- Tesla just released
their Q4 2019 results
and they did it again.
They absolutely crushed it.
Let's dive into the numbers.
See what it means and even
dig into some of the details
that most people may glance over.
Let's free the data.
(funky music)
First, let's just dive straight
into the financial report.
Q4 has always been big
for Tesla, and this one
was no exception here.
In fact, this one, they
set a record by earning
$7.3 billion dollars in revenue.
This is up 8% from Q3 and just slightly up
from the year prior.
But again, setting an even bigger number
for them to best in 2020.
And of course you can make
all the revenue in the world
but if you aren't
profitable then you're just
a sinking ship and well,
Tesla was profitable
yet again in Q4 of 2019.
This is their fourth out
of the last six quarters
where they've shown a profit.
And it is down a bit from Q3, which was at
$143 million dollars in profit
and just slightly down
from the previous year.
But again, maintaining profitability
while growing, expanding into China,
just huge success here in 2019 for Tesla.
And one number that is probably not
the most important or not
one that a lot of people
focus on is cash on hand.
This is important because this is the one
that actually will say
if you can keep going
in your business and now
that they're actually
showing profitability every single quarter
over quarter, year over
year, this is growing
and it grew by almost $1
billion dollars in Q4 of 2019
up to $6.3 billion dollars.
Now we already know that
in Q4 they delivered
a record 112,000 vehicles, but there were
some details in there
about the production plans
for Fremont and for the other factories,
so let's dive into those now.
Specifically, the Model 3 and Model Y
are currently being produced at Fremont
and the capacity is looking right around
400,000 vehicles per year, which is great.
That's a really tremendous
number for them.
And then once they get the
new machinery installed,
the new line for Model
Y, then they will be
looking at 500,000 just
for these two models
from that one factory.
They've also now broken
ground on a new facility
in China to help them spin
up the Model Y line there.
Now with the Model Y
being produced in China,
that is gonna increase
demand and just really
blow out any of these
production or profitability
revenue numbers we're looking at today.
So with that, currently,
the production target
for China is at 150,000 vehicles,
and that's just for the Model 3.
Prior to that new Model Y facility
and the new Model Y stuff coming online.
Speaking of the Model Y,
there's a little nugget in here
that's a good little
present for those of us
with reservations and that is
that with the all wheel drive version,
you now have a range of 315
miles instead of 280 miles.
This of course is due to
their relentless pursuit
of efficiency and constantly improving
the battery technology in the motors
and everything with
regards to their vehicles.
So for me personally
that's a tremendous win
because we have this one on order.
All-wheel drive not totally
necessary in San Diego,
but we do go out to the
mountains and sometimes
see snow, so of course we always want that
for added safety.
In addition, they also
deploy 530 megawatt hours
of energy storage and
increased solar installs
by 26% quarter over quarter.
If you recall, they kind of
switched the pricing model
of solar now where you
basically have small
medium or large and from day
one, you'll be making money.
You can lease it or buy it.
It's kind of as simple
as it could possibly get.
So I think the simple ordering process
and the kind of shirt
sizing as we'd call it
in the product development space
makes it just really easy and just kind of
a no brainer.
So as more people go solar, the experience
Tesla provides is far
superior than your typical
experience from what I know.
And so Tesla is killing it from any way
you look at it and so, of
course, we have to check
with those good ole
investor friends of ours
in the stock market
because they, you know,
often act in a way that's
counter to reality,
but in this case, well, yeah,
they're doin' the right thing.
The stock is up a huge
percentage after already
being up the past few weeks.
So things are looking very well here.
But we can't really leave this out
and call it a day without
hearing from Elon himself
on the earnings call.
But before we get to Elon's
comments on the call,
I thought it made sense to talk about
how to really understand him.
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So thanks Audible for sponsoring this show
and let's hop back to the video.
The first question I
thought that was interesting
was about whether or not
the car-sharing service
from Tesla called the Tesla Network
can come before they're
completely autonomous
and all that's approved and out there.
Here's what Elon had to say.
- [Elon] Well I think it's,
it probably will make sense
to have the, to enable
car-sharing in advance
of the kind of, robo-taxi fleet
because the car sharing can be done before
a Tesla driving you is
approved by regulators.
So it's probably something
that we would enable
before the full sort of
robo-taxi fleet is enabled.
- Another good question
was of how, whether or not
the whole full self
driving feature complete
thing is happening now.
It's supposed to be done in 2019,
but it still hasn't actually come.
And Elon had some interesting things
to say about that as well.
- [Elon] Well, I mean to be precise,
I said I was hoping we
would be feature complete
with, supposed to be by
the end of last year.
We got pretty close.
It's looking like we
might be feature complete
in a few months.
Feature complete just
means it has some chance
of going from your home
to work, let's say,
with no interventions.
So that's, it doesn't mean the features
are working well.
It means it has sort of, you know,
above zero chance.
So I think that's looking
like maybe it's gonna be
a couple months from now.
And what isn't obvious regarding autopath
and full self driving is just how much
work has been going into improving the
foundational elements of autonomy.
The core autopilots in Tesla,
autopilot software and AI team
is just, I think very very
strong and making great progress.
And we're really only beginning
to take full advantage
of the autopilot hardware,
the FSD hardware.
So I think it's,
the apparent progress as seen by consumers
will seem to be extremely rapid
but actually
what's really gone on behind
the scenes, like I said
is just having the foundational software
be very strong, having a
really strong foundation
and then a really fundamental thing
is moving to video training,
so in terms of labeling, labeling with
video and all eight
cameras simultaneously.
This is a really,
I mean in terms of labeling efficiency,
arguably like a three order of nine
to an improvement in labeling efficiency.
So those who know about this,
it's extremely fundamental.
So that's, making great progress on that."
- Another bit that I thought
was really interesting
or telling about where
things are going with Tesla
that Elon shared with us
was when he talked about
the upcoming Plaid Power
Train, and it really was just
typical kind of classic Elon.
- [Elon] Plaid Power Train
is like mind-blowing I think.
Yeah, coming out later this year,
end of the year probably.
That's our goal, get the
Plain Power Train out
end of the year, and
then it's gonna be like,
this is like alien
technology, it's insane.
- [Man] Tell them about.
- [Elon] I didn't even think we could do,
yeah, I mean honestly,
I felt it was no way.
This kick ass engineering
team, it's Tesla,
Tesla's all about hard-core engineering.
- And along those lines,
there were some questions
about the Maxwell technology,
which was a company
that they acquired this past year.
And whether or not you could integrate
what they've done in their technology
into the vehicles and
what that would mean,
well, he talked about it, and hopefully
we'll hear more at the
upcoming battery day.
- [Elon] Well, like I said,
we're gonna talk about this
battery day, which is probably April,
and a lot of these
questions will be answered.
I think it's gonna be
a very compelling story
that we have to present.
I think it's gonna actually
blow people's minds.
It blows my mind and I
am, you know, I know it.
- So that's it for this one.
I'm really curious what you
guys think this year holds.
Obviously Model Y is a big story,
but the way Elon talked
about some of these things,
there's probably some more
kind of aces up their sleeve
there, so stay tuned with
me because it's gonna be
a fun ride, as it always is.
And lastly, don't forget,
when you free the data,
your mind will follow.
I'll see you guys back
here on the next one.
