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Wall Street just got to see all of the details of Tesla's disastrous first quarter, and now things look even worse for the electric-car maker than they did just a few days before.
Here's what went down: Last week the company reported select numbers – including a $ 700 million loss and deliveries that fell 31% from the previous quarter – while CEO Elon Musk swatted away
Then on Monday, Tesla released all of its numbers, and there were a few nasty surprises that it had neglected to mention the week before. For one thing, the company made $ 216 million selling auto-energy credits, with which it would have experienced a quarterly loss of around $ 900 million.
For another, it stealthily changed its next "milestone." Back in its annual report, Tesla wrote it would make 500,000 Model 3s from June 30, 2019, through June 30, 2020. Now the electric-car maker says it's going to make 500,000 cars total during that period.
It was admitted to having a problem with one of its suppliers that held up production in Q1.
And finally, Tesla said it was in "material compliance with financial debt covenants" by the end of the quarter. That may sound good, but this is Wall Street and words are tricky. Adding "material" to that sentence (as opposed to flat-out saying it is "in compliance with all financial debt covenants") means something is amiss. Tesla has yet to answer Business Insider's question about what exactly went wrong there.
Demand
Wall Street is focused on Tesla listed in Wall Street is focused on – demand. Over and over again on the earnings call, as he has been doing for a few times now, Musk stressed that the company has no problem with demand.
One of the most important problems in the world, and one of the most important problems in the world. at the same time.
Tesla maintained that it is going to blow up 90,000 to 100,000 cars (compared to the 63,000 it delivered this quarter). So some bulls, like Jed Dorsheimer at Canaccord Genuity, say that should "quell demand fears."
Bears, of course, do not buy Tesla's reasons for its sales collapse in Q1. They point to the fact that Tesla did not make this mark, and that it has a history of missing guidance.
Musk dodged any questions about the question or future price cuts on the conference call. He played down the existence of the $ 35,000 Model 3 that the company had proposed with such fanfare. Tesla if they want one, and Musk said Tesla is seeing that customers who would have bought the $ 35,000 price tag. That should help with the margins, which fell from 25% in Q4 to 20% in Q1.
Tesla said in its filing that it "may choose to seek alternative financing sources" for its operations. That makes sense. The company is now sitting on $ 2.2 trillion of cash, and has been guided to spending the same amount in capital expenditures for the year. It's about the money and it wants to finance the building of its Shanghai facility, and the production of its Model Y and Semi next year.
The story has changed
Over at Morgan Stanley, Adam Jonas, has longtime booster of the company, admits the story has changed. He just cut his price on the stock (from $ 240 to $ 230) for the fourth time this year:
"We have long held that we are driven by (3) access to capital markets. When we think about the third quarter of the year, when we were thinking about the market, we were more likely to be trading the $ 350 range. At the same time, Tesla posted the first time of the day of 'self-funding' in Tesla.
People thought self-funding had come to Tesla, in part, because Musk said it had. Tesla's plan to put 1 million self-driving robo-taxis on the road by the end of this year. He claimed that thanks to a chip that Tesla had developed, it was now leaps and bounds ahead of its self-driving tech competition at Uber, GM, and Google.
This without using lidar, a technology that uses a laser to measure distance to a target. Tesla's competitors all use it, but Musk has not got it.
Instead of swinging back to profitability, Musk says it will help to make sure that this robo-taxi plan is executed as soon as possible. Drivers, he said, can clear up to $ 30,000 a year if they upload this new technology Tesla's robo-taxi fleet. It's unclear how to get the approval of this business, or how it would be insulting all of these cars (which Musk said it would be liable for). Tesla did not answer any of our questions on that.
What we do know, though, is that the cost to build a robo-taxi is about $ 38,000. Model 3, incidentally.
We also know that Tesla held a big event to announce this change – because it's a big strategic shift. The word "autonomous" was published in the most recent filing. Stories change.
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