MW Tesla earnings miss the mark, but stock gains after margins hold
By Claudia Assis
Tesla stock rises more than 1% after earnings
Tesla Inc. reported quarterly earnings and sales that missed Wall Street expectations Wednesday, but, crucially, showed gross margins that were within forecasts.
Tesla $(TSLA)$ earned $1.85 billion, or 53 cents a share, in the quarter, compared with $3.3 billion, or 95 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Adjusted for one-time items, the company earned 66 cents a share.
Revenue rose 9% to $23.35 billion, the company said.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet expected Tesla to report adjusted third-quarter earnings of 73 cents a share on sales of $24.2 billion.
Gross margins were 17.9%, a drop from 18.2% in the second quarter, and 25.1% in the third quarter of 2022.
Investors have focused on Tesla's gross margins amid several rounds of price cuts, the latest of which were announced earlier this month. The outlook for the fourth quarter was also high up on the list.
The EV maker earlier this month reported quarterly sales numbers that were below expectations. Some Wall Street analysts have estimated that deliveries of tens of thousands of Teslas will be shifted to the end of the year due to the longer-than-expected downtimes in factories in Shanghai and in Austin, Texas.
Tesla shares have more than doubled this year, compared with an advance of around 13% for the S&P 500 index SPX.
-Claudia Assis
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 18, 2023 16:19 ET (20:19 GMT)
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