[ad_1]
The electric car maker on Wednesday posted a surprise profit of $342 million. Wall Street had expected the company would post a net loss as big as $257 million.
It marked the first quarter Tesla was profitable since the company posted back-to-back profits in the second half of 2018. Before that, Tesla had posted profits only twice since it went public in 2010 — once in 2013 and again in 2016.
Tesla struggled last year to ramp up production of the Model 3 sedan, the company’s first car designed more for the mass market with price points starting around $40,000. Manufacturing issues at the company’s California factory appeared to be ironed out by the end of 2018.
This year, Tesla has worked to expand sales abroad and has spent big bucks on a manufacturing plant in China in the hopes of accessing its billions of consumers.
“We have also dramatically improved the pace of execution and capital efficiency of new production lines,” Tesla said in a letter to shareholders Wednesday. “Gigafactory Shanghai was built in 10 months and is ready for production, while it was [about] 65% less expensive to build than our Model 3 production system in the US.”
Tesla also reported that it brought in $6.3 billion in revenue, about on par with what analysts predicted.
Deliveries are, for the most part, the best indicator of how much money Tesla is bringing in because customers typically pay for their vehicles whenever they receive their cars.
Tesla said Wednesday it is entering the fourth quarter with an order backlog and is focusing on “increasing production to meet that demand.”
US sales are down about 2% in the first half of this year, according to sales tracker Autodata.
[ad_2]
Source link