Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tesla Q3 Financial Results

ir.tesla.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 299 posts

Re: Tesla Q3 Financial Results

#181

Post by aftbit »

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #176
sjg007 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids are going to work for scholarships if college is in their future. I should have but didn't because my parents didn't understand the game and nobody told me otherwise. There is a balance to this though but I will provide all of the supports I can to help them be the individuals they are.

Please don't xplain the game you are referring to. I had scholarships but I don't get the game.

If you apply to enough scholarships you will get some. Anyone paying for their full cost of education is a chump.

Re: Tesla Q3 Financial Results

#182

Post by spectrum1234 »

"Margin was impacted in part due to fundamental improvements in our operating efficiency, including higher fixed cost absorption, reductions in manufacturing and material costs and continued improvements in vehicle quality and in part due to Smart Summon-related deferred revenue recognition, FX and other non-recurring items."

How did Tesla cut fixed and variable costs so much? I want more details than this. This is extremely impressive!

And what is an example "higher fixed cost absorption" in this context? Seems like most of the fixed costs here would be the already established factory and other fixed costs would be minimal.

Its also surprising there was such a big opportunity for variable cost savings over a short time period of 1 quarter. Presumably this is from less manufacturing waste, higher quality output, and slightly higher production rates.

Tesla is certainly a rare company that can find ways to increase margin this much, but its extremely impressive to see this happen over 1 quarter instead of 1-2 years as I was expecting.

Re: Tesla Q3 Financial Results

#183

Post by _ea1k »

threeseed wrote: post #53
zaroth wrote: post #6

$143M GAAP / $342M Non-GAAP Net Income. $371M free cash flow. GAAP Gross Margin 18.9%. That is before G3 comes online which will, I believe, have an upward case for margins. That is the big news here today. And that is really great news for Tesla. Over $5.3B cash on hand. TSLA is in an amazing position going into Q4 and 2020. Highly confident of exceeding 360k deliveries for 2019. Just an amazing run up to the end of…

Not sure why people think long term Tesla is in an amazing position. Their market share can only go down. All of the car companies have or are releasing cars this year/next and are significantly more capitalised. Some of these cars are superior to Tesla e.g. Porsche Taycan and their ability to share platforms between brands helps to amortise costs. As we've seen with Summon their FSD program does not look like coming…

> Their market share can only go down.

When you currently hold less than 2% of the market, this is far from a certain statement. Their share is as likely to increase as their competitors, though the rate of increase is certainly open to debate.

> As we've seen with Summon their FSD program does not look like coming out anytime soon and their inability to be profitable means they can't invest in it or even fundamentals like product refreshes.

Considering that both S and X are getting a major drivetrain and battery refresh next year, I don't see how you can say that they aren't investing in product refreshes.

I do not have a positive opinion on their FSD efforts, however, I will say one positive thing about their approach. They seem to be accomplishing at least as much as some of their competitors (for example, Ford) with far less capital investment. I see no reason why that trend won't continue.

Re: Tesla Q3 Financial Results

#184

Post by [deleted] »

appleiigs wrote: post #62
steelframe wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to lecture or suggest your decision is unsound, but note that the expected opportunity cost of investing in any given stock vs. an index ETF over 9 years is about an 85% return.

why did you pick 9 years? When you use an arbitrary number like that, it looks like cherry picking.

[deleted]

Re: Tesla Q3 Financial Results

#185

Post by matthewdgreen »

205guy wrote: post #174
btilly wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been aware for about 20 years that on technology trends, all the car companies will release electric cars somewhere near 2020. And that once they do the agenda of manufacturers and car dealers will be at odds. Manufacturers will want to sell electric because that is the future, and car dealers will want to push gas cars to capture the future maintenance revenue. With the result that manufacturers will find tha…

I think this is a very salient point, about the dealership model being a hindrance. It's like Sears and Amazon, at some point the incumbent leader can't change fast enough and the new market is run by new companies. I do think it will take a long time for the big 3 to die, they will probably go all trucks and big SUVs (as Ford has essentially done already), and leave the car market to EVs. However, I do not think tha…

“They could create an EV Camry/Accord-killer tomorrow--actually, I'm surprised they haven't already.”

