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2012 Q4 Earnings Report thread

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Anyone know how many stores they had in Q3?

Their SG&A is actually a pretty big factor. 8 million increase from Q3 to Q4 due to the opening of 8 service centers and ? stores (32-Q3 stores at year end)

If the 8 million comes mostly from the service centers, then their plans to double the amount of service centers in 2013 is going to be material.
 
35.52 and still dropping...


So, what's the play here and now? Buy Tesla just before Elon spins how great everything is (at 2:30PM PST)?

And, I do see things as going well. Profitable in Q1 instead of Q4 seems like a big deal. I'll guess the concern is their cash balance. Even reservations don't seem bad.

Now we're getting into the range I was waiting for. But I am going to monitor the trajectory. I see no fundamental reason for it not to go to $30.
 
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"In the month of December we generated positive free cash flow, through growing sales and careful working capital management."

[Emphasis mine]

Cash flow was already positive in December, so I suppose this is a good basis for predicting "slight profit" in Q1, given that they already know about the first half of Q1.

Who cares about the time before that, if it is already going upwards now?


"In the first quarter of 2013, we expect to generate slightly positive net income, on a non-GAAP basis. We also expect to be near breakeven on cash flow from operations"

NON-GAAP net income. Not meaningless, but not real profits.

Near breakeven is not breakeven, and is a much less confident statement then previously.

Worked my way through the report. The biggest concern I have right now is the 8mm increase in SG&A on a increase of only 8 service centers. It doesn't matter if their gross margins are 25% if they achieve it just by moving 'service' expenses to SG&A.

Still love tesla and am probably going to add during the pullbacks. Very happy i sold out before earnings though. Stock is in need of a pullback
 
$115m in operating expenses. R&D expense going down, Selling expenses going up, so maybe somewhere around $110m next quarter. They hope to achieve 25% gross margin by the end of the year. To break even at 25% margin they'd need to sell $440m in automobiles in a quarter. $440m in cars on 4500 cars is about $98k per car. How do they expect to average $98k per car in Q1? How do they expect to get up to 25% GM in Q1?

I'm not saying that they're going under or that they're doing anything foolish. I'm just saying that I don't see how their numbers support their conclusion that they'll be profitable in Q1.


Where does warranty repair fall on the income statement? I suspect that's going to be noticeably higher in Q1. What about selling us our service contracts: is that automotive sales? Will the revenue from service contracts cancel warranty repair expenses in Q1? Does GAAP require that service contract sales get amortized out over the life of the service contract or will Q1 see revenue from 3 quarters worth of car owners buying 4 year contracts?
 
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I think this is after-hours knee-jerk reaction to a larger than expected loss for Q4. And, I still think some people even thought the quarter was going to be profitable - there was an article on that recently I can dig up if somebody's interested.

I think as the conference call proceeds, the stock will come back. But, I've been wrong more often than right, so don't pay attention to my predictions.
 
$115m in operating expenses. R&D expense going down, Selling expenses going up, so maybe somewhere around $110m next quarter. They hope to achieve 25% gross margin by the end of the year. To break even at 25% margin they'd need to sell $440m in automobiles in a quarter. $440m in cars on 4500 cars is about $98k per car. How do they expect to average $98k per car in Q1? How do they expect to get up to 25% GM in Q1?

There is R&D revenue, such as from Mercedes, for instance.
 
Grabbed some in the 35s. No reason not to, I'm well prepared for this one. Wouldn't mind seeing even lower prices in the next few days.
Yea, wish I'd sold a bunch earlier (or hell, everything given the market shift is one of the largest in a long time), then again the market reaction is the complete opposite of my reaction. Having a stake in Tesla aside, I read that they've beat their revenue estimate and expect profitability early than expected, I'd think the desire would be to jump on the stock rather than bail out of it.
 
Personally I was hoping for a better year-end report and a spike up in the stock price. But the report is realistic and a bit sobering. Tesla has got it's work cut out for them. But overall, I think everything points to a good 2013 as long as demand keeps up for the Model S and Model X, which I think it will. I see the stock dipping some and recovering... hopefully.
 
k finished going through the report.

Key things I got out of it.

A cancelation rate of about 30% from rolling reservations to nonrefundables
This puts the 6000 reservations/quarter closer to 4200, less then their 20k/year production rate but within reach. Still no demand problem

SG&A is going up alot this year. 29 service centers costing about 700k/quarter each, doubling them to 58 by years end. Will cost about 16M more a year. Unknown cost of the new stores

Can extrapolate CapEX
"In 2013, we plan to spend significantly less on capital expenditures than we did in 2012, as we have concluded the majority of our investment in the Tesla Factory and Model S tooling. This reduction will be partially offset by
expenditures related to expanding our service and store network, investing in new capital equipment and tooling to
reduce variable costs and new product development." (funny they said we're cutting capex and offsetting it with capex).

Cutting capex back to 2011 levels is about a 18Million decrease, similar to the amount SG&A is likely to increase.

Their going to have a hard time hitting net margins of 10% by end of year even with gross margins of 25% with this SG&A, going to need close to 800M in sales. Which is actually less then their annualized revenue rate right now, so its quite possible, just not there yet.