Tesla doubles losses – but investors celebrate elon musk

E-car pioneer tesla more than doubles quarterly loss, but still inspires confidence in investors.

The difficult production of the hopeful model 3 should finally really take off and yield profits, as the company of the enterprising tech billionaire elon musk announced on after the US stock exchange close.

Tesla is on the verge of becoming "sustainably profitable," musk promised. This went down well with investors – the share price rose by over nine percent at times after the event.

But the model 3 is still a financial feat that pushed tesla deeper than expected into the red this spring. In the second quarter, a loss attributable to shareholders of 718 million dollars (615 million euros) was posted. In the previous year, the deficit was 336 million dollars. Sales, meanwhile, rose a surprisingly strong more than 40 percent to $4.0 billion.

Tesla expects to reach weekly production of 6,000 units of the model 3 – its first low-cost car for the mass market – by the end of august. After that, the pace is to be increased further quickly. "We are aiming to ramp up production as quickly as we can to 10.000 pieces per week," it said in the letter to shareholders. From 7000 units per week, musk believes he will be able to operate profitably in the long term. In the third quarter, tesla plans to deliver a total of 50.000 to 55.000 model 3 produce.

In recent months, the new car, with which tesla wants to make the leap out of the luxury niche, caused enormous pressure. The production targets had to be postponed several times and were finally achieved at the end of june only by hook or by crook. Musk made the rough project a boss thing, setting up a night camp at tesla’s factory in fremont, california, and wearing the same shirt for days on end, according to his own account. To meet his ambitious goal of rolling out 5,000 model 3s a week, an entire assembly line was flown in without further ado and set up in a tent.

In the past quarter, tesla produced a total of 53.339 vehicles, 40 delivered.768. According to the company, 18 of these were.449 pieces of a model 3. Tesla ended the quarter with $2.2 billion in cash on hand, and the company’s balance sheet benefited from hundreds of thousands of model 3 preorders for which prepayments had to be made.

Tesla’s expenses continue to significantly exceed revenues, but the outflow of cash was not as strong as experts had feared. Some analysts see a need for capital, but musk has always denied this so far.