Tesla 2Q’18 update letter:
http://ir.tesla.com/static-files/7235e525-db16-470c-8dce-9ecac0ad7712
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And Tesla stock is up almost 10% in after-hours trading.
Thanks for all the info sigmetnow.
My read into Tesla's letter:
The good news:
* our aim being to produce 6,000 Model 3 vehicles per week by late August
* We aim to increase production to 10,000 Model 3s per week as fast as we can. We believe that the majority of Tesla’s production lines will be ready to produce at this rate by end of this year, but we will still have to increase capacity in certain places and we will need our suppliers to meet this as well. As a result, we expect to hit this rate sometime next year.
* In May 2018, our energy storage business reached a significant milestone when we finished deploying 1 GWh of energy storage worldwide since the inception of our business. Having reached that milestone after less than 5 years, we are now aiming to repeat it with another GWh of energy storage deployed in just the next 9 to 12 months.
* Model 3 gross margin should grow significantly to approximately 15% in Q3 and to approximately 20% in Q4 predominantly due to continued reduction in manufacturing costs and to some extent an improving mix
* we still expect to achieve
GAAP profitability in Q3 and Q4. Going forward, we believe Tesla can achieve sustained quarterly profits, absent a severe force majeure or economic downturn, while continuing to grow at a rapid pace
The bad news:
* We expect to produce 50,000 to 55,000 Model 3 vehicles in Q3 (note: 5,000 sustained per week should have been 65,000, and they claim an aim of 6,000 by late August)
* We are steadily ramping Solar Roof production in Buffalo and are also continuing to iterate on the product design and production process, learning from our early factory production and field installations. We have deployed Solar Roof on additional homes in Q2 and are gaining valuable feedback from each new installation. We plan to ramp production more toward the end of 2018 and are working hard to simplify the production and installation process before deploying significant capital into factory automation. (note: this means that solar roof is not ready for mass deployment yet and is not a finished product as I hoped)
The market is cheering (for now). I would have liked to see higher sustained production of model 3, but overall I'd say a good update.