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>The margin on each car is decent What margin? They are losing upwards of $20,000 per car produced, and as of Q3, it's growing. Sure, if you use their non-GA

>The margin on each car is decent What margin? They are losing upwards of $20,000 per car produced, and as of Q3, it's growing. Sure, if you use their non-GAAP gross margin figures, which remove many costs that other auto manufacturers include, things look downright swell; non-GAAP accounting artifacts can do all kinds of things. But at the end of the day Tesla are burning cash at an increasing rate, even with production and deliveries increasing (around 100k cars per year). Where are all these profits from scale to come from?

schiffern 9y ago
> What margin? They are losing upwards of $20,000 per car produced, and as of Q3, it's growing. Perhaps the 19% "Gross margin total automotive & services and other segment" margin they disclosed on page 51 of their latest 10-K filing?[1] Or the 23% "Gross margin total automotive"? Taking the smaller number, Tesla made $24,741 per vehicle (and yes, that's the correct sig figs). > Sure, if you use their non-GAAP gross margin figures... Tesla hasn't reported non-GAAP figures since 2016.[2] Search the filing yourself: the word "GAAP" appears only eight times, and none of those refer to any non-GAAP accounting. [1] http://ir.tesla.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1564590-18-2956&CIK=1318605 http://ir.tesla.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1564590-18-2956&C... [2] https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/tesla-backs-away-from-non-gaap-metrics-after-sec-letters https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/tesla-backs-away-from-n...
- mhermher 9y ago
  Not sure what the other guy meant, but this article goes over the differences in how Tesla reports gross margin: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4153659-just-say-no-teslas-misleading-margin-metric https://seekingalpha.com/article/4153659-just-say-no-teslas-... To summarize: 1. Tesla’s Calculation Ignores The Cost Of Its Service Center Network 2. Tesla Excludes Its R&D From Its Calculation 3. Tesla Allocates Some Supercharger Costs To SG&A 4. Expensing Of Warranty Costs 5. Front-Loading Of Gross Margin You'd have to read the details on what each means or implies.
  - schiffern 9y ago
    Yikes, this one's even worse. Briefly, 1. Tesla doesn't ignore it (the very next line is "Total automotive & services and other segment"), plus the author completely ignores service revenue which pays 81% of those costs 2. True, but Ford is stable and spends 4% of revenue while Tesla is growing and spends 12% 3. No they don't, Supercharger costs are all under "Cost of automotive sales revenue" on pp51 4. True, but this is tiny 5. Again, this is covered under "Total automotive & services and other segment" on the very next line, and again that bin necessarily includes additional revenue, not just additional costs as this author pretends (apparently 'forgetting' that car dealerships make money??). The author's "adjusted" 2017 numbers arbitrarily chop 964m off revenue to "correct" for Tesla running its own service centers, but Tesla's service centers only incurred a net loss of 228m. The article is laughably inaccurate (presuming you don't hold a short position). More FUD from the self-avowed Tesla shorts. Nothing more.

schiffern 9y ago

> What margin? They are losing upwards of $20,000 per car produced, and as of Q3, it's growing. Perhaps the 19% "Gross margin total automotive & services and other segment" margin they disclosed on page 51 of their latest 10-K filing?[1] Or the 23% "Gross margin total automotive"? Taking the smaller number, Tesla made $24,741 per vehicle (and yes, that's the correct sig figs). > Sure, if you use their non-GAAP gross margin figures... Tesla hasn't reported non-GAAP figures since 2016.[2] Search the filing yourself: the word "GAAP" appears only eight times, and none of those refer to any non-GAAP accounting. [1] http://ir.tesla.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1564590-18-2956&CIK=1318605 http://ir.tesla.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1564590-18-2956&C... [2] https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/tesla-backs-away-from-non-gaap-metrics-after-sec-letters https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/tesla-backs-away-from-n...

mhermher 9y ago
Not sure what the other guy meant, but this article goes over the differences in how Tesla reports gross margin: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4153659-just-say-no-teslas-misleading-margin-metric https://seekingalpha.com/article/4153659-just-say-no-teslas-... To summarize: 1. Tesla’s Calculation Ignores The Cost Of Its Service Center Network 2. Tesla Excludes Its R&D From Its Calculation 3. Tesla Allocates Some Supercharger Costs To SG&A 4. Expensing Of Warranty Costs 5. Front-Loading Of Gross Margin You'd have to read the details on what each means or implies.
- schiffern 9y ago
  Yikes, this one's even worse. Briefly, 1. Tesla doesn't ignore it (the very next line is "Total automotive & services and other segment"), plus the author completely ignores service revenue which pays 81% of those costs 2. True, but Ford is stable and spends 4% of revenue while Tesla is growing and spends 12% 3. No they don't, Supercharger costs are all under "Cost of automotive sales revenue" on pp51 4. True, but this is tiny 5. Again, this is covered under "Total automotive & services and other segment" on the very next line, and again that bin necessarily includes additional revenue, not just additional costs as this author pretends (apparently 'forgetting' that car dealerships make money??). The author's "adjusted" 2017 numbers arbitrarily chop 964m off revenue to "correct" for Tesla running its own service centers, but Tesla's service centers only incurred a net loss of 228m. The article is laughably inaccurate (presuming you don't hold a short position). More FUD from the self-avowed Tesla shorts. Nothing more.