7 ms·

Tesla Q1 2019: losses 4x more than expected, revenues 12% less

51 points by listenallyall 8y ago

navigatesol 8y ago
I thought it was profits from here on out though? I'm sure robotaxis will fix it!
dforrestwilson 8y ago
If you can get past the smarmy attitude there is a Twitter account called Tesla Charts that does a great chartroll each quarter: https://twitter.com/TeslaCharts/status/1121167252559151104 https://twitter.com/TeslaCharts/status/1121167252559151104
- melling 8y ago
  Someone mentioned all the cash from customer deposits. Does Tesla still have a large backlog of undelivered Model 3s? There’s a lot of schadenfreude on Twitter but the stock price has barely budged in after hours trading.
  - navigatesol 8y ago
    They have about $750MM in customer deposits. That's cash on hand, but it's also deferred revenue. It's a deposit, after all.
    - astrodust 8y ago
      If you're not lucky that "deposit" might turn into an "investment".
- et2o 8y ago
  Tesla Charts is highly biased and intellectually dishonest. Check out @TeslaHistorian (also on Twitter) for dozens of examples. https://mobile.twitter.com/TeslaHistorian https://mobile.twitter.com/TeslaHistorian
Sohcahtoa82 8y ago
How much of Tesla's losses are caused by spending money on continuous expansion of manufacturing capacity? I've always thought that FUD regarding Tesla is mostly caused by short-sightedness and that they're not profitable because every dollar they make is going towards expansion. Is this accurate?
- gamblor956 8y ago
  A lot of Tesla's cash goes toward covering Elon's mistakes, like: the unused billion-dollar-plus "alien dreadnought" manufacturing line gathering dust, the SEC settlements, spending on SolarCity and BoringCo, Elon's hundreds of flights each year, purchasing hundreds of auto trailers for deliveries because Elon goofed on the logistics schedule, last-minute storage in port because Elon goofed on the basic paperwork, parking lots near their factory to storage unsold cars or cars awaiting replacement parts, shrinkage due to repairing/replacing parts on the factory line because they were broken or improperly installed the first time around because Elon doesn't believe in letting employees having time to do things properly. Very little of their cash actually goes to expansion of manufacturing.
  - maxthegeek1 8y ago
    As far as I know, Tesla has has little to no relation to BoringCo beyond the fact that they are both owned in large part by Elon Musk.
    - gamblor956 8y ago
      Boring Co uses Tesla's lot as its base of operations, and a number of its engineers are actually just Tesla engineers pulling double duty (without extra pay). Also, BoringCo's PR staff is just Tesla's PR staff. BoringCo doesn't really have much in the way of its own assets except for TBM.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 8y ago
childintime 8y ago
Big changes happened this quarter with a sudden shift in demand, to Europe. Such sudden changes always incur a cost, so the losses may well be incidental, and the next quarter should be fine.
- navigatesol 8y ago
  Can you please elaborate in this? How does shipping cars create a loss? Other manufacturers do it all the time. Maybe your margins shrink,but what explains the massive loss?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - consumer451 8y ago
    I believe Tesla doesn’t count the cash from a car sale until it is in the customers’ hands.[0] I remember reading that there were a lot of cars mid-shipment to the EU at the end of that quarter. [0] I believe other auto manufacturers count the cash earlier in the delivery process, like when sold to a dealer, correct?
    - dforrestwilson 8y ago
      But the cash in many cases is already deposited with Tesla isn’t it? If so, then it has already been counted.
      - consumer451 8y ago
        I know little about the financial world, but I used to listen to their earnings calls for fun. I remember Musk and their previous CFO saying that they didn’t count the cash of a sale until the customer received the car. But again, I could have misunderstood.
    - navigatesol 8y ago
      >I remember reading that there were a lot of cars mid-shipment to the EU at the end of that quarter. So what is in their accounts receivable?
dragontamer 8y ago
Hey @Dang, I've flagged this story, mostly because there's another Hacker News post with a "more direct link" to the story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19743051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19743051 I would argue that the direct information from Tesla's website is the primary document. Maybe merge the topics together? Thanks.
- reitzensteinm 8y ago
  I don't think flagging the story with momentum and commenting on the story with no upvotes is the right thing to do, it'll result in two buried threads (a flag is a potent downvote). Just ask them to update the URL of this post instead. Usually mods are pretty quick to do a swap for posts that are on the front page.
  - dragontamer 8y ago
    Hmmm... well I've unflagged the topic then. I just didn't know exactly how to get the mod's attention. At this point, it seems clear that "this" topic has more momentum. But both the topics were at only ~3 votes when I made my post.
    - greenyoda 8y ago
      You can contact the moderators by e-mailing hn@ycombinator.com.
      - dragontamer 8y ago
        Cool. I'll do that next time. Its a bit late for this topic, since it has so much more momentum than the other topics now.
- listenallyall 8y ago
  lol, let's bury an article by independent financial press and replace it with the company spin, making no mention of poor results vs consensus analyst estimates, and hiding the most important info (-2.90 EPS, $4.5b rev) on Page 6.
woodandsteel 8y ago
Two points. One is that you have to look at the trends over the years, not just quarterly ups and downs, and there Tesla is doing remarkably well. But by far the more important point is that the EV revolution is finally taking off. Thanks to Tesla's example and plunging battery prices (down %35 in the last year alone), a whole bunch of EV's are going to come on the market in the next few years. And sticker price for the larger ones is predicted to match ICE's around 2023, and keep falling after that. This is going to turn the auto industry upside down, and be a huge step in saving the environment. So don't focus so much on Tesla, look at the larger trends.
- dragontamer 8y ago
  > Two points. One is that you have to look at the trends over the years, not just quarterly ups and downs, and there Tesla is doing remarkably well. https://fairlyvalued.com/company/TSLA https://fairlyvalued.com/company/TSLA Tesla has NEVER posted a yearly net income in its entire life. Q1 2019 is quite a bad start, with another $700 Million loss to start this year. That's the trend: losing money by any measurement on a yearly basis. Free Cash flow? Negative. Net Income? Negative. Etc. etc. > This is going to turn the auto industry upside down, and be a huge step in saving the environment. So don't focus so much on Tesla, look at the larger trends. Tesla lost 1.5 Billion this quarter and is down to $2.2 Billion in cash. A capital raise is absolutely necessary to prevent this company from going bankrupt. I mean, I wanna stop global warming as much as you do. But an unsustainable business model is doomed to fail. This company needs to start making a profit (and not just a quarterly non-GAAP profit... I mean a real GAAP profit measured on a yearly basis)
  - windexh8er 8y ago
    > I mean, I wanna stop global warming as much as you do. But an unsustainable business model is doomed to fail. This company needs to start making a profit (and not just a quarterly non-GAAP profit... I mean a real GAAP profit measured on a yearly basis) So many darlings don't ever post profits though. Palo Alto Networks is a prime example. They've never posted a GAAP profit, ever. Yet... It trades at ~38x and the stock has rocketed over the years. Non-GAAP reporting is a racket and should be illegal.

