Investor's Corner
Tesla beats on revenue, misses on Model 3 production, stumbles to reduce losses
Tesla released its third quarter 2017 earnings after the closing bell on Wednesday, summarized in the Q3’17 Update Letter. The results beat Wall Street’s revenue expectations and missed on bottom line. The company posted third-quarter earnings loss of $2.92 per share, representing a wider loss than analyst estimates of a $2.27 per share loss. Revenue was $2.98 billion versus an estimate of $2.92 billion.
REVENUE
The company’s revenue consisted of $2.36B in automotive revenue, $317.5M in energy generation and storage, and $304M in service and other revenue. Automotive revenue increased 3.33% over the second quarter, while energy generation and storage grew 10.7%. Automotive revenue primarily grew from the 4.5% sequential increase in Model S and X deliveries. Tesla attributed the gains in energy generation and storage to their south Australia battery storage project.
The company deployed 109 MW of energy generation products and 100MWh of energy storage products in Q3. This is a sequential increase of 12% over Q2 and 138% increase year-over-year. Tesla also stated that now 46% of residential solar installations were sold rather than leased, this is compared to just 13% of all residential solar in Q3 2016.
MODEL 3
Tesla delivered 222 Model 3s in the third quarter, representing a fraction of the total amount of the company’s deliveries and revenue. Tesla did not disclose in its Q3 letter the number of Model 3 units produced in the fourth quarter thus far, but did identify Model 3’s production bottlenecks to be that of the battery module line at Gigafactory 1. Tesla notes that the company decided to take over an automated process related to production of Model 3’s battery module from a ‘manufacturing systems supplier’ and redesign the process in-house. “We are confident that throughput will increase substantially in upcoming weeks and ultimately be capable of production rates significantly greater than the original specification.” read Tesla’s update letter.
Tesla also included a video of the Model 3 being worked on in general assembly.
GUIDANCE FOR END OF 2017
While Tesla expects the Model 3 to have a break-even gross margin in Q4, then go on to “improve rapidly” to their target of 25% in 2018. The company previously expected the Model 3 to carry a positive gross margin in Q4, but production “bottlenecks” pushed back that goal. In Q4 the overall non-GAAP automotive gross margin is expected to drop to 15%, compared to 18.7% in Q3.
Tesla expects to produce a total of 100,000 Model S and X vehicles this year and expects to reach a production level of 5000 Model 3 vehicles per week will at the end of Q1 2018.
Tesla has just over $3.53B in cash at the end of the quarter, up nearly $137M from Q2. This includes the $1.8B the company raised through a debt offering in August. The company expects to spend roughly $1B on capital expenditures in Q4, compared to $1.1B in Q3.
Today’s session ended up closing down at a 3.15% a loss and down another 4.07% in after-hours. Looking at the after-hours trading action after the close, the initial reaction to the numbers for Q3 2017 is quite negative, with the stock dropping to $308. Still, Tesla stock is up 50% in 2017 and nearly 70% in the past 12 months.
The full Q3 letter can be found here.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a massive beat on vehicle deliveries for the second quarter, delivering 489,126 vehicles and building 451,758 cars during the three-month span.
This was a major shock for those on Wall Street as they anticipated somewhere around 400,000 deliveries for the quarter, and showed Tesla still has plenty of demand for its vehicles around the world and in the U.S. despite losing the $7,500 EV Tax Credit last year.
Tesla Q2 2026 Earnings Results
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.33 reported vs. $0.53 expected
- Revenues – $28.236 billion reported vs. $26.4 billion expected
- Free Cash Flow- -$1.092B
- Profit -$ 4.751B
Tesla (beat/missed) analyst expectations, so the market response to the company’s quarter is what we will look for next.
Tesla shares closed today down just over 1 percent, trading at $374.01.
In the past, it has been anyone’s guess with what Tesla shares will do after they report earnings. Strong quarters have resulted in sharp drops, while lackluster quarters have seen the stock shoot up considerably.
Tesla will hold its Q2 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q2 2026 Earnings Call https://t.co/zZS6ii2TWK
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) will report its earnings for the second quarter of 2026 this evening after market close, and investors and analysts are waiting anxiously to see what the company will report for the second three-month span of the year.
Analysts have already put out their expectations from a financial standpoint for the company’s second quarter, but what’s unknown is what Tesla plans to discuss during the call.
