Tesla achieves record profit in the third quarter of 2020

Tesla has been making money for several quarters now, but it has always been rather modest. However, the fifth consecutive quarterly profit has increased massively: Tesla now reports $331 million, roughly three times as much as the previous quarter, where it was $104 million. Accordingly, Elon Musk is pleased:

“The third quarter was the best in our history.”

With an adjusted EBITDA of the equivalent of 1.8 billion euros, Tesla aims to have reached an EBITDA margin of 20.6 percent, and the operating business margin is also at 9.2 percent. For comparison: the "classic" automotive industry is sometimes satisfied with five to seven percent.

Revenue amounted to $8.77 billion, of which $7.61 billion came from the automotive business. Tesla says this mark was mainly achieved by an increase in deliveries to a total of 139,300 vehicles, as well as growth in other business areas. Crucially, alongside revenue, liquid assets also rose significantly in the third quarter—by $5.9 billion to now $14.5 billion. However, this was largely due to the recent $5 billion capital increase. Production also rose to a new record of 145,036 cars.

Tesla has already nearly matched 2019's full-year deliveries in the third quarter

Thus, in the first three quarters of the year, Tesla has built nearly 330,000 cars and delivered just over 318,000, placing it only just behind 2019's figure of 367,500 cars. But to reach the targeted 500,000 mark, Tesla would need to produce another 181,000 cars in the fourth quarter. The capacities are available and were recently massively increased:

In Fremont, 500,000 instead of 400,000 units of the volume models Model 3 and Model Y can now be assembled per year, and full capacity has not yet been reached. In Shanghai, production capacity for the Model 3 has been increased from 200,000 to 250,000 units per year. Meanwhile, "Autopilot" developments are continuing. Beta versions of the "Full-Self-Driving" function were released to a small number of users. However, the system is supposed to work "extremely slowly and cautiously." Tesla has not disclosed the exact features, but it could be that the autopilot can autonomously cross intersections in the future.

In the subsequent webcast, Elon Musk gave a preview of the Cybertruck, which will be built in Texas, albeit with entirely new technology:

“It depends on the completion of this factory, and there are some new technologies with the high-hardness exoskeleton.”

And he concedes once again:

“This has never been done before, so there will probably be some challenges.”

Despite this, he is still planning initial deliveries by the end of 2021, but not full-scale production: That is likely to ramp up only in 2022. A lot is expected to be improved in detail as well. And he couldn't resist his bold statements, confidently declaring that Tesla shares only "maybe ten percent" with a traditional car manufacturer:

“They assemble parts from suppliers and pass them on to car dealers. It's like comparing Tesla to a carpenter.”

Besides cars, other business areas also grew: In the solar business, installed capacity in Q3 was 57 MW, 111 percent higher than the 27 MW installed in Q2. In energy storage, 759 MWh were built, 81 percent more than in Q2. For Superchargers, the numbers of stations and charging points each increased by seven percent compared to Q2. Tesla now has 2,181 Supercharger stations with 19,437 charging points worldwide—about a third more than a year ago.

What does that mean?

Investor patience seems to be paying off: After initial shaky profits, Tesla has now been posting positive numbers for five quarters, which now also have substance and could bring Tesla its most successful fiscal year to date.