Investor's Corner
Tesla will likely meet Model 3 production guidance for Q3, says TSLA skeptic
There is no denying that Tesla’s goals for the third quarter of 2018 are ambitious. After achieving its then-elusive goal of producing 5,000 Model 3 per week at the end of Q2 2018, Tesla immediately set its sights on a bigger target. In terms of Model 3 production and deliveries, Tesla noted that it was aiming to manufacture and deliver more than 50,000 units of the electric car in Q3 2018.
If Tesla’s ongoing delivery blitz is any indication, it appears that the electric car maker is attempting to deliver as many vehicles to reservation holders as possible before the quarter ends. This weekend alone, Tesla opted to accept help from volunteer owners who offered to assist in deliveries by conducting new customer orientations. Elon Musk later noted on a Twitter post that Tesla is now in the process of building its own car carriers to help address bottlenecks in the transportation of electric cars from the Fremont factory to delivery centers across the United States.
Amidst Tesla’s delivery blitz, Goldman Sachs analyst David Tamberrino, a known skeptic of the electric car maker, issued a somewhat positive estimate about the company’s delivery figures this third quarter. While Tamberrino maintained his Sell rating on Tesla, and while he kept a conservative $210 price target for TSLA stock (NASDAQ:TSLA), he stated in a recent note that the electric car maker would likely deliver 27,500 Model S and X and about 52,000 Model 3 in Q3 2018. The analyst further noted that Tesla’s deliveries would likely exceed his estimates, considering that the company had more than 11,000 vehicles en route to customers at the end of Q2.
Production-wise, the Goldman Sachs analyst stated that he expects Tesla to meet its Model 3 production target. Tamberrino did note, though, that Model 3 production figures will likely be on the lower end of Tesla’s 50,000-55,000 range. Tamberrino also stated that while the Model S and X delivery cadence is below the numbers implied by the company’s guidance of 100,000 units per year, Model S and X figures this Q3 will likely be better than FactSet and consensus estimates.
Earlier this month, Elon Musk teased in a letter to Tesla employees that the company is about to have a record quarter, “building and delivering more than twice as many cars as (it) did” in Q2 2018. Tesla board member Kimbal Musk further noted in a CNBC Closing Bell segment that “it’s really gonna blow people’s minds how many Model 3s are gonna appear in America in just the next couple of weeks.”
Tesla is a newcomer in the US auto industry, and as such, it still has a lot of learning to do before it masters the auto business. While the company is still pretty much in startup mode today, its growth over the past decade has been remarkable. Exactly ten years ago, for example, Tesla was still a struggling electric car maker that has only been able to build 27 units of the original Tesla Roadster. By the end of September 2008, Tesla completed three more vehicles, producing a total of 30 Roadsters. This year, Tesla is expecting to deliver 100,000 units of Model S and X alone.
As of writing, Tesla stock is trading up 0.15% at $300.13 per share.
Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.
Investor's Corner
Tesla (TSLA) Q4 and FY 2025 earnings results
Tesla’s Q4 and FY 2025 earnings come on the heels of a quarter where the company produced over 434,000 vehicles, delivered over 418,000 vehicles, and deployed 14.2 GWh of energy storage products.
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) has released its Q4 and FY 2025 earnings results in an update letter. The document was posted on the electric vehicle maker’s official Investor Relations website after markets closed today, January 28, 2025.
Tesla’s Q4 and FY 2025 earnings come on the heels of a quarter where the company produced over 434,000 vehicles, delivered over 418,000 vehicles, and deployed 14.2 GWh of energy storage products.
For the Full Year 2025, Tesla produced 1,654,667 and delivered 1,636,129 vehicles. The company also deployed a total of 46.7 GWh worth of energy storage products.
Tesla’s Q4 and FY 2025 results
As could be seen in Tesla’s Q4 and FY 2025 Update Letter, the company posted GAAP EPS of $0.24 and non-GAAP EPS of $0.50 per share in the fourth quarter. Tesla also posted total revenues of $24.901 billion. GAAP net income is also listed at $840 million in Q4.
Analyst consensus for Q4 has Tesla earnings per share falling 38% to $0.45 with revenue declining 4% to $24.74 billion, as per estimates from FactSet. In comparison, the consensus compiled by Tesla last week forecasted $0.44 per share on sales totaling $24.49 billion.
For FY 2025, Tesla posted GAAP EPS of $1.08 and non-GAAP EPS of $1.66 per share. Tesla also posted total revenues of $94.827 billion, which include $69.526 billion from automotive and $12.771 billion from the battery storage business. GAAP net income is also listed at $3.794 billion in FY 2025.
xAI Investment
Tesla entered an agreement to invest approximately $2 billion to acquire Series E preferred shares in Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI, as part of the company’s recently disclosed financing round. Tesla said the investment was made on market terms consistent with those agreed to by other participants in the round.
