Investor's Corner
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2018 financial report and earnings call: What to expect
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) is set to release its financial report for the second quarter after markets close on Wednesday, August 1, 2018, followed by its Q2 2018 earnings call at 2:30 p.m. PST (5:30 p.m. EST).
With a vast majority of the second-quarter spent pushing volume production of Model 3, questions are abounding if vehicle demand matches company claims and if Tesla is finally on its way to profitability. Arguably, the elephant in the room will be indicators on whether the company will have to raise more capital due to what Wall Street analysts widely regard as Tesla’s cash flow challenges. Here is an outline of things to expect in Tesla’s Q2 2018 financial results and earnings call.
Tesla’s Losses and Revenue
Considering that the electric car maker continued to invest heavily in the Model 3 ramp over Q2, a consensus among Wall Street analysts suggest that Tesla would be reporting a loss of $2.81 per share. Among 21 analysts, the range for expectations made public about the company’s losses for the second quarter spans from a loss of $3.44 to $1.71 per share.
Wall Street analysts estimate that Tesla would post revenue of around $3.97 billion, which is significantly higher than the $2.79 billion the company posted for the second quarter of 2017. If analysts’ predictions are correct, Tesla would be able to post a year-on-year growth of $42.3%. Ultimately, Tesla’s revenue would be a compelling point in the company’s financial report, validating CEO Elon Musk’s narrative that the electric car and energy company continues to see strong demand in the past seven quarters. Tesla’s revenue has increased sequentially in each of the last six quarters as well.
Model 3 Ramp and Delivery Guidance
Tesla is expected to give an update on the current state of Model 3 production. With the electric car maker managing to hit its self-imposed target of manufacturing 5,000 Model 3 per week in a “burst build effort” during the final week of June, questions are now abounding about the company’s capability to exceed this production rate.
Tesla’s plans and strategies for the delivery of the Model 3 are also expected to be discussed in the Q2 earnings call. With the company recently selling its 200,000th vehicle in the United States, Tesla would likely provide delivery guidance for the Model 3 as the $7,500 federal tax credit starts its phase-out period.
Tesla Energy
Tesla Energy has slowly been growing in the background as the company’s electric car business stayed in the limelight. Over the past months, Tesla has teased several key developments in its Energy business. During the 2018 Annual Shareholder Meeting, Elon Musk mentioned that the company is on pace to “cross a key battery-cost threshold of $100-per-kilowatt-hour later this year.” Such a milestone could cut the cost of its upcoming products such as the Model Y, while pushing Tesla forward as a leader in battery technology.
Updates on large-scale Tesla Energy initiatives, including a 1 GWh scale energy project that Musk teased in the Shareholder Meeting, as well as the South Australia virtual power plant, would likely be discussed as well.
Financial Guidance
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made his stance clear during the now-infamous Q1 2018 earnings call that he does not intend to raise capital this year. Musk has also reiterated his prediction that Tesla would be profitable in the third or fourth quarter of 2018. This goal, however, hinges on the successful ramp of the Model 3.
During Tesla’s update on vehicle deliveries for Q1, the company stated that the 5,000 Model 3 per week milestone is expected to lay “the groundwork for Q3 to have the long-sought ideal combination of high volume, good gross margin, and strong positive operating cash flow.” Tesla’s Q2 2018 earnings call would likely cover how the company plans to hit the green for the second half of the year.
A webcast of Tesla’s Q2 2018 earnings call could be accessed here on Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. PST (5:30 p.m. EST).
Elon Musk
SpaceX President to gift Trump Accounts her SpaceX stock
Gwynne Shotwell’s 2 million SpaceX shares are headed to children’s Trump Accounts starting this December.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said Friday that more than 2 million SpaceX shares belonging to her and her husband, Robert, will be distributed to children’s Trump Accounts in December, turning a pledge she made over the summer into an actual transfer. “Robert and I are thrilled that our gift of over 2 million shares of SpaceX stock will be distributed to children’s Trump accounts in December!” Shotwell wrote on X, adding that the shares are “transferring to escrow as we speak.”
The first round goes to children aged 11 to 17 who live in ZIP codes where the median family income is $57,000 or less, along with kids in ZIP codes with too few residents for the Census to report that figure. Shotwell said those families should receive a notice by Monday, Reuters reported.
A second gift is expected to be finalized in the next few weeks. That round will cover eligible children in military families serving overseas, children in foster care, and more kids in Texas counties near the Shotwells’ home where median family income is $90,000 or less. Elon Musk replied to the announcement with “Cool” and a heart emoji.
Shotwell first announced the donation on July 6, less than a month after SpaceX priced its record IPO at $135 per share on the Nasdaq. IPO filings showed Shotwell owned about 12.6 million SpaceX shares, Quartz reported at the time, which makes the gift roughly one sixth of her stake. At the roughly $146 per share used to value Musk’s own pledge earlier this month, 2 million shares are worth about $290 million.
How the stock would actually reach the accounts had been an open question since July. Treasury guidance acknowledged that stock donations could flow into Trump Accounts, but it did not explain the mechanics for a program whose contributions default into an S&P 500 index fund. Shotwell thanked the Treasury, the IRS, the Dell Foundation, Greater Horizons, Invest America and the law firms Morgan Lewis and Gibson Dunn for “working over the past few months to make this happen.”
The transfer also works as a dry run for a far larger gift. On October 19, Musk said he would give one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America next year and called it “the first of many.” With roughly 72 million children in the country, that pledge is worth about $10.5 billion. President Donald Trump thanked Musk the same day and said the shares would go through Trump Accounts, though neither SpaceX nor the Treasury has published how or when that distribution will happen.
