21–30 of 290 posts
Cashed in a large amount of ZEV credits, for a one-time revenue bump of $140MM. Excluding that, GAAP loss was $117MM. Big increase in accounts payable. But, all things considered, that's not bad.
SCTY acquisition is locked up. EDIT: Elon just said on the investor call "Our current plan requires no capital raise whatsoever for the Model 3 production . Solar City will be neutral to cash contributor in Q4.
I'm not sure it does. All it shows is that Tesla, may at some point in the future be consistently profitable. It doesn't change anything about the prospects of SolarCity to be consistently profitable and if I were a Tesla owner that's what I'd want to see, getting more value than I put in.
First, those that know me know that I am a Tesla FANATIC. My girlfriend once challenged me to not talk about Tesla (motors, energy, something) for a 24 hour period. I dunno if I've ever done that honestly. I'm also an owner (no surprise given my fanaticism, lucky to be able to afford one). And I also own some TSLA.
Elon sent a company-wide email in Q3 to push sales to show profitability. I don't think its a fluke but they did something they never really do to help reach this number: they offered significant discounts on vehicles (new, pre-owned, showroom). Like, really big discounts (relative to the price of the car).
That certainly helped. Elon also sent an email at the start of Q4 that NO MORE DISCOUNTS are allowed. So I'm really very interested to compare Q3 to Q4 when that comes.
I also happen to know a lot of the people who bought a heavily discounted Tesla in Q3 feel kind of burned that right at the beginning of Q4 Tesla announced the new Autopilot hardware (that isn't retrotfitable on old vehicles). If you did your homework on Tesla though, this wasn't a surprise. It was expected that Tesla would make some big announcement to spur Q4 sales especially after Elon said there wouldn't be any capital raises in Q4 while he expected to hit Q4 numbers. You generally can't do that without some big news.
Just wanted to color this news with that. I'm still very excited!
Cashed in a large amount of ZEV credits, for a one-time revenue bump of $140MM. Excluding that, GAAP loss was $117MM. Big increase in accounts payable. But, all things considered, that's not bad.
Very first line of the Update linked to in another comment, > The Tesla third quarter results reflect strong company-wide execution in many areas. Furthermore, we expect this to continue into Q4 and project positive GAAP net income (excluding non-cash stock-based compensation) despite ZEV credit sales in Q4 likely being negligible. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12800234
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure it does. All it shows is that Tesla, may at some point in the future be consistently profitable. It doesn't change anything about the prospects of SolarCity to be consistently profitable and if I were a Tesla owner that's what I'd want to see, getting more value than I put in.
The whole is greater than its parts. Tesla, to 'own' the ecosystem, needed to eventually offer what SolarCity has or there'd be a segment in their market they are catering to.
The Economist recently did a good article on the financing of Elon Musk's companies that flew under the radar of Hacker News that probably warranted further discussion [1] [2]. (Though the author of that piece completely misses the relative importance of each company to Musk, suggesting "he could try to sell [...] SpaceX, through gritted teeth, to a defence firm") It's unfortunate there's a bit of a reality distortio…
Surely the only ones who don't want dramatically cheaper space launches, cheaper, widely available solar PV installations and attractive, affordable electric vehicles are deeply entrenched incumbents whose continued profitability involves polluting the planet, or those who really hate the environment for whatever reason.
There are valid criticisms you can level at Musk (I wouldn't like to be a direct employee), but taking on the Wall Street quarter to quarter thinking with enormous, risky endeavours that have the potential to completely revolutionise some of the biggest industries out there (energy and transport) takes an extreme type of individual to succeed.
[0] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tesla-self-driving-car-n...
Cashed in a large amount of ZEV credits, for a one-time revenue bump of $140MM. Excluding that, GAAP loss was $117MM. Big increase in accounts payable. But, all things considered, that's not bad.
Very first line of the Update linked to in another comment, > The Tesla third quarter results reflect strong company-wide execution in many areas. Furthermore, we expect this to continue into Q4 and project positive GAAP net income (excluding non-cash stock-based compensation) despite ZEV credit sales in Q4 likely being negligible. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12800234
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very first line of the Update linked to in another comment, > The Tesla third quarter results reflect strong company-wide execution in many areas. Furthermore, we expect this to continue into Q4 and project positive GAAP net income (excluding non-cash stock-based compensation) despite ZEV credit sales in Q4 likely being negligible. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12800234
Er, should GAAP net income include SBC? Otherwise, it's non GAAP.