51 points by listenallyall 8y ago

I thought it was profits from here on out though? I'm sure robotaxis will fix it!

If you can get past the smarmy attitude there is a Twitter account called Tesla Charts that does a great chartroll each quarter: https://twitter.com/TeslaCharts/status/1121167252559151104 https://twitter.com/TeslaCharts/status/1121167252559151104

melling 8y ago
Someone mentioned all the cash from customer deposits. Does Tesla still have a large backlog of undelivered Model 3s? There’s a lot of schadenfreude on Twitter but the stock price has barely budged in after hours trading.
- navigatesol 8y ago
  They have about $750MM in customer deposits. That's cash on hand, but it's also deferred revenue. It's a deposit, after all.
  - astrodust 8y ago
    If you're not lucky that "deposit" might turn into an "investment".
et2o 8y ago
Tesla Charts is highly biased and intellectually dishonest. Check out @TeslaHistorian (also on Twitter) for dozens of examples. https://mobile.twitter.com/TeslaHistorian https://mobile.twitter.com/TeslaHistorian

Sohcahtoa82 8y ago

How much of Tesla's losses are caused by spending money on continuous expansion of manufacturing capacity? I've always thought that FUD regarding Tesla is mostly caused by short-sightedness and that they're not profitable because every dollar they make is going towards expansion. Is this accurate?

gamblor956 8y ago
A lot of Tesla's cash goes toward covering Elon's mistakes, like: the unused billion-dollar-plus "alien dreadnought" manufacturing line gathering dust, the SEC settlements, spending on SolarCity and BoringCo, Elon's hundreds of flights each year, purchasing hundreds of auto trailers for deliveries because Elon goofed on the logistics schedule, last-minute storage in port because Elon goofed on the basic paperwork, parking lots near their factory to storage unsold cars or cars awaiting replacement parts, shrinkage due to repairing/replacing parts on the factory line because they were broken or improperly installed the first time around because Elon doesn't believe in letting employees having time to do things properly. Very little of their cash actually goes to expansion of manufacturing.
- maxthegeek1 8y ago
  As far as I know, Tesla has has little to no relation to BoringCo beyond the fact that they are both owned in large part by Elon Musk.
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    Boring Co uses Tesla's lot as its base of operations, and a number of its engineers are actually just Tesla engineers pulling double duty (without extra pay). Also, BoringCo's PR staff is just Tesla's PR staff. BoringCo doesn't really have much in the way of its own assets except for TBM.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 8y ago

childintime 8y ago

Big changes happened this quarter with a sudden shift in demand, to Europe. Such sudden changes always incur a cost, so the losses may well be incidental, and the next quarter should be fine.