Shotwell’s recipients also fill a gap in the program itself. Trump Accounts launched on July 4, and the $1,000 Treasury deposit only goes to babies born between 2025 and 2028. Teenagers aged 11 to 17 receive no government seed money, so for many of the families getting a notice on Monday, SpaceX stock will be the first asset in the account. The accounts convert into retirement accounts when the child turns 18.
Investor's Corner
Tesla has a Cybercab problem nobody saw coming
Tesla’s Cybercab line now builds robotaxis faster than Tesla can deploy them, Lars Moravy says.
Tesla’s Cybercab line in Texas can now build the two seat robotaxi faster than the company can put it into service, according to Lars Moravy, Tesla’s Vice President of Vehicle Engineering. “We don’t run every day because the line can run so fast. It’s currently outpacing our deployments,” Moravy said in a new Cybercab deep dive from Munro Live. “So, it’s a bit of a race right now. Who’s going to go faster? Right now the manufacturing line’s ahead.”
Tesla’s official Robotaxi account shared a Cybercab analysis video on X on Monday, calling it a “Cybercab engineering deep dive.” Moravy’s comments go further than what he told analysts on the Q3 earnings call last week, when he said the Cybercab line’s listed capacity of more than 125,000 units a year undersells what it can actually run.
The tour shows where that speed comes from. Tesla’s unboxed process splits the Cybercab into front, rear, side and center modules that are built and tested on their own before they meet on a short final line. That final line has just 25 fully automated stations, which Tesla’s team estimated is a fifth to a tenth of what a Model Y needs. The full line is about 78% automated, the framing line is already at 100%, and the layout uses roughly 50% less floor space per vehicle. The stated goal is “100% automation in 10 second cycle time,” or one finished Cybercab every 10 seconds.
Tesla also deleted the paint shop. Only the side modules are coated, and the exterior panels get their color inside the molding machine. Engineers said the car is designed to run at least 500,000 miles, which matters for a vehicle that will spend most of its day carrying riders.
The battery got the same treatment. The Cybercab uses an 88S6P pack of 4680 cells in a steel enclosure, a first for Tesla, with each module potted separately so a single failed module can be swapped instead of the whole pack. Wireless battery management boards replace a wiring harness, and new contactors are fast enough to drop the pyro fuse entirely. Tesla’s battery director graded the pack an A minus, compared with a D for the Model Y structural pack and a B minus for Cybertruck. Up front, the drive unit runs an 11:1 gear ratio versus roughly 9:1 on most Teslas, since the Cybercab does not need a high top speed.
Cybercab engineering deep dive — Robotaxi (@robotaxi) October 26, 2026
The deployment side is now the bottleneck Moravy described. Tesla had more than 50 Cybercabs working the Formula 1 weekend in Austin, and Texas records show 463 Cybercabs registered. Tesla said on its earnings call that Cybercab service will launch in Dallas next month, and Moravy said the company is aiming to get Cybercabs to customers by the end of 2026. Every unit built so far has gone into Tesla’s own fleet since the line moved into volume production in April.
Munro Live also asked when it could get a Cybercab to tear down. Tesla’s answer: “Not yet.”
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the third quarter of 2026, marking a reasonable performance on the various financial metrics. Tesla still plans to hold a call that will field investor questions at 5:30 p.m. ET, 4:30 p.m. CT.
Here’s where Earnings came in:
- Total Revenues: $28.046 reported vs. $28.34B expected
- Non-GAAP EPS: $0.48 reported vs. $0.45 expected
- Operating Margin: 2.6 % reported vs. 2.5% expected
- Operating Income: $718M reported vs. $721M expected
- Free Cash Flow: $1.531B reported vs. ~-$4.51B expected
Tesla $TSLA Earnings Results:
Revenues: $28.046B
Non-GAAP EPS: $0.48
Operating Margin: 2.6%
Operating Income: $718M
FCF: $1.531B— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 21, 2026
Major Takeaways
Full Self-Driving (Supervised)
“FSD (Supervised)⁴ attach rate continued to grow, reaching over 75% of new vehicle deliveries in North America – our most mature market – a nearly twenty percentage point sequential increase. We believe that FSD is driving demand in markets where it is available, and we continue to work with regulators to get it approved in other markets.”
Tesla Semi
“We began volume production of Tesla Semi, our Class 8 heavy-duty truck. The top variant can go 500 miles at full 82,000 lbs gross combination weight while achieving an efficiency of 1.7 kWh/mile. That efficiency allows the Tesla Semi to use a third of the energy used by a comparable diesel truck to haul the same payload. In a transportation market where energy is one of the largest components of total cost per mile, this will provide a meaningful advantage to Tesla Semi operators.”
SI Compute
“We plan to reach 400 MW of SI training compute by the end of the year, supporting the development of both vehicle and humanoid robot autonomy software. Additionally, we continued construction for the Austin Fab, where we plan to start commissioning equipment in 2027.”
Robotaxi
“We began deployment of Cybercab into our Robotaxi fleet in Austin. We reached nearly two million cumulative unsupervised miles for our Robotaxi service as of the end of the quarter. Operating hours in Austin are now 6am to midnight, and we expect to reduce wait times via increased fleet supply and improvement of Robotaxi orchestration algorithms. Grok is available in Cybercab with access to Grok Bot and Connectors, which allows users to manage their inbox, calendars, files, chats and tasks – all hands free via voice command – making Cybercab a mode of transport, a productivity space and, with our entertainment options, a second living room.”
Interested in ordering a Tesla? Use my referral code for three free months of Full Self-Driving (Supervised) here.
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