Tesla (TSLA) Q4 2024 earnings results and conference call transcript

Published , by Asif Khan

Tesla just released its Q4 2024 earnings results, and the stock is reacting in after-hours trading. The EV company reported earnings-per-share (EPS) of $0.73/share and revenues of $25.7 billion, missing Wall Street analyst estimates of $0.76/share and $27.3 billion. 

Listen to the Tesla (TSLA) Q4 2024 earnings call

Tesla (TSLA) Q3 2024 Earnings Release

Check out the full TSLA Q4 2024 earnings report on the Tesla Investor Relations website.

Highlights

Profitability

Cash

Operations

Summary

Q4 was a record quarter for both vehicle deliveries and energy storage deployments. We expect Model Y to once again be the best-selling vehicle, of any kind, globally for the full year 2024, and we have made it even better, with the New Model Y now launched in all markets. In 2024, we made significant investments in infrastructure that will spur the next wave of growth for the company, including vehicle manufacturing capabilities for new models, AI training compute and energy storage manufacturing capacity.

Affordability remains top of mind for customers, and we continue to review every aspect of our cost of goods sold (COGS) per vehicle5 to help alleviate this concern. In Q4, COGS per vehicle reached its lowest level ever at <$35,000, driven largely by raw material cost improvement, helping us to partially offset our investment in compelling financing and lease options.

The Energy business achieved another record in Q4 with its highest-ever gross profit generation. Construction of Megafactory Shanghai was completed in December and will begin ramping this quarter. Powerwall deployments achieved another record