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2014 Q3 Data Points & Estimates

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DaveT

Searcher of green pastures
Nov 15, 2012
3,502
11,184
Texas
Here's a new thread to post data points, estimates, info in regards to 2014 Q3 earnings.

Previous years Q3 reporting was done of the following dates: 11/5/13, 11/5/12, 11/3/11, 11/9/10

I'm attaching to this post a rough preliminary estimate of Q3 earnings based off of the guidance Tesla gave. I've used my own discretion to forecast various income and expense categories. This is only a rough estimate. Feel free to download the excel file I've created and add in your own numbers (just make sure to share them with us).

download excel file: View attachment TSLA-Q3-2014.xlsx
2014-q3-estimates.jpg
 
Wow only 1 cent EPS? Seems a bit pessimistic don't you think?

Actually, I had to do a lot to get non-GAAP profit into the positive territory.

The problem is Tesla guided only a marginal increase in revenue/sales (7579 deliveries in Q2 vs 7800 deliveries in Q3). So revenue basically only grows like 3%. But then they guided for expenses (R&D, SGA) to rise 15-20% in Q3. And then gross margin they guided to be similar as Q2.

Put all these things together and what you have is revenue only very slightly rising, expenses rising quite a big, and gross margin staying about the same. (ie., If you had a company that was barely profitable last quarter and you told me this upcoming quarter your revenue would go up 3% but expenses would rise 15-20% and gross margin wouldn't change, I would have a difficult time seeing how you could pull a profit)

When I put in the numbers as Tesla guided, it was a non-GAAP loss. So I had to do a lot to try to move it into positive territory. I increased deliveries from 7800 guided to 7850. I kept the ASP at around $106k. I added $12m ZEV (which might not be there in Q3, I don't know). I lowered expenses a bit from their guided 15-20% increase. And I had to fudge a few more numbers.

Then, I was able to get a non-GAAP $0.01 eps profit.

But you should download the spreadsheet and work out the numbers yourself.

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Note: I'm actually not trying to be optimistic or pessimistic in this initial Q3 estimate. I'm purely taking the Q3 guidance given by Tesla and inputting the numbers into the spreadsheet to the best of my ability, and welcome others to do the same. Optimism/pessimism for Q3 should probably rely more on hard data points during Q3 and following Q3 that show whether Tesla will meet guidance, fall short, or beat guidance. And the key number will be cars delivered.
 
That's true, I hadn't considered how low their revenue growth was actually going to be this quarter but yet they are still growing more than ever. If they post a negative EPS I would highly expect the stock to fall on pessimism. I actually thought last quarter we were going to post a break even EPS and was surprised they were as high as they were.

I guess the numbers don't lie. Will have to wait and see as information trickles in throughout the Quarter.

And your numbers do make sense I guess I just wasn't expecting to see it turn out the way it did.
 
Don't forget Q4 should be huge and people know that.

We know that, but there are plenty of doubters out there that they will meet their guidance for the year, a low delivery rate combined with a negative earnings could set the stock back a bit. Besides I could go for a correction at this point, so I can buy some more shares ;)

But I would at the very least plan for the stock to go down some if they just have the negative earnings and nothing else to show for. They better have an X to show off or a finalized gigafactory... or we might just see the stock go down.
 
We know that, but there are plenty of doubters out there that they will meet their guidance for the year, a low delivery rate combined with a negative earnings could set the stock back a bit. Besides I could go for a correction at this point, so I can buy some more shares ;)

But I would at the very least plan for the stock to go down some if they just have the negative earnings and nothing else to show for. They better have an X to show off or a finalized gigafactory... or we might just see the stock go down.

It's tough to say the stock will drop with a non-GAAP loss because I think it all depends on what the stock price is at the time of Q3 earnings and if they re-emphasize strong Q4 guidance.
 
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On a somewhat related note has there been any guidance of a drop off on US sales? According to Monthly Plug-In Sales Scorecard Tesla's US sales are about half of the Nissan Leaf and well behind the Volt. I know the company is moving a lot of cars to China and Europe but the estimate of 500 US sales last month is quite a low number.

Agree David. After all Tesla is a completely American automaker brand. So I don't understand this numbers. Maybe that Norway alone is doing better?
 
