My family used to say I had an obsession with Tesla and Elon. I bought a Model 3 as “investment research.” Not to mention it was safe, cool, and it seemed the good folks were making a difference for once. I have written many pieces supporting Elon and Tesla’s vision … [continued]
BYD is the only automaker that sells more plugin vehicles worldwide than Tesla (and a bit fewer full electrics). It’s also basically the only other profitable electric automaker in the world. In some regards, you can certainly say that BYD is leading the charge in EVs. On the other hand, … [continued]
One of the highlights of the annual Tesla shareholder meeting held earlier today was a graph showing that Tesla has risen to #1 in the auto industry in terms of operating margin. Luxury car companies known for their solid operating margins and gross profits are solid steps below Tesla now. … [continued]
How profitable is each car that Tesla sells? This is a question that was recently asked in a thread of misinformation and FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) being put forth on Twitter. The question was answered by James Stephenson, who debunked the entire thread of misinformation with his own graphs, … [continued]
There have been many pieces on Tesla stock’s rocket run over the last month. According to stockcharts.com, Tesla went from a low price of 328.69 on December 2nd, 2019, to a closing price of 430.38 on December 27th, 2019 (it has dropped a bit since then). This is a phenomenal return of 30.9% gain in less than 30 days. I speculated earlier on many reasons why it happened. It turns out, though, the reason may be very simple. Wall Street analysts are expecting Tesla to earn higher profits in 2019 and 2020 compared to what they thought 3 months ago.
Analysts seem to talk about Tesla’s “cash problem” often, especially leading up to the $920 million bond repayment and after the Model Y event. Tesla has access to so many sources of liquidity that the “cash problem” is a mythical problem.
Editor’s note: Contrary to some core points in the article below, Elon Musk has said on a few occasions that Tesla’s more or less continuous profitability will not slow Tesla’s growth — that it’s still growing as fast as it can. We also have a Tesla financials deep dive coming in a couple of days that should help anyone interested in that aspect of the business to walk through the numbers in detail yet hopefully without getting lost if you don’t have an MBA or accounting degree. In any case, it is a common concern among Tesla supporters that a focus on achieving quarterly profits could slow Tesla’s overall growth. This author chimes in on that topic through a bit more than 1,000 words.
Twitter user @ElonMuskScience created an interesting chart last year based on Tesla financial data and shared it with us.
I thought it was fascinating and worth a long story, but we never got around to diving deeply into the topic (well, I mean, since Maarten did back in May). But the time has come. Here we go!
Today, Tesla and Ford both had their 3rd quarter 2018 financial calls. Upstart, diversified auto/energy company vs. established, focused auto company. Electric vehicles vs. fossil fuel vehicles. How does the competition look?
The big news from Tesla in Q3 2018 is that the company was profitable for only the fourth time in its history. That was enough to send its share price higher in after-hour trading, but there was more good news.
