CEO Elon Musk has told investors that the company's electric vehicle sales will increase 20-30% next year as it prepares to roll out more affordable models. Tesla stock rose more than 13% before the opening bell Thursday after the company said it expected .
Tesla, which had a market capitalization of nearly $670 billion as of Wednesday's close, is expected to be worth another $80 billion on Thursday, thanks to an optimistic forecast for “modest growth” in car deliveries this year. is.
The company said it made a profit of $2.17 billion in the three months from July to September, which was higher than the profit of $1.85 billion in the same period last year.
Excluding regulatory credits, Tesla's car sales margin rose to 17% in the third quarter from 14.6% in the previous three months, according to Reuters calculations.
Wall Street's forecast was 14.9%, according to 24 analysts surveyed by Visible Alpha.
The EV giant announced that its vehicle manufacturing labor and material costs, known as the cost of goods sold per vehicle, have fallen to an all-time low of about $35,100.
Third-quarter adjusted earnings were 72 cents per share, beating the average estimate of 58 cents.
Wall Street was unimpressed by Tesla's announcement of robot taxis earlier this month, but analysts were reassured on Wednesday's conference call when Mr. Musk said he thought the cost of making cars had come down.
“There are no EV companies that are profitable,” Musk told analysts Wednesday.
“As far as I know, no company, no established car company, has ever had a profitable EV division. So despite a very tough automotive environment, Tesla is profitable. It is worth noting that there is.”
Shares of Tesla's smaller EV rivals Rivian and Lucid both rose 1% to 2% in premarket trading Thursday.
Musk said Tesla will roll out self-driving cars offering paid rides next year after receiving regulatory approval in California and Texas.
He said adoption and sales of the company's supervised autopilot software, known as Full Self-Driving, increased significantly after the robotaxi event.
This month, for the second time this year, Tesla offered existing customers a free month of FSD.
After lowering prices last year, Tesla began offering lucrative financing options this spring to boost demand.
It has already delivered 1.29 million vehicles in the first nine months of this year.
To beat last year's record, an additional 514,925 vehicles need to be delivered.
Matt Blitzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “The results raise concerns that the huge incentives to pump into a tough EV market will significantly reduce profit margins.'' “That's reflected in that, but it doesn't seem to be the case,” said Matt Blitzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, who also spoke privately. I own Tesla stock.
Sales for the July-September period were $25.18 billion, compared to expectations of $25.37 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG.
Sales for the corresponding quarter of 2023 were reported at $23.35 billion.
Tesla said it recognized regulatory credit income as the second highest in the quarter.
This metric was $739 million, up 33% year-over-year, but down from $890 million in the second quarter.
with post wire
