Tesla (TSLA) releases Q1 2020 results: surprise with some profit

Fred Lambert | Apr 29 2020 - 4:15 pm PT

Tesla has released its financial results and shareholders letter for the first quarter of 2020 after market close today.

We are updating this post with all the details from the financial results, shareholders letter, and the conference call later tonight.

As we reported in our Q1 earnings preview post yesterday, Wall Street was expecting revenue of about $6.113 billion for the quarter and a loss of $0.32 per share.

This quarter, expectations were kind of all over the place due to the impact of the pandemic, but Tesla still announcing strong deliveries.

Today, the automaker announced that it made $5,985 billion in revenue and it reported a small profit of $0.09 per share (Non-GAAP) in Q 2020 – virtually meeting expectations for revenue and beating expectations for earnings.

Tesla’s stock rose 3% in aftermarket trading after the market was surprised by the small profit.

However, the company didn’t update any guidance for the year and instead, it suspended all guidance until Q2 when they believe they will have a clearer view of the situation post-pandemic.

In the shareholders letter, Tesla showed confidence that they will be able to go through tougher times with lower demand – helped by its strong $8 billion cash position:

Tesla never directly addressed the coronavirus pandemic in the release other than mentioning the “interruption of our operations at the end of the quarter.”

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 Tesla’s Q1 2020 shareholder letter in full:

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Electrek’s Take

A surprise little profit is nice, but I think the best news in the results is an automotive gross margin of 25.5% and even positive gross margin on the Model Y.

Both very impressive results.

As for the bad news, it’s definitely the negative cash flow, which was to be expected due to Tesla producing about 15,000 cars that they couldn’t deliver at the end of the quarter due to limited operations amid the shelter-in-place orders.

It increased its inventory significantly.

I would have liked Tesla to address the pandemic more in the presentation, but I expect there will be plenty of that in the call in a few hours.

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