this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2025
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Since when 2.4 billion net profit is terrible?
"Yes, we earned billions but it's actually less than the year before!" Dude, go out and touch some grass...
It's terrible for the stock price which has a price to earnings ratio of almost 200.
If this were a normal company with a profit margin of ~6% and a normal stock price (in line with the market average), it would be fine.
"Terrible" is just for attention, but the bit of news that would have cratered any other company's stock it that it's down 71% YOY. Plus:
People in the current administration have said they plan to end these credits in the coming months. Without them in 2024 Tesla would have reported a $500million loss for the year.
You misread the sheet slightly. The total profit for the year was $7.1 billion, of which $2.8 billion was renewable energy credits. I.e. their profit would have only been $4.3 billion.
Source on the killing of credits?
Those are California ZEV credits, and other similar non USA programs.
They're going to kill a lot of other things, but haven't heard about that yet.
This one is paywalled, but if you hit the firefox reader mode button quick enough you can bypass BI's content blocker.
Just on mobile now so can't read it all, but it did get the gist across, thanks! I hadnt seen that yet.
I still think they'd have to win a lawsuit against California saying California can't have the program?
Edit: as in I don't think they can just scrap it like he's scrapping other things via executive order.
every other car manufacturer would kill for a deficit of only 500 mill for the year
And every other car manufacturer has valuation multiples 12x lower than Tesla's. Musk's worst nightmare is investors treating Tesla like a car company. That's why he keeps pushing on "Tesla is an AI company that makes cars, not a car company."
Oh Yeah I completely agree, apparently everyone is super touchy with everything elon and couldn't take the joke.
Since Musk claimed in 2022 that a 50% growth per year would be normal for Tesla. And people are stupid enough to partially believe him. In January 2024 Musk promised 2024 would be a HUGE growth year, with autonomous RoboTaxi being launched in June. He claimed it’s LITERALLY only 5 months away!!!
https://fortune.com/2025/01/29/tesla-shares-rally-2025-earnings-growth/
Nothing he claimed or promised has come true. Quite the opposite.
You just glossed right over the "dropped by 71%" bit...since when is that not terrible? That's an incredible decrease in profits over the course of just 12 months.
71% drop in a single quarter is time for workers to start looking for other jobs bad. This was way before Elon's Nazi salute so expect things to get way worse. I'd be so embarrassed if I drove a Tesla.
When those profits come from carbon credits which means your main activity is still wildly unsustainable over a decade after the company being founded. Tesla is a massive investor bubble and their cars are objectively trash with failure rates 3x higher than the industry's worse. Tesla is garbage sustained by a massive collective illusion of US exceptionalism.
When you know you're going to get a billion dollars in credits for something, you plan your business around having those billion credits.
You sell cars cheaper, you expand faster, you try new ideas you might not have tried etc.
Tesla hasn't needed those credits for a very long time now, but if they are there, of course they're going to take as full advantage of the situation as they can.
If the credits had stopped around when Tesla didn't need them anymore, I'm sure they would look very different than today, but they'd still be around and profitable.
Tesla would never exist in a capitalist system. Their business model is wholly predicated on government subsidies and carbon credits. Furthermore, the hen has come home to roost and their cars, like I linked above, are just bougie expensive paper weights sold by the biggest con man in history. If I was buying electric tomorrow, I'd even look at Volkswagen before considering a Tesla. I want my cars to last more than 4y, not try to kill me, and, I don't like to pay extra for vapoware. If anything, the fact Tesla still exists, is testament we no longer live in a capitalist system but in an oligarchy where companies selling snake oil can still have high valuation because they are close to the ~~N*%i Party~~ party in power. Looking at Teslas's results and seeing the carbon credit weight on their fundamentals and looking at the speed BYD is expanding, only Authoritarianism can save them from bankruptcy already in 2025. Luckily, their CEO just helped bring about the 4th reich, so they are fine, just don't pretend it's because it's a solid enterprise, it's anything but.
Oh so it is an AI company then.
It's bad because downward trends are bad, especially when the economy is growing.
Look at it this way: suppose you have a job with a decent salary. Your supervisor calls you in and says, "Well, looks like we're going to cut your pay next year". You ask, "Is the company in trouble? Is everyone getting a pay cut?" And they answer, "No, the company is growing. Most people are getting raises. Not you, though."
That's a bad sign.
It's bad because the company is bad and they should collapse, not continue on.
Receiving $2.4 billion is nice. But not if you had to pay $1265 billion (market cap) for the privilege.