Investor's Corner
Polestar’s Q3 revenue and gross profit skyrocket, operating loss trims by 33%
Polestar’s (NASDAQ: PSNY) position as one of two global, pure electric vehicle makers was solidified with a strong Q3 earnings report that featured skyrocketing revenue and gross profit figures and an operating loss that was reduced by one-third. The Swedish automaker reiterated its 50,000-vehicle delivery goal, expecting Q4 to be its strongest three-month showing in company history.
Polestar’s revenue skyrocketed in Q3 from $748 million in 2021 to $1.477 billion this year. The growth was mainly driven by higher Polestar 2 sales and continued commercial expansion across markets. Revenue per vehicle decreased slightly, Polestar said, attributing the slight reduction to product and market mix.
Polestar is currently recognizing its active markets as Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, South Korea, Kuwait, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UAE, U.K., and the USA.
Gross profit also grew considerably compared to the same quarter in 2021. Polestar reported a $57 million gross profit in Q3 2022, up from just $1 million last year. This was a result of higher Polestar 2 sales and lower manufacturing costs, which come as companies scale the production of their vehicles. The gross profit growth was slightly offset by “the continued deterioration of the Swedish Krona versus Chinese Renminbi which led to higher cost of sales,” the automaker said.
Polestar accomplished five feats in Q3, including the launch of the Polestar 3, which was met with mixed reviews due to its stylish and competitive design that also features less-than-admirable efficiency. The event provided a spike to the company’s website, only succeeded by user visits following the Superbowl ad the company ran in February.
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- Credit: Polestar
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- Credit: Polestar
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- Credit: Polestar
Polestar is reaching its 100,000-vehicle production milestone for the Polestar 2 in the near future. The company expects to meet this threshold in Q4 as it expects to deliver at least 19,500 vehicles in 2022’s final quarter. Polestar said it expects Q4 to be its biggest quarter to date as manufacturing growth continues to help the company solidify itself as a major player in the market.
The company’s $1.48 billion in revenues through the first nine months of 2022 only transitions into the $2.4 billion that Polestar expects to deliver for the full year. This is an estimated increase of 80 percent compared to 2021. It also obtained an additional $1.6 billion in financing and liquidity packages from major shareholders, which will, in addition to other potential financing activities, provide Polestar will sufficient funds to operate through 2023.
Polestar reduced SG&A expenses by 10 percent compared to Q3 2021, from a loss of $199 million to $179 million, and R&D expenses by 51 percent, from a loss of $51 million to a loss of $25 million. It also trimmed its operating loss by one-third compared to Q3 2021. These numbers tell a different story from the first nine months of 2021 compared to the same period this year.
SG&A was up 31 percent for the first nine months of 2022 compared to the same period in 2021. This was due to “rapid commercial expansion and significantly increased global presence.” R&D expenses were down 22 percent due to lower amortization. Meanwhile, operating loss was up 64 percent, “reflecting investment in the business growth and a $372 million non-recurring, non-cash listing expense.”
Polestar has launched production of the Polestar 3 and plans to start deliveries sometime early next year. It will also launch the Polestar 4 in early 2023, it said.
Polestar shares were up nearly 20 percent at the time of publishing, trading at $5.44 per share.
Disclosure: Joey Klender is not a Polestar investor or shareholder.
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Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
SpaceX’s Starship flew successfully Friday, landing both stages and deploying its first Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship’s thirteenth test flight delivered exactly what SpaceX needed with a clean liftoff, two successful stage recoveries, and the first real payload the vehicle has ever carried to space. Booster 20 and Ship 40 lifted off at 5:51 p.m. CT from Starbase, and by the time the mission wrapped roughly an hour later, both halves of the rocket had done exactly what they were supposed to do.
Booster 20 separated from Ship 40 a few minutes into the flight and stuck a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about six minutes after liftoff. That is a meaningful turnaround from Flight 12 in May, when the booster lost several engines during its boostback burn before a hard water landing attempt.
Starship as seen from Starlink satellites pic.twitter.com/e2hvfmnewh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
Starship 40’s performance was arguably the bigger win. The vehicle deployed the first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever carried, then flew a suborbital arc to a landing in the Indian Ocean that SpaceX commentator Dan Huot called the company’s softest splashdown yet. “This is a dream scenario for this team that’s trying to get this heat shield data,” Huot said on the live broadcast, according to Space.com’s live coverage. “I’m a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13.”
