That news narrative is deeply misleading. Tesla achieves a 23.7% automotive margin, excluding regulator credits [#1 p. 31]. Regulatory credits for Q4 were $40

That news narrative is deeply misleading. Tesla achieves a 23.7% automotive margin, excluding regulator credits [#1 p. 31]. Regulatory credits for Q4 were $401M [p4] while they increased their quarter over quarter R&D spending by $156M [p. 28] and paid stock based compensation charge of $633M, up from roughly $347M in Q2 as the stock boomed [p.30]. Call that an additional $286M of stock based compensation and adding $156M in R&D we have an additional $442M in Q4 expenses. So the Q4 regulator credits are slightly less than the combined 42% Q/Q R&D increase (a great thing) and increased SBC charges (also a good thing as caused by rising share price). Keeping net income flat by investing in R&D, and 'suffering' from increased SBC charges as the stock soars, is a great thing for a high growth company to do! Why pay taxes on net-income when it's FAR more profitable longterm to invest more in R&D. Said differently, their $3B net cash from operations in Q4, and then $1B in cash invested in investment, are the real news of the quarter. [#1] https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/1LRLZK_2020_Q4_Quarterly_Update_Deck_-_Searchable_LVA2GL.pdf?xseo=&response-content-disposition=inline%3Bfilename%3D%22TSLA-Q4-2020-Update.pdf%22 https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/1LRLZK_2020_Q4_Quarterly_...