Connect with us
elon musk elon musk

Investor's Corner

Tesla to hold Q3 2018 financial results and earnings call on Oct 24

Published

on

Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) has announced the date for the release of its third-quarter 2018 financial results report; as well as its following earnings call. In a recent announcement on its Investor Relations page, Tesla stated that it would be posting its financial results for Q3 2018 after the market closes on Wednesday, October 24, 2018. The company would also be issuing a brief advisory with a link to its Q3 2018 Update Letter, which would be accessible from Tesla’s Investor Relations website.

A live Q&A session is set for 3:30 p.m. Pacific Time (6:30 p.m. Eastern Time), an hour later than the company’s recent earnings calls, which were usually held at 2:30 p.m. PST. An update on Tesla’s announcement states that the earnings call’s time had been moved due to requests from a number of analysts.

Tesla’s Q3 earnings call comes at a time after the company completed yet another record quarter in terms of Model 3 production and deliveries, manufacturing a total of 80,142 electric cars including 53,239 Model 3, as well as delivering a total of 83,500 vehicles, comprised of 55,840 Model 3, 14,470 Model S, and 13,190 Model X. By the time the third quarter ended, 8,048 Model 3 and 3,776 Model S and X were also in transit to customers. 

Since ending the third quarter on a strong note, Tesla has been showing signs that its production ramp for the Model 3 continues to be consistent. In the first two weeks of October alone, Tesla registered more than 30,000 new Model 3 VINs. Leaked emails from Elon Musk during the final days of Q3, such as those teasing that Gigafactory 1 has hit a production pace of 10,000 drive units per week, as well as a message stating that the company is “very close to profitability,” also invoke an optimistic outlook for the electric car maker.

Tesla’s earlier-than-expected Q3 2018 earnings call seems to bode well for the company. Tesla’s Q3 2018 earnings calls are usually conducted on the first days of November, such as in 2015 and 2017. Tesla held an earlier-than-expected third-quarter earnings call back in October 2016, and it proved to be the one quarter where the company actually posted a profit. During Q3 2016, Tesla posted a $21.9 million profit (GAAP) or 14 cents per share, while non-GAAP EPS was at 71 cents per share.

“We set new records for vehicle production, deliveries and revenue, which led to GAAP profitability and positive free cash flow (cash flows from operations less capital expenditures). At the same time, GAAP total automotive gross margin and gross profit per car increased substantially,” Tesla noted then.

It remains to be seen if Tesla is conducting its third-quarter earnings call due to positive news on profitability, especially considering that the company revealed the date of the Q3 2018 earnings call less than 48 hours before it is scheduled to be held. That said, all eyes will be on Tesla as it is expected to release some notable updates on the company’s ongoing initiatives, from the quick progress of Gigafactory 3 in Shanghai, the introduction of the new 260-mile Mid-Range Model 3 RWD, as well as updates on future products like the Model Y and the Tesla Semi.

Advertisement
-
-

Tesla’s announcement for its Q3 2018 earnings call can be accessed here.

Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

Advertisement
Comments

Elon Musk

SpaceX’s biggest test yet arrives this week and it’s not a rocket launch

Published

on

By

SpaceX will report second quarter results after the market closes on Tuesday, August 4, marking the first time the company has opened its books to the public since its record IPO in June. Management will host a live audio only webcast at 4:30 p.m. ET, streamed on X, with no dial in option.

The debut carries more weight than a typical first quarter as a public company. Two trading days after the release, on August 6, the first tranche of SpaceX’s lockup expires, freeing roughly 911.5 million insider and employee shares, worth well over $100 billion at current prices and the largest such release in Wall Street history. A second, larger tranche tied to the stock trading 30 percent above its $135 IPO price never triggered, since shares have spent most of July trading below that price.

Wall Street’s models point to revenue near $6.9 billion for the quarter, up sharply from the $4.69 billion SpaceX reported in the first quarter, with a narrower per share loss than the $1.27 posted three months earlier, according to estimates compiled by Motley Fool. Those numbers will be the first look at how SpaceX’s three segments, Starlink, launch and AI, are performing independently.

SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites

Investors heading into the call have a specific list of questions. How many net new Starlink subscribers did SpaceX add after ending March with 10.3 million, and is average revenue per user holding up as the service expands into lower income markets. How much of the AI segment’s revenue reflects contract signings with Anthropic, Google and Reflection AI this year, deals that combined could annualize to nearly $28 billion if fully ramped. Whether capital expenditures, which nearly doubled in the AI segment alone between 2024 and 2025, are still accelerating or starting to plateau. And whether management offers any forward guidance at all, something SpaceX has never done publicly.

The report will also land days after Elon Musk publicly denied a Wall Street Journal report describing internal planning to separate Tesla’s China business ahead of a potential Tesla-SpaceX merger. Whether Musk or SpaceX executives address that speculation on the call, even indirectly, maybe something investors will be listening for on Tuesday.

As Teslarati reported after Musk’s own warning to short sellers last week, the CEO has made clear he expects skeptics to be proven wrong over time. Tuesday will be the first chance for the numbers themselves to make that case.

Advertisement
-
-
Continue Reading

Elon Musk

Tesla AI boss reveals how big Optimus is going to get

Tesla’s Optimus chief corrected himself on X, confirming a staggering 10 million robot production target.

Published

on

By

Tesla Optimus Gen 3 [Credit: Tesla]

Tesla’s Optimus program has a new number attached to it, after Ashok Elluswamy, the executive who has run the humanoid robot program since June 2025, posted a three word correction on X Thursday, “Correction, 10 million robots.”

The line clarifies the long term annual capacity Tesla is building toward its planned second Optimus production line at Gigafactory Texas, a figure Musk has cited repeatedly since last year’s shareholder meeting.

The scale is worth noting, because ten million robots a year would mean Tesla building more units annually than most countries sell in new cars. Tesla has framed this as a second line, not the first. The buildout is happening in two phases: a roughly one million unit per year line inside Tesla’s Fremont factory, installed on the floor space vacated when Model S and Model X production ended earlier this year, and a much larger dedicated facility under construction at Giga Texas that broke ground on its first steel structure in May. That Texas facility is the one Elluswamy’s correction refers to, and is expected to reach volume production sometime in 2027.

Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress

Elluswamy took over Optimus from Milan Kovac last summer and has spent the months since talking up the program’s trajectory. Elon Musk has also floated the ten million figure at Tesla’s 2025 shareholder meeting.

Advertisement
-
-

Ending Model S and Model X production to make room for the first Optimus line was one of the more consequential manufacturing decisions in the company’s recent history, retiring two flagship vehicles in favor of a robot that has yet to enter mass production. Musk has previously estimated per unit production costs at $20,000 to $25,000 once Tesla reaches a million units a year, though he hasn’t said what that cost looks like at ten times the volume.

Continue Reading

Elon Musk

SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites

Published

on

By

SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.

The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.

SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters

Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.

SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.

With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.

Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.

Advertisement
-
-

Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.

Continue Reading