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Do you know how to read a financial statement? They have 26% gross margins on the Model S. Model 3 just turned gross margin positive in Q2. Your response is bor

Do you know how to read a financial statement? They have 26% gross margins on the Model S. Model 3 just turned gross margin positive in Q2. Your response is boring and boneheaded. Next.

dragontamer 8y ago
I'm not talking gross margin. I'm talking raw and simple profits. If I wanted to talk about margins, I would have said "margin" in my post earlier. I said profit. To be more specific, how about the words "Cash Flow Positive" ?? In any case, Tesla has only had ONE profitable quarter since its IPO, and has never had a profitable year.
- zaroth 8y ago
  Tesla is not a company that wanted to nor needed to be cash flow positive until now. They raised cheap capital and applied it to grow their business faster than bootstrapping would have allowed. Which is why the point about margins is so crucial. No one anticipated such great margins on an electric car. The tear down analysis demonstrates that the $35k standard-range Model 3 is not a unicorn, but will be profitable to make and sell once the production lines have any slack at all at the higher price points.
- Latteland 8y ago
  But the point of tesla is they are making investments long term. Yes, they definitely need to produce those new products that justify all that money (like the model 3). They don't have dozens of different car products where they can trade off their current cash flow against future development costs - they have had just the S & X. How can you evaluate any company if you can't think about these separately - how much profit they make on one widget, and how much they spend on developing infrastructure and the next things, how much value will that have.
  - dragontamer 8y ago
    > But the point of tesla is they are making investments long term. What definition of "long term" do we have here? How many years did it take for Apple to become profitable from the iPod? The iPad? The iPhone? It was profitable throughout all of those years. That's the very point of technology gadgets: they don't require huge upfront costs like Tesla. Apple does have innovations (see their custom ARM chip, which is consistently superior to Snapdragon in benchmarks every year). But even with the billions of dollars needed to custom-make an uncore from scratch, Apple remains profitable. https://www.statista.com/statistics/267728/apples-net-income-since-2005/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/267728/apples-net-income... https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSLA/tesla/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSLA/tesla/net-inc... Since 2005 (and maybe earlier), Apple has made a profit every quarter. Since 2009 (before Tesla's IPO), Tesla has NEVER made a profit. Its completely insane to compare these two companies. They're run completely differently, aside from both being California based.

Do you know how to read a financial statement? They have 26% gross margins on the Model S. Model 3 just turned gross margin positive in Q2. Your response is boring and boneheaded. Next.

dragontamer 8y ago

I'm not talking gross margin. I'm talking raw and simple profits. If I wanted to talk about margins, I would have said "margin" in my post earlier. I said profit. To be more specific, how about the words "Cash Flow Positive" ?? In any case, Tesla has only had ONE profitable quarter since its IPO, and has never had a profitable year.

zaroth 8y ago
Tesla is not a company that wanted to nor needed to be cash flow positive until now. They raised cheap capital and applied it to grow their business faster than bootstrapping would have allowed. Which is why the point about margins is so crucial. No one anticipated such great margins on an electric car. The tear down analysis demonstrates that the $35k standard-range Model 3 is not a unicorn, but will be profitable to make and sell once the production lines have any slack at all at the higher price points.
Latteland 8y ago
But the point of tesla is they are making investments long term. Yes, they definitely need to produce those new products that justify all that money (like the model 3). They don't have dozens of different car products where they can trade off their current cash flow against future development costs - they have had just the S & X. How can you evaluate any company if you can't think about these separately - how much profit they make on one widget, and how much they spend on developing infrastructure and the next things, how much value will that have.
- dragontamer 8y ago
  > But the point of tesla is they are making investments long term. What definition of "long term" do we have here? How many years did it take for Apple to become profitable from the iPod? The iPad? The iPhone? It was profitable throughout all of those years. That's the very point of technology gadgets: they don't require huge upfront costs like Tesla. Apple does have innovations (see their custom ARM chip, which is consistently superior to Snapdragon in benchmarks every year). But even with the billions of dollars needed to custom-make an uncore from scratch, Apple remains profitable. https://www.statista.com/statistics/267728/apples-net-income-since-2005/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/267728/apples-net-income... https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSLA/tesla/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSLA/tesla/net-inc... Since 2005 (and maybe earlier), Apple has made a profit every quarter. Since 2009 (before Tesla's IPO), Tesla has NEVER made a profit. Its completely insane to compare these two companies. They're run completely differently, aside from both being California based.