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Businesses The Almighty Buck Technology

Tesla Reports Second-Consecutive Profit; CFO Retires Again 102

Posted by BeauHD from the full-steam-ahead dept.
Rei writes: Yesterday, Tesla reported their 4th quarter earnings, representing their second consecutive profit. While earnings per share missed analyst expectations ($1.93 vs. $2.20), revenue beat expectations by around $100 million and free cash flow ($910 million) was more than double the First Call consensus of $395 million. Model 3 margins were maintained at an impressive 20% level despite significant reductions in the average sale price in Q4; labor hours fell by 20% in Q4 and 65% in the second half of 2018 alone. With $3.7 billion in the bank, Tesla is now well positioned to repay its $920 million March convertible bond obligations in cash. Severance costs and an increase in inventory in transit due to shipments to Europe and China are expected to hurt Tesla's profits in Q1, but guidance for Q2 onward in 2019 is strong. Highlights planned for 2019 include introduction of faster V3 Supercharging early in the year, Model Y and pickup unveiling in the middle of the year, base Model 3 unveiling in the middle of the year, and full-vehicle production in the under-construction Shanghai Gigafactory by the end of the year -- the first wholly foreign-owned auto plant in China, which has seen extensive governmental support.

Despite a generally positive earnings report and conference call, the atmosphere was soured by the news that Tesla's 11-year Tesla veteran CFO Deepak Ahuja was re-retiring. Having previously retired in 2015, Deepak returned to Tesla in 2017 to replace outgoing CFO Jason Wheeler. Ahuja will remain with the company for several months as CFO and then become a senior advisor, while his protege Zach Kirkhorn fills his role. The market reacted negatively to the news, with Tesla trading down 4.5% premarket.
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Tesla Reports Second-Consecutive Profit; CFO Retires Again More

Tesla Reports Second-Consecutive Profit; CFO Retires Again

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  • I always thought that, nice to see it official.

    • If your assertion is that it is a Tesla employee, [citation needed]

    • I always thought that, nice to see it official.

      Yes, every poster on here is some official liaison officer for some corporation. There's no such thing as personal interest articles anymore.

      Does anyone disagree? Who's paying to shill against me?

      Mind you I do like how Rei is rubbing the smug shits' on Slashdot who insisted that Tesla would be bankrupt next month (for the past 24 months running) noses in it.

  • I regret (Score:1, Troll)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 )
    I regret shorting Tesla stock. It was the biggest mistake I ever made! I lost a bundle when the stock skyrocketed last year. I should have listened. But I bought a bunch of Tesla stock last week so I am guaranteed to make it all back (and more)

  • Re-retiring (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Thursday January 31, 2019 @09:52PM (#58053514) Homepage Journal

    Thanks for the good summary. I read stories this morning along the lines of "Management Shake-Up at Tesla, CFO Out, Replaced by VP of Finance."

    I shall now go mark those news sources as "fake news, shorts colluders."

  • More Info (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mentil ( 1748130 ) on Friday February 01, 2019 @02:38AM (#58054068)

    Their earnings report says they plan to begin tooling for the Model Y this year, and 70% of its parts will be in common with the Model 3, which should lead to a quicker ramp-up than the Model 3 had. They're also still claiming to be working on the Semi, and are going to seriously ramp up solar roof production this year.

  • This is actually very nice (Score:5, Informative)

    by Terje Mathisen ( 128806 ) on Friday February 01, 2019 @05:32AM (#58054346)

    Elon Musk have been extremely clear, from the very beginning, that Tesla was a private bet almost sure to fail, but still worthwhile in order to speed up the transition away from ICE cars. The fact that they now seem to be able to actually make this a sustainable business is great!

    Full disclosure: I'm a Norwegian electrical engineer who waited close to 25 years before the first 4x4 long range EV, i.e. a Tesla Model S70D was announced, we have used that as our only car for 3 years now.

    Tesla is of course one of the best-selling car brands in Norway due to our extreme EV incentives, which include no toll road fees, mostly free parking, very low road tax, all on top of zero import duties or sales tax. With 98%++ of our electricity coming from hydro, this is a very nice situation indeed. Currently well over half of all new cars here are pure EVs (a majority) or plug-in hybrids, with ICE cars making up the remaining third or so.

    Terje Mathisen

    • "extreme EV incentives, which include no toll road fees, mostly free parking, very low road tax, all on top of zero import duties or sales tax"

      And here I thought it was about saving the planet! Who knew?
    • It might be a good car ($100k cars usually are), but it's a little disingenuous to feel smug about driving a tax-supported EV in Norway when you consider how that is being paid for - oil exports.