On a somewhat related note has there been any guidance of a drop off on US sales? According to Monthly Plug-In Sales Scorecard Tesla's US sales are about half of the Nissan Leaf and well behind the Volt. I know the company is moving a lot of cars to China and Europe but the estimate of 500 US sales last month is quite a low number.

It has been quite the opposite, in Q1 they said that demand was up 10% Q/Q, they reiterated that demand was up in NA and EU for Q2 as well. Actual deliveries are another story, one of which is a complicated answer that only Tesla knows why they do what they do. But mostly I am sure they are trying to spread the cars around so they don't have to make EU and Asia customers wait longer than they have to. As such this is "starving" NA sales.

Note that when we started this year off, we were doing right at 600 a week and the wait times in NA were around 2 months for Performance and 3 months for Standard. As we got into Spring, wait times had dropped to about 1 month for P and 2 months for S. Then around mid May it shot through the roof and everything fell back to 4 months wait time. Combine that with them pushing up to 800 a week, and that would be why things have changed a lot. Now here we are getting closer to the 1k a week mark and it looks like they have started to pull back down the wait times to right around 3 months right now... But they have also pretty much stopped rolling out any new stores in the US. They aren't penetrating this market any further right now. All they have been doing is Superchargers and maybe some service centers as of late. So if they wanted to push up more demand in NA they could easily saturate the market more.

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I have to think that the wait time increase has also had an affect on sales in NA, in that, if it was shorter more people would be going for the car again. Not that demand isn't still up overall, just that there are many things that would let them increase that pretty much... as Elon said "at will".
 
Europe is certainly not taking up delivery slots. Reported numbers for July for the main markets are (compared with april '14) : Norway 114 (-9%), the Netherlands 31 (-37%) and Germany 26 (-46%). Those are official numbers and correlate pretty 100% to deliveries. How reliable is that plugin-in sales scorecard? Looking at the round numbers, it's nothing more than an educated guess? If they are on the mark however and the trend for the US/EU continues (2 big ifs) for August and September, it is going to take an incredible jump in sales in underserved (China/UK) or yet unserved (Japan/Australia) markets to make guidance this quarter. Very interesting indeed.
 
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Also remember, that in US the deliveries are supposed to drop in July due to the 2 week shutdown that was almost entirely in July. So only the first few weeks could have been deliveries in US and of those I think a bunch were actually production that got shipped outside. The EU etc deliveries in July were entirely cars produced in Q2 as there's no way they could have made it in July from factory to delivery (ca 3-4 weeks transport alone)
 
While I initially tracked Estonian numbers with the delay taken into account between payment to Tesla and actual registration in Estonia (can be 1-2 week delay). Here are the numbers based on official registrations, but there is likely a shift in comparison to Teslas own numbers as being non-core-market the delivery is in Tilburg and any delivery before end of month is counted in that month with regard to Tilburg, not when it then arrives in Estonia a week or two later based on transport company delays :)

2013:
Dec -> 1 (mine :wink:)

2014:
Jan -> 0
Feb -> 1
Mar -> 1
Apr -> 2
May -> 1
June -> 4
July -> 5

Also, if someone else is looking at Maanteeamet statistics and gets the EV table in XLS don't forget to look at the last column too, which is count per registration by that entity (i.e. a company). In June and July there were both cases where one entity registered 2 Model S's hence the count was off a bit.

But fun to see we outsold Finland in July ;) Should get many more in August - September now as that was the bulk of the region of cars ordered after the test drive event in April.
 
Belgium is the first market doing better than last quarter : 23 compared with just 10 in April (+130%). A decent showing in the UK could still bring the total for July over that of April. Really unfortunate that this kind of data is not available for the US. Has anyone already tried to file a freedom of information request with the relevant authorities for their state (I am assuming vehicle registration is handled by individual states)?
 
Belgium is the first market doing better than last quarter : 23 compared with just 10 in April (+130%). A decent showing in the UK could still bring the total for July over that of April. Really unfortunate that this kind of data is not available for the US. Has anyone already tried to file a freedom of information request with the relevant authorities for their state (I am assuming vehicle registration is handled by individual states)?

You could get the numbers but you'd probably be paying a fee for each state.