The investment aligns with Tesla’s strategy under Master Plan Part IV, which centers on bringing artificial intelligence into the physical world through products and services. While Tesla focuses on real-world AI applications, xAI is developing digital AI platforms, including its Grok large language model.
Below is Tesla’s Q4 and FY 2025 update letter.
TSLA-Q4-2025-Update by Simon Alvarez
Tesla has scheduled its Earnings Call for Q4 and Full Year 2025 for next Wednesday, January 28, at 5:30 p.m. EST, and investors are already preparing to get some answers from executives regarding a wide variety of topics.
The company accepts several questions from retail investors through the platform Say, which then allows shareholders to vote on the best questions.
Tesla does not answer anything regarding future product releases, but they are willing to shed light on current timelines, progress of certain projects, and other plans.
There are five questions that range over a variety of topics, including SpaceX, Full Self-Driving, Robotaxi, and Optimus, which are currently in the lead to be asked and potentially answered by Elon Musk and other Tesla executives:
- You once said: Loyalty deserves loyalty. Will long-term Tesla shareholders still be prioritized if SpaceX does an IPO?
- Our Take – With a lot of speculation regarding an incoming SpaceX IPO, Tesla investors, especially long-term ones, should be able to benefit from an early opportunity to purchase shares. This has been discussed endlessly over the past year, and we must be getting close to it.
- When is FSD going to be 100% unsupervised?
- Our Take – Musk said today that this is essentially a solved problem, and it could be available in the U.S. by the end of this year.
- What is the current bottleneck to increase Robotaxi deployment & personal use unsupervised FSD? The safety/performance of the most recent models or people to monitor robots, robotaxis, in-car, or remotely? Or something else?
- Our Take – The bottleneck seems to be based on data, which Musk said Tesla needs 10 billion miles of data to achieve unsupervised FSD. Once that happens, regulatory issues will be what hold things up from moving forward.
- Regarding Optimus, could you share the current number of units deployed in Tesla factories and actively performing production tasks? What specific roles or operations are they handling, and how has their integration impacted factory efficiency or output?
- Our Take – Optimus is going to have a larger role in factories moving forward, and later this year, they will have larger responsibilities.
- Can you please tie purchased FSD to our owner accounts vs. locked to the car? This will help us enjoy it in any Tesla we drive/buy and reward us for hanging in so long, some of us since 2017.
- Our Take – This is a good one and should get us some additional information on the FSD transfer plans and Subscription-only model that Tesla will adopt soon.
Tesla will have its Earnings Call on Wednesday, January 28.
Elon Musk
Tesla locks in Elon Musk’s top problem solver as it enters its most ambitious era
The generous equity award was disclosed by the electric vehicle maker in a recent regulatory filing.
Tesla has granted Senior Vice President of Automotive Tom Zhu more than 520,000 stock options, tying a significant portion of his compensation to the company’s long-term performance.
The generous equity award was disclosed by the electric vehicle maker in a recent regulatory filing.
Tesla secures top talent
According to a Form 4 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Tom Zhu received 520,021 stock options with an exercise price of $435.80 per share. Since the award will not fully vest until March 5, 2031, Zhu must remain at Tesla for more than five years to realize the award’s full benefit.
Considering that Tesla shares are currently trading at around the $445 to $450 per share level, Zhu will really only see gains in his equity award if Tesla’s stock price sees a notable rise over the years, as noted in a Sina Finance report.
Still, even at today’s prices, Zhu’s stock award is already worth over $230 million. If Tesla reaches the market cap targets set forth in Elon Musk’s 2025 CEO Performance Award, Zhu would become a billionaire from this equity award alone.
Tesla’s problem solver
Zhu joined Tesla in April 2014 and initially led the company’s Supercharger rollout in China. Later that year, he assumed the leadership of Tesla’s China business, where he played a central role in Tesla’s localization efforts, including expanding retail and service networks, and later, overseeing the development of Gigafactory Shanghai.
Zhu’s efforts helped transform China into one of Tesla’s most important markets and production hubs. In 2023, Tesla promoted Zhu to Senior Vice President of Automotive, placing him among the company’s core global executives and expanding his influence beyond China. He has since garnered a reputation as the company’s problem solver, being tapped by Elon Musk to help ramp Giga Texas’s vehicle production.
With this in mind, Tesla’s recent filing seems to suggest that the company is locking in its top talent as it enters its newest, most ambitious era to date. As could be seen in the targets of Elon Musk’s 2025 pay package, Tesla is now aiming to be the world’s largest company by market cap, and it is aiming to achieve production levels that are unheard of. Zhu’s talents would definitely be of use in this stage of the company’s growth.
Tesla announces massive investment into xAI
Tesla (TSLA) Q4 and FY 2025 earnings results