Unlike the mass simulators SpaceX flew on Flight 12, these were production Starlink V3 satellites, meant to extend solar arrays and antennas and attempt to link with the broader constellation before reentering minutes later. Getting real hardware through a full deploy sequence on only the second flight of the V3 generation keeps Starship on schedule for the payload work NASA is counting on for future Artemis lunar landings.
What an awesome launch, really seems like everything went super well and it was all incredibly smooth.
SpaceX is awesome. Very interested to see how the market will respond on Monday pic.twitter.com/KSHmyBfV55
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
The flight also arrives at a moment when SpaceX needed a win. SPCX has traded below its $135 IPO price since mid-July, as Teslarati reported when the mission slipped to Friday, and short interest has climbed to roughly a third of the tradable float. A clean flight will not fix a balance sheet, but it does answer the one question SpaceX absolutely needed answered this week: whether the fixes made after the July 16 abort would hold up under real flight conditions. They did, on both stages, on the first try after the redesign.
SpaceX has not set a target date for Flight 14, though the company has said it wants to push toward an orbital attempt on the next mission. After Friday, that goal looks a lot more within reach.
Tesla short sellers won big following the company’s massive fall on Wall Street after it reported subpar Earnings on Wednesday.
Tesla short sellers collected about $4.12 billion in single-day profits on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. Shares fell as much as 15 percent during Thursday’s session. It closed as one of the worst days for Tesla on Wall Street in the past three years.
Investors sold off the stock after Tesla said it would aggressively direct its spending toward AI and its Optimus robot project. The company had record revenues, which were driven by one of the strongest quarters in terms of vehicle deliveries in company history.
However, it missed EPS estimates by reporting just $0.33, a far cry from the $0.53 analysts expected.
S3 Partners reported that about 3 percent of Tesla’s outstanding stock is sold short. Managing Director at S3, Ihor Dusaniwsky, provided the short seller’s potential profit, as well as another figure: shorts have likely had paper gains of $8.92 billion this year, as Tesla shares are down 30 percent in 2026.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla has burned short sellers many times in the past, but the company’s latest Earnings Call was a chance for those skeptics to taste some payback. Although the company gave some very transparent information regarding future projects, the rollout of Robotaxi, Optimus, and Semi, many investors took their profits on Thursday.
Notable short sellers like Michael Burry have been transparent about their skepticism around Tesla shares. Burry just revealed three weeks ago that he had opened up a new short on the stock, stating he shorted Tesla shares at $416.22. “Happy it jumped back to this level,” he said in a blog post.
At the time of publication, Tesla shares were down about 3 percent and the stock was trading at $309.92.
Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) endured one of its sharpest single-day declines in years on July 23, tumbling approximately 14.5 percent and closing near $320 after opening the session around $374. The drop erased more than $140 billion in market value amid heavy trading volume and left the shares at multi-week lows.
The sell-off followed the company’s second-quarter 2026 results, released the previous evening. Tesla reported record revenue of $28.2 billion, up 26 percent year over year, driven by a Q2-record 480,126 vehicle deliveries. Energy storage deployments also rose strongly.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Yet profitability disappointed sharply. Operating income fell 57 percent to $398 million, compressing the operating margin to just 1.4 percent. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $0.33, well below the roughly $0.53 analysts had expected. Free cash flow turned negative by $1.1 billion as capital expenditures surged 142 percent to $5.8 billion, largely tied to accelerated spending on artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomous systems.
The losses on capex were expected, as Tesla said it would be spending heavily in 2026.
Investors also reacted to lingering uncertainty surrounding key product timelines. During the Earnings Call, management reiterated ambitions for Robotaxi deployment and the Optimus humanoid robot, but offered limited new concrete milestones, renewing questions about execution pace that have long accompanied Tesla’s ambitious roadmap.
The magnitude of the decline places it among Tesla’s more severe one-day percentage losses since its 2010 initial public offering. Historically, the two largest single-day drops (split-adjusted) remain September 8, 2020, when shares fell 21.1 percent amid broader market volatility and valuation concerns, and January 13, 2012, with a 19.3 percent plunge during the company’s early growth struggles.
Other notable declines include an 18.6 percent drop on March 16, 2020, at the onset of pandemic-related market turmoil. Thursday’s move ranks roughly ninth on the all-time list but stands out as the steepest in more than a year.
Despite the short-term pain, Tesla’s long-term trajectory has repeatedly recovered from such volatility. The latest results underscore both the strength of its core automotive and energy businesses and the near-term costs of heavy investment in next-generation technologies.
SpaceX wants to catch Starship for launch 14, Elon Musk says
Tesla to open source Model S and Model X designs and software