      Petroleum exports are 17% of GDP, 21% of total state revenue and a whooping 43% of total exports!

      https://www.norskpetroleum.no/... [norskpetroleum.no]

      Oil exports are taxed at 78%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      Your electricity might be coming from Hydro but the money that paid for the car and continues to subsidise it co

  • SP500 not in 2019 April (Score:3)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Friday February 01, 2019 @06:05AM (#58054414) Journal
    We were hoping Tesla will be included in SP500 index in April. But it has made 450 mill in Q3+Q4. And lost 700 mill in Q2. So to have positive earnings in the trailing four quarters, it needs to make 250 mill in Q1 of 19. But the conference call guidance was a very small profit. So it is not going to be included in April. But when 2019 Q2 comes in the 700 mill loss will roll off the time frame. So even if it makes a loss it will definitely make it. Results will be announced in July 2019, so certain to be included.

    Market will anticipate it, index funds would have buy some 6 billion in TSLA stock. And steady purchase thereafter. But it is not something that trigger any kind of short squeeze of any kind.

    Already big smart shorts have closed their positions. 41 million TSLA shares were shorted in Jun 2018. Now the number is around 24 million. Still high, but the trend is down. Two more months it might not be the most heavily shorted stock in the market.

    Elon is surprisingly well behaved. If his demeanor is any indication, the company is doing very well.

    • Yeah the top 5 shorted stocks are Tesla, Apple, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon. You definitely wouldn't want to be in that list! Good analysis.
      • Why? Shorts do not hurt a company's day to day operations. Stock price does not affect daily ops at all.

        Stock price influences cost of capital. Any company depending on fresh capital could be seriously affected by short and slander schemes, (the opposite of pump and dump schemes). Most vulnerable to rumor mill are the banks and insurance companies. So much so, the banks are federally insured to some extent and heavily regulated with regards to capital requirements. Insurance companies are also seriously r

        • As with all things, context matters.

          If you have $900M in convertible bonds coming due, and the short float is dragging your stock price under the conversion price, it can matter very much.

          That's $900M coming out of cash on hand, rather than issuing stock certificates.

          • Short float doesn't drag the stock down. You know what companies also hated short sellers? Enron, Tycho, Worldcom. Normal companies don't care. Apple/Amazon are also highly shorted yet they never whine about it.

            • Amazon and Apple are not highly shorted. They are both at about 1 day to cover.

              I did make a few thousand last year from a successful short of Sears, but I never posted negative information about Sears without also stating that I held a short position.

          • Yes, shorts can make capital expensive. This scenario of bond coming due is exactly the time they try to choke a company. If it does not have the cash, it has to go to the bond market. If it can't raise the cash it will go belly up. That is the short seller's idea/plan/hope/prayer.

            This will not affect the day to day operation. Of course morale will suffer, some vendors will balk supplying, all kinds of secondary things will happen.

            But back in Dec18 it said it is going to convert only 50% of the bonds. C

  • what the hell, nothing but good news, one tidbit about the CFO re-retiring (really, you should have seen it comming that this was only a short stint) and the tesla stock still drops!

    meanwhile after facebook financial announcements, the stock goes up, while it's probably the most scummy company on the planet hated by most of its users!

    • It is not CFO retirement that dropped the stock. It is the delay in getting into SP500.

      Tesla said 2019 Q1 profit will be small. Not big enough to have positive earnings in the trailing four quarters. Which means it wont get into SP500 in April 19. It will definitely get into SP500 in July 2019, when the 2018Q2 loss of 700 million rolls of the time window. So the market is readjusting the price for the 3 month delay, that is all.

  • You don't see that very often. I'm a little jealous.
  • This thread did not start for 24 hours after the earnings call.

    It has barely gathered 50 comments over 12 hours.

    Looks like most paid trolls have been reassigned and only the self motivated trolls are infesting these threads.

    Looks like Tesla will be left alone soon, like Ford or GM. Of interest to a few people and does not attract clicks.

    • Wrong. I am still being paid big money to troll Tesla articles on Slashdot. I literally make pennies per year on my efforts in behalf of "Big Oil", or the Saudis, or the legacy carmakers!
  • How is the demand side looking for Tesla? Out of curiosity, I went to the order page to see how long the wait is for a Model 3. The wait is.. none? What happened to the wait list of orders? Is this going to be an issue going forward, or do they see enough on demand orders to absorb their ramped up production?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by vipvop ( 34876 )

      Demand isn't there, you can find people really into hating on Tesla who take pics of lots full of cars sitting there, batteries probably being permanently damaged from the cold during the polar vortex.

      I think the early adopters (or rabid fan boys) already have their model 3s, but objective car buyers would probably do some research and see they're actually pretty shitty cars with incredibly poor service if you need parts / get in accident. I'm not pro or anti Tesla, I drove a friend's model S and it's fun

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