-term ambition for Tesla to be a leader in several markets beyond just vehicles.
“Everyone knows Tesla as an electric car company, but they are going to continue to build products around energy,” she said.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiP2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmZ0LmNvbS9jb250ZW50L2U3ODJjYWM0LWNiZGYtNGQzOS05ODZlLThiN2I3OTcxZGUxZNIBP2h0dHBzOi8vYW1wLmZ0LmNvbS9jb250ZW50L2U3ODJjYWM0LWNiZGYtNGQzOS05ODZlLThiN2I3OTcxZGUxZA?oc=5
2020-10-21 22:11:30Z
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