Last week was earnings weeks for Tesla. We are going to change up the report a bit this week and discuss the top 5 FUD headlines before going into the regular #Pravduh about #Tesla report. My “kudos” to CNBC for covering Tesla in every which way possible, some of which I didn’t know existed or wanted to exist. I’ll start with two CNBC pieces.
Tesla reported financials for the 4th quarter of 2018 and for all of 2018 last week. The company also gave some guidance for the coming quarters. The results included Tesla’s second consecutive quarter of profits, which came after months of Wall Street analysts and the financial media claiming that Tesla was about to run out of cash (and might even go bankrupt), couldn’t possibly post a profitable quarter in 2018 (and certainly not two quarters of profits), and would need to raise money again to fund its massive “cash burning” production processes.
WARNING: This article is centered around faux distortions of positive Tesla news, like you might see from Seeking Alpha or Wall Street analysts. The point is to add context and perspective (after the faux distortions) to the kinds of reactions you might see on larger media sites like CNBC and Business Insider.
With back-to-back profitable quarters under its belt, Tesla is kicking off 2019 with an emphasis on financial discipline. As Engadget reports, “Tesla’s 2018 fourth-quarter results showed the company still made a profit ($139.5 million), but it was smaller than that of the third quarter ($311.5 million). For the quarter, the company posted $7.23 billion in revenue. Last year’s revenue was $3.29 billion. Overall for 2018 it reported $21.4 billion in revenue.”
On its Q4 2018 earnings call last night, Tesla confirmed that the Model Y will be the first vehicle it will build at its Gigafactory 1 in Sparks, Nevada. In parallel, it plans to build the crossover (CUV) at its new Gigafactory 3 in Shanghai, China.
Tesla’s 4th quarter 2018 conference call just launched. You can listen below. We will also update this post repeatedly as we jot down highlights.
Tesla has published its 4th quarter 2018 shareholder letter.
We will pick apart the details and add our own commentary and extra context soon. In the meantime, click here to read the full thing and here are the summary points:
The most popular CleanTechnica articles of the past week were actually not led by a Tesla story. (Though, Tesla Model 3 is in the title since the featured EV, the Hyundai Ioniq, is being compared to the Model 3.) Other top stories included some findings from a rather limited but interesting survey of Tesla buyers who used the referral code of one of our writers, Tesla layoffs and Wall Street’s response, an open letter to Toyota USA, and a piece rounding up 30 Tesla sales charts from the past month.
Editor’s note: CleanTechnica, EVANNEX, and surely others were given a sneak preview of some Tesla investment news from Galileo Russell. The TSLA YouTuber has been working on a way to give retail investors a bigger voice on Tesla (and other) financials calls. Read on below to learn more and participate.
I received quite a few comments that running Tesla’s finances through a lemonade stand confused readers. I realized two things. People without a financial background loved it. People who fully read Tesla’s SEC filings for a mid-morning snack hated it, or at best tolerated it. 😉
