Earlier this month, Tesla announced another record-setting quarter when it came to how many cars it delivered to customers. But today, the company also announced in a letter to investors that it lost $408 million while doing it. This so-so news piggybacks on a disappointing first quarter of the year, when Tesla lost $702 million.
Naturally, investors didn’t react well, with the company’s stock down nine percent in after hours trading immediately following the announcement.
For those looking, there’s plenty of reason for optimism. Tesla says it’s still on track to open the Shanghai Gigafactory by the end of the year, a potential boon to the company’s production and logistics capabilities. Tesla also said it ended the second quarter with “$5.0 billion of cash and cash equivalents, the highest level in Tesla’s history.” So they have money to burn.
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And the company is surely celebrating some wins around production and deliveries, which it said surpassed previous records. Model 3 deliveries alone “reached an all-time record of 77,634.” From the report:
In the second quarter of 2019, we achieved record deliveries of 95,356 vehicles and record production of 87,048 vehicles, surpassing our previous quarterly records of ~91,000 deliveries and ~86,600 units produced in Q4 of 2018. This is an important milestone as it represents rapid progress in managing global logistics and delivery operations at higher volumes.
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But the net revenue miss did nothing to assuage concerns that Model 3 sales are largely cannibalizing more profitable S and X sales rather than expanding the company’s potential customer base.
Tesla says it’s still targeting a profit in forthcoming quarters, so I guess we’ll be right back here in a few months.
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