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Tesla (TSLA) releases Q1 results: net loss of $702 million, Model 3 margin at ~20%

After market close today, Tesla released its financial results and shareholders letter for the first quarter of 2019.

We are updating this post with all the details from the financial results and shareholders letter.

As we reported in our preview post, Wall Street was expecting revenue of about $5.779 billion for the quarter and a loss of $1.21 per share.

Tesla announced that it made $4.5 billion in revenue and a loss of $4.10 per share – way below expectations on both counts.

The company attributed the big miss on revenue to delays delivering vehicles, especially with the introduction of Model 3 in Europe and China:

“We started production and deliveries of Model 3 vehicles for overseas markets during Q1. To quickly meet international demand, Europe and China Model 3 builds occurred in the first half of the quarter, with builds for local US markets in the second half. This wave of quarter-end deliveries in the US, China and Europe meant that even short delays caused deliveries to be deferred to Q2.”

With its direct-sale business model, Tesla doesn’t get revenue until a vehicle is delivered to the end customer.

They delivered a net loss of $702 million during the first 3 months of 2019.

Along with the important loss, Tesla also had to do a massive $920 million bond payment, which resulted in an important reduction in its cash position. It now stands at $2.2 billion.

While the numbers mostly look grim, Tesla still had some good news. The company claims Model 3 is still selling well in the US:

“Model 3 was yet again the best-selling premium car in the US in Q1, outselling the runner-up by almost 60%.”

Here we will be posting our follow-up posts about the earnings and conference call to expand on the most important points (refresh the page to see the most recent posts):

Here’s the shareholder letter in full:

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Avatar for Fred Lambert Fred Lambert

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