Financial Expectations
Wall Street consensus expectations put Tesla’s Earnings Per Share (EPS) at $0.53, while revenues are expected to come in around $26.4 billion.
This would compare to an EPS of $0.39 and $22.19 billion compared to Tesla’s Q2 2025. Last quarter, EPS came in at $0.41 on $22.387 billion of revenue. Additionally in Q1, Tesla beat analyst expectations, but shares dropped over 3 percent the following trading day.
What We Expect
In terms of discussions, Tesla earnings are pretty sporadic and depend on a handful of things, including current events, investor questions, and more.
Tesla uses a platform called Say to field questions from investors and analysts. These questions are what will be used during the call. Here are the top 5 from the Retail side and top 3 from the Institutional side:
Retail:
“Tesla has missed short-term guidance on robotaxi 3 earnings reports in a row, from 50% coverage of USA by end of 2025 to most recently 7 new cities in 1H26. What is keeping Tesla back from accomplishing these short term goals that they’ve set for themselves?”
“What are the main constraints to expanding robotaxi operations faster, and how do you see that lining up with Cybercab production?”
“What’s the current status of Optimus Gen 3 production ramp, initial deployment in factories, and external sales timeline/volume for 2027? What tasks can we expect the Optimus to perform by end of 2027?”
“To reward long-term Tesla retail shareholders for their loyalty, can you commit to achieving at least half of the goals outlined in your 2025 compensation plan before considering any offers to acquire or merge Tesla?”
“Why has growth of robotaxi vehicles stalled? When will we see cybercab start customer rides?”
Institutional
“Previously, you’ve said Tesla would lead the R&D while SpaceX would lead production for Terafab. Can you provide an update on how that division of responsibilities is evolving, and any additional clarity on the expected capital contributions from Tesla and SpaceX?”
“For autonomous driving, Tesla’s fleet created a huge data advantage by collecting billions of real-world miles. That advantage doesn’t yet exist for Optimus. How should we think about data availability and its impact on Optimus development?”
“Why is it necessary to limit robotaxi operations within specific zones within cities to start? Will every city have to be rolled out this way?”
Tesla will report earnings for Q2 this evening with the Shareholder Deck at 4 p.m. ET, with the call starting around 5:30 p.m. ET.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk handed Grok something no other AI company can get their hands on
Elon Musk says SpaceX will feed engineering data into Grok’s next model, avoiding restricted material.
Elon Musk said Tuesday that SpaceX will feed its internal engineering data into the next major training run for Grok, the AI model now folded into SpaceX following February’s merger. In a post on X, Musk wrote that SpaceX’s “massive corpus of world-class engineering data,” excluding anything restricted under U.S. arms export law, will be added during supplemental training of what he called the “2T run,” a reference to a roughly two trillion parameter model that would nearly double the parameters behind the latest Grok 4.5 that’s rolling out.
SpaceX’s massive corpus of world-class engineering data (excluding material blocked by ITAR) will be added during supplemental training of the 2T run.
This will dramatically improve Grok’s engineering capabilities. https://t.co/BbQEViFByn
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2026
The excluded material that Musk is referring to would fall under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which restricts export of technical data tied to defense and space hardware. That likely rules out propulsion specifics for Merlin and Raptor engines along with guidance and control details for SpaceX’s launch vehicles, but leaves manufacturing knowledge, materials science, and Starlink hardware design on the table.
The announcement extends a pattern that has been building since SpaceX’s Nasdaq debut in June, when the company went public with Grok and xAI’s Colossus supercomputer folded into the pitch to investors.
Days after that listing, SpaceX closed its $60 billion all stock acquisition of coding startup Cursor, giving xAI both enterprise software distribution and a stream of real world developer data to train on. Grok 4.5 launched July 8 running partly on that Cursor training data, with Musk describing it as roughly comparable to Anthropic’s Opus 4.7 but faster and cheaper to run.
Feeding SpaceX’s own engineering data into the next AI model follows the same logic Musk has applied across xAI’s sister companies. Tesla supplies real world driving data and manufacturing expertise, X supplies conversational data, and now SpaceX supplies aerospace engineering data built up since 2002.
Musk did not give a release date for the upcoming AI model, referred to elsewhere as Grok 4.6. He has said the two trillion parameter run is in its final training phase and expected to wrap this week.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla is about to make parking in busy lots less stressful than ever