navigatesol 8y ago
Can you please elaborate in this? How does shipping cars create a loss? Other manufacturers do it all the time. Maybe your margins shrink,but what explains the massive loss?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- consumer451 8y ago
  I believe Tesla doesn’t count the cash from a car sale until it is in the customers’ hands.[0] I remember reading that there were a lot of cars mid-shipment to the EU at the end of that quarter. [0] I believe other auto manufacturers count the cash earlier in the delivery process, like when sold to a dealer, correct?
  - dforrestwilson 8y ago
    But the cash in many cases is already deposited with Tesla isn’t it? If so, then it has already been counted.
    - consumer451 8y ago
      I know little about the financial world, but I used to listen to their earnings calls for fun. I remember Musk and their previous CFO saying that they didn’t count the cash of a sale until the customer received the car. But again, I could have misunderstood.
  - navigatesol 8y ago
    >I remember reading that there were a lot of cars mid-shipment to the EU at the end of that quarter. So what is in their accounts receivable?

dragontamer 8y ago

Hey @Dang, I've flagged this story, mostly because there's another Hacker News post with a "more direct link" to the story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19743051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19743051 I would argue that the direct information from Tesla's website is the primary document. Maybe merge the topics together? Thanks.

reitzensteinm 8y ago
I don't think flagging the story with momentum and commenting on the story with no upvotes is the right thing to do, it'll result in two buried threads (a flag is a potent downvote). Just ask them to update the URL of this post instead. Usually mods are pretty quick to do a swap for posts that are on the front page.
- dragontamer 8y ago
  Hmmm... well I've unflagged the topic then. I just didn't know exactly how to get the mod's attention. At this point, it seems clear that "this" topic has more momentum. But both the topics were at only ~3 votes when I made my post.
  - greenyoda 8y ago
    You can contact the moderators by e-mailing hn@ycombinator.com.
    - dragontamer 8y ago
      Cool. I'll do that next time. Its a bit late for this topic, since it has so much more momentum than the other topics now.
listenallyall 8y ago
lol, let's bury an article by independent financial press and replace it with the company spin, making no mention of poor results vs consensus analyst estimates, and hiding the most important info (-2.90 EPS, $4.5b rev) on Page 6.

woodandsteel 8y ago

Two points. One is that you have to look at the trends over the years, not just quarterly ups and downs, and there Tesla is doing remarkably well. But by far the more important point is that the EV revolution is finally taking off. Thanks to Tesla's example and plunging battery prices (down %35 in the last year alone), a whole bunch of EV's are going to come on the market in the next few years. And sticker price for the larger ones is predicted to match ICE's around 2023, and keep falling after that. This is going to turn the auto industry upside down, and be a huge step in saving the environment. So don't focus so much on Tesla, look at the larger trends.

dragontamer 8y ago
> Two points. One is that you have to look at the trends over the years, not just quarterly ups and downs, and there Tesla is doing remarkably well. https://fairlyvalued.com/company/TSLA https://fairlyvalued.com/company/TSLA Tesla has NEVER posted a yearly net income in its entire life. Q1 2019 is quite a bad start, with another $700 Million loss to start this year. That's the trend: losing money by any measurement on a yearly basis. Free Cash flow? Negative. Net Income? Negative. Etc. etc. > This is going to turn the auto industry upside down, and be a huge step in saving the environment. So don't focus so much on Tesla, look at the larger trends. Tesla lost 1.5 Billion this quarter and is down to $2.2 Billion in cash. A capital raise is absolutely necessary to prevent this company from going bankrupt. I mean, I wanna stop global warming as much as you do. But an unsustainable business model is doomed to fail. This company needs to start making a profit (and not just a quarterly non-GAAP profit... I mean a real GAAP profit measured on a yearly basis)
- windexh8er 8y ago
  > I mean, I wanna stop global warming as much as you do. But an unsustainable business model is doomed to fail. This company needs to start making a profit (and not just a quarterly non-GAAP profit... I mean a real GAAP profit measured on a yearly basis) So many darlings don't ever post profits though. Palo Alto Networks is a prime example. They've never posted a GAAP profit, ever. Yet... It trades at ~38x and the stock has rocketed over the years. Non-GAAP reporting is a racket and should be illegal.