No, this is wrong. Vehicles go into inventory on the balance sheet when produced, which btw affects FCF, but not on the P&L Statement. When the vehicle is sold, then that asset is moved from the Balance sheet to P&L, with COGS being expenses and the sale being revenues.
Given that Tesla made 21.8% gross margin on vehicles with an ASP around $53k, that's about $11.5 gross profit for every extra vehicle sold, regardless of when it was produced. Then given that Tesla sold 6,100 more vehicles than it produced in Q4, that's an est'd $70M in ADDITIONAL gross profit for 2019Q4 vs just selling the same no. of cars as they produced.
And since we know 2019Q3 was profitable while selling 15,000 fewer vehicles, we have a strong indication that MOST of that extra gross margin in Q4 will flow straight through to bottom line profits. I estimate the effect on profits to be +$172.5m from this alone.
Paging
@The Accountant "Is this Accounting 101, or Accounting 301?"
Cheers!