Tesla misses profit estimates, extending weak start to 2024

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Tesla Inc. missed Wall Street’s second-quarter earnings expectations, continuing a rocky start to the year marked by slowing sales and mass layoffs across the company.

It was the fourth straight year that the electric carmaker missed its forecast, reporting adjusted earnings of 52 cents a share on Tuesday, below analysts’ average estimate of 60 cents a share. Tesla’s revenue rose to $25.5 billion, above the $24.6 billion analysts had expected.

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The Elon Musk-led company said its focus remains on cutting costs, and said it expects “significantly lower” growth through 2024 while it is between “growth waves.”

Shares of the electric-car maker were down 3.6% at $238 at 4:23 p.m. in New York, after the close of regular trading. The stock was down about 1% this year at the close of trading Tuesday.

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Tesla has already reported second-quarter sales that beat analysts’ expectations and sent the stock higher. While deliveries were down from a year ago, Tesla has improved on a sequential basis from the first three months of the year. The stronger sales were driven in part by a series of price cuts that have squeezed the company’s margins. Gross profit margin on cars, excluding regulatory credits — a closely watched metric — was 14.6 percent in the second quarter, compared with 16.4 percent in the first quarter.

Investors bought into Musk’s promises that self-driving robot taxis and humanoid robots were coming, reversing a year-to-date decline in stock prices. At one point in 2024, shares were down more than 40 percent from the end of last year on weak Tesla sales.

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The company said it expects to build more vehicles this quarter than it did in the second quarter. In addition, its new Cybertruck is on track to be profitable by the end of the year while plans to build a lower-cost vehicle are moving forward, with production expected to begin in the first half of 2025.

Bloomberg.com

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