Tesla's profit falls short again as Elon Musk demands investor patience

By Kara Carlson and Dana Hull
 

Tesla Inc. reported its fourth straight quarter of disappointing profits on Tuesday, and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk made clear that better days are still a ways off.
 

The electric vehicle giant won’t unveil a highly anticipated robotaxi until Oct. 10 — and that will only be a prototype. A new, lower-cost car that could juice sales won’t go into production until the first half of next year at the earliest. A planned factory in Mexico is on pause at least through the US presidential election on Nov. 5. And a humanoid robot that Musk claims will send Tesla’s valuation soaring won’t be ready anytime soon, either.

 

That’s left the company’s investors in a holding pattern. While they wait for Tesla’s long-term plans to come to fruition, they’re stuck enduring weaker vehicle output and sales. The carmaker, the world’s largest seller of battery-powered vehicles, is far off the pace of the 1.8 million cars it sold last year and warned for a second time Tuesday it expects to see a “notably lower” growth rate in 2024.

“The whole story here is about what else is to come,” said Gene Munster, a managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management. 

At the moment, shareholders seem to be at least somewhat willing to wait out the dark days. Tesla shares fell 8 per cent in extended New York trading at 7:20 p.m., eating into the stock’s recent rally but not fully erasing it. 

Things have improved since a tumultuous start to the year, when Tesla reported its biggest-ever sales miss in the first quarter, spurring mass firings across the company and at one point sending the stock down 40 per cent from the end of 2023. Musk responded by talking up the promise of autonomy and AI at the company, and shares began to surge back. 

“The value of Tesla overwhelmingly is autonomy. All these other questions are in the noise relative to autonomy,” Musk said Tuesday, urging anyone who disagrees to sell the company’s stock.

Even amid the lower-than-expected quarterly profits, which reached 52 cents a share on an adjusted basis, sales still surpassed expectations. Revenue hit a record $25.5 billion, partly buoyed by $890 million in regulatory credits. Tesla, which sells the credits to other carmakers seeking to comply with emissions mandates, recorded less than half as many credit sales in the first quarter.

Its automotive gross margin, excluding regulatory credits — a closely watched metric by investors — fell to 14.6 per cent in the second quarter, compared with 16.4 per cent in the first quarter. That reflects stepped up operating expenditures on AI and other projects, as well as restructuring charges from sweeping job cuts.

Musk said Tesla will manufacture its newer, lower-cost car at its plant in Austin starting in the first half of next year. It will also make both the robotaxi, which Munster expects to be ready no sooner than 2026 or 2027, and the Optimus robot in Austin.

The carmaker put a Mexico factory on pause earlier this year amid its sales slump, though has now extended that pause as it awaits the outcome of the US presidential race. Republican candidate Donald Trump, who Musk has endorsed, has been talking about imposing tariffs on Mexico-made products.

“Trump has said that he’ll put in heavy tariffs on vehicles produced in Mexico, so it doesn’t make sense to invest a lot in Mexico if that is going to be the case,” Musk said.

Musk formally endorsed Trump after the former president was shot during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania earlier this month, and is involved with America PAC, a political action committee backing Trump. On Tesla’s earnings call, Musk downplayed the risk to Tesla’s business if Trump wins office, even though the Republican has slammed the rise of electric vehicles.

The CEO said if Trump wins and revokes the Inflation Reduction Act that Democratic President Joe Biden championed, which gives EV makers up to $7,500 in tax credits per vehicle, it wouldn’t especially harm Tesla.

“There would be some impact but I think it would be devastating for our competitors and would hurt Tesla slightly but long term probably actually helps Tesla,” Musk said. 

The company expects to make more cars in the current period than it did in the second quarter. It also said its new Cybertruck is on track to make a profit by the end of the year while plans for a lower-cost vehicle are moving ahead, with production expected to start in the first half of 2025. The cheaper cars should be available for sale around the same time.