Tesla financial results for Q2 show improving finances, but lower deliveries

6 Aug 2015

A Tesla car at a supercharging station. Image via Tesla

Tesla has released its financial results for Q2, which appear to show optimism financially for the electric vehicle (EV) and energy company, but its estimated number of EV deliveries for 2015 has been scaled back.

The Tesla financial results were posted online in the form of a letter from the company’s chairperson and CEO Elon Musk and CFO Deepak Ahuja, and revealed that total non-GAAP revenue was US$1.2bn for the quarter, up nearly 40pc from a year ago.

This also surpasses what market analysts had predicted for this quarter, with estimated revenues for the company for this quarter of US$1.17bn.

However, Tesla also recorded a loss of US$61m during Q2, which accounts for a loss of US$0.48 on the basic share price but, once again, was lower than the US$0.60 that had been predicted.

Despite having recently diversified into the home energy business, Tesla’s auto production still accounts for the vast majority of its revenues – US$1.12bn of non-GAAP revenues – but it has recorded a reduction in car delivery numbers to the shop floor.

New head of security

The company had previously stated that it hoped to deliver at least 55,000 Tesla cars in 2015, but according to the financial statement it has now scaled this back to somewhere between 50,000 and 55,000.

Despite this, the company has produced slightly more cars this quarter than it had expected, manufacturing 12,807 compared with an estimate of 12,500.

The company will hope to scale up its production to building between 1,600 and 1,800 of its Model S and Model X cars per week.

In other Tesla news, it has been confirmed that the person who will be leading the company’s security division and ensuring its cars aren’t hackable will be the former head of Google’s Chrome browser security, Chris Evans.

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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