The fact that they haven’t tried is the root of the problem. And, I suspect, the problem that will continue to plague them for at least a few more critical years.

Re: Tesla Q3 Financial Results

#187

Post by taneq »

sjg007 wrote: post #152
kick wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

News Guidelines: Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Paul Graham: I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness. https://news.ycombinator.com/it…

I think people should get points for sparking discussions. So since you generate a lot of replies you should get some points for that. You can have a 1 point thread that has 10+ comments on it.

Since we're getting meta here - I've always thought voting should be based on whether a comment contributes meaningfully to the conversation. Maybe if it's blatantly wrong and misleading it should get a downvote (unless a follow-up comment sets this straight and would get buried if the parent gets nuked) but otherwise I really don't like the "downvote = disagree" trend I've seen recently.

Re: Tesla Q3 Financial Results

#188

Post by pmart123 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #128
LeftHandPath wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why you just go to the [EDGAR files]( https://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml ) and think on your own. If you want entertainment, read the interpretation given by a news organization with your preferred bias. If you want real insight, read articles with conflicting agendas. I suggest Barrons and WSJ as the obvious conservative-agenda choices, and Bloomberg and Financial Times as liberal-agenda choices.

not to diminish the effort of reading different viewpoints but I have to chuckle about the fact that we live in times were the ideological spectrum spans the astonishing distance from the Wall Street Journal on the one side to the Financial Times on the other

Don’t worry, each one will wrote the opposing headline tomorrow to close the loop.

Re: Tesla Q3 Financial Results

#189

Post by refurb »

zaroth wrote: post #6

$143M GAAP / $342M Non-GAAP Net Income. $371M free cash flow. GAAP Gross Margin 18.9%. That is before G3 comes online which will, I believe, have an upward case for margins. That is the big news here today. And that is really great news for Tesla. Over $5.3B cash on hand. TSLA is in an amazing position going into Q4 and 2020. Highly confident of exceeding 360k deliveries for 2019. Just an amazing run up to the end of…

Highly confident of exceeding 360k deliveries for 2019.

Musk got in trouble for tweeting that he’d hit 500,000 this year.

Re: Tesla Q3 Financial Results

#190

Post by zdragnar »

newnewpdro wrote: post #66
dmix wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Foxconn Wisconsin plant had the full support of the executive branch + billions in welfare from the local/state governments and even then they haven't started to working on it primarily due to the significant business risks and high costs of employing labour in America and general uncertainty around manufacturing anything state-side: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn%27s_Wisconsin_plant Even the Chinese can't…

The Foxconn story is far more nuanced than that. There's been substantial uncertainty in Foxconn's genuine commitment to the project. It's been heavily reported on that Foxconn is notorious for failing to follow through on its promises. e.g. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/27/heres-whats-worrisome-about-... There's been some great podcasts on the topic. Last I heard Foxconn kept changing their plans of what would actual…

Foxconn has purchased a number of buildings, but hasn't quite figured out what it wants to do with them. Simply put, it's a huge, multi-billion dollar global company with many, many more things going on that just Wisconsin, and as such a combination of things- most likely internal politics and / or misaligned management- have slowed down, but not stopped, their plans to expand.

For example, they're in the process of purchasing a property in Eau Claire, have delayed their plans for madison and green bay, and have a stated goal of a 2020 opening for the data center portion for the mount pleasant office building:

https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/north-america/foxconn-s-...

Of course, they're getting a lot more in tax breaks per job created in WI than the original plan was (along with fewer total jobs expected), and it's taking longer, so people are understandably upset.

I'm wondering if the new plans- datacenter, plus "innovation centers" and basically white collar service jobs- aren't a better long term deal for WI anyway. We tend to lose a lot of those types to Chicago and Minneapolis / St. Paul, and if they actually pan out might slow that drain. The 13k manufacturing jobs certainly would have been nice, nonetheless.

Post reply on HN