On Wednesday, Tesla reported a $283 million loss for Q1 2016, its 12th straight quarterly loss in a row. Last quarter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla would find itself in the black this quarter, but that prediction did not pan out. Still, the loss was narrower than Wall Street expected, leading to a 4.4 percent climb in stock price in after hours trading as of this writing. (Tesla's Q1 loss is a wider $320 million according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), which includes stock-based compensation and treats vehicle leases differently.)
Still, the company's overall quarterly revenue rose 22 percent from Q1 in 2015 to $1.6 billion (or 1.15 billion according to GAAP).In addition, Tesla said it would be sticking by its promise to deliver 80,000 to 90,000 vehicles this year, and it made its long-term delivery outlook more aggressive, promising 500,000 Teslas on the road by 2018 instead of 2020.
The company announced its long-awaited mass-market car, the Model 3, just a month ago, and the company said it picked up 325,000 reservations in just a week. But in reporting its cash reserves, which rose from $1.2 billion to $1.44 billion, Tesla didn't include the refundable $1,000 reservation deposits that it accumulated from people hoping to get in line for the $35,000, 215-mile electric vehicle. Tesla did count an additional $430 million that it drew from its credit line as part of its cash pile, but a Tesla executive on the call said the company had already been able to "pay a significant portion of that back."
In a phone call today about the Q1 results, the focus was on getting Tesla's rates of production up. The company had some good news to report on that front: in Q1 2016, it sold 2,659 Model X cars, as opposed to the 507 it sold in the quarter prior. Tesla also reported that Model S orders were up 45 percent compared to Q1 the year before. That's something analysts were looking closely at going into the call, hoping to see that demand for the still-nascent Model 3 did not cut into demand for the Model S.
In fact, Tesla said that 93 percent of the people who reserved Model 3 vehicles had never interacted with the company before. But, the company noted, some potential customers have decided to buy a Model S first because Model 3 priority is given to Model S and X owners.
Musk admitted on the earnings call that Tesla has struggled with manufacturing its cars at a fast enough clip to meet demand. "Tesla is gonna be hell-bent on becoming the best manufacturer on Earth," he said. "Thus far I think we've done a good job on design and technology… the key thing we need to achieve in the future is also to be the leader in manufacturing. It's the thing that we need to obviously solve if we're going to scale and scale rapidly."
The comments come as two senior manufacturing executives, vice president of production Greg Reichow vice president of manufacturing Josh Ensign, have said they will be leaving the company. On the call, Musk insisted that this was no cause for concern and that Reichow would stick around to make sure the vacuum of power gets filled. Still Musk put out a call: "To the best manufacturing people in the world, we want you to come join our company."
The Tesla CEO reiterated that the Model X was complex and difficult to make, noting that "[last] Friday at 3am we had our first flawless production of the Model X," where the car went through the production line a single time without any issues. He also hinted at the amount of management the production line has needed: "My desk is at the end of the production line," Musk said, adding that he has a sleeping bag in a conference room adjacent to the production line.
On the other hand, the Model 3 would be the first car from Tesla "that's designed to be easy to make," Musk claimed. When pressed by journalists and analysts on how Tesla would meet reportedly overwhelming demand for the Model 3, Musk said that Tesla has a hard deadline of July 1, 2017 for suppliers of Model 3 parts to meet. The CEO said he doesn't expect every supplier to meet that deadline, adding that the Model 3 has 6,000-7,000 unique components and "there's always something late." But the deadline stands to get everything ready so that Tesla can go into full production on the Model 3 in the second half of 2017, when it expects to produce 100,000 to 200,000 cars.
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