November 04, 2015

Tesla Motors Surges after Q3 Earnings Announcement

After Tesla reported their third quarter earnings last night, Tesla Motors' stock [TSLA] surged as the company announced that it had produced a record 13,091 vehicles and delivered (another record-breaking) 11,603 new vehicles in the previous quarter. Tesla reported that it plans on delivering 17,000 to 19,000 vehicles in the fourth quarter which should yield 50,000 to 52,000 deliveries for the year. Total third quarter non-GAAP revenue was up about 33% from last year at $1.24 billion for the quarter.

Source: wulfman_78

Strong Growth

According to the Shareholder's Letter* released last night, in Q3, global Tesla Model S orders increased by more than 50% from a year ago, and grew at a faster pace in North America, Europe and Asia, than during Q2. In China, Tesla Motors' newest major market, Q3 Model S orders increased substantially from Q2, due in part to the opening of two new retail locations. Tesla expects order growth in China to remain strong with more store openings and the recent policy changes in Beijing and other major cities that allow buyers of Tesla vehicles to bypass license plate restrictions. And, Tesla Motors confirmed that they are on track to unveil the Tesla Model 3 in late March 2016.

Source: Inside EVs

Model X

Tesla reported that the Model X Signature Series reservation holders are converting to firm production orders at a much higher rate than witnessed prior with the launch of the Model S. Since the Model X launch event, order rates have accelerated for both the Model S and Model X. Although it is too early to draw firm conclusions, this supports Tesla Motors' belief that Model X actually expands the market for Tesla vehicles, with little to no cannibalization of Model S. Tesla noted that the primary limiting factor to higher Q4 deliveries is the near term ramp of Model X production, with the biggest constraint being the supply of components related to the second row monopost seats. To eliminate these supply constraints and achieve a better overall outcome, Tesla Motors brought manufacturing of these seats in-house. "We see no fundamental issues on the production ramp," Musk explained. "It's pretty much down to how quickly we can solve every issue. We feel very confident of being able to get to several hundred [Model X] vehicles (produced) per week by the end of the year."

Autopilot

The software update 7.0 release enabled Autopilot on about 40,000 Model S and Model X vehicles globally… thousands of Autopilot-equipped Tesla vehicles are gathering over one million miles of driving data per day. Tesla then analyzes this data and feeds it back to the fleet to continually improve customers’ driving experiences. In addition, Autopilot is so advanced and unique that test drive requests from prospective customers has increased significantly since its introduction. To manage this volume of requests efficiently, consumers can now schedule their own test drives online, representing another industry-first by Tesla. "All cars will go fully autonomous in the long-term… Any car that doesn’t have full autonomy will have negative value,” Musk predicted. “It will be like owning a horse. You will own it only for sentimental reasons.” Check out the remarkable video below from an Uber driver showing Tesla's autopilot safety features in action...

Source: Jon Hall

New Hires

During the earnings call with analysts, the company announced Google's Jason Wheeler as the company's new chief financial officer and Jon McNeill as the president of Global Sales and Service. McNeil is the former CEO of business software company Enservio and the co-founder Sterling Collision Centers auto repair. Wheeler who was Google’s former vice president of finance for the past 13 years starts November 30th and replaces Deepak Ahuja, who will retire after remaining at Tesla for the next few months to help with the transition. On the earnings call, Musk called Wheeler a “super smart guy” who “really understood what we were doing.”

Model S and other news

"We are very happy with quality of the [Model S] drive units. We changed durability from 200,000 miles to 1 million miles. We want drive units that never wear out,” Musk revealed. Also, in response to the diesel-gate scandal at Volkswagen, Musk remarked: "It's now obvious to consumers that gasoline and diesel cars have real world emissions that are above that in testing. We expect regulators will no longer turn a blind eye to these issues. The costs to produce gasoline cars will increase... I expect the car companies will accelerate their plan to make EVs [electric vehicles], which is great.” Musk also emphasized on the earnings call that 97% of Tesla Model S owners independently surveyed said they would buy another Tesla as their next car.

Source: The Province

Tesla Energy

The management team at Tesla is seeing very strong demand for Tesla Energy products globally, and particularly in Australia, Germany and South Africa. Tesla reported an exciting market opportunity for Tesla Energy in India citing strong government alignment in the works for 2016. Recent changes to feed-in tariff structures in Hawaii also create a large new energy storage market in that state. Most importantly, Tesla noted accelerated plans to begin cell production for Tesla Energy products at the Gigafactory by the end of 2016. This is several quarters ahead of Tesla's initial plan.

Uber Competitor?

During the earnings conference call, analyst Adam Jonas from Morgan Stanley (once again) served up a provocative question: "Assuming Tesla establishes itself as a leader in autonomous transport, do you see a business case for selling autonomous vehicles to ridesharing firms or can Tesla cut out the middle man and offer on-demand electric mobility services directly from the company’s own platform?” In other words, Jonas is predicting that Tesla is planning to enter into the Uber space as a future business strategy. Musk hinted that something is brewing and carefully responded to this question by noting, “I think there’s a right time to make announcements, and this is not that time. Nor is our strategy fully baked here, so for us to state what it would be — it’s not fully baked, so there’s no — we’d prefer to announce something when we think we’ve got the full story understood.”

To check out the complete Q3 Q&A conference call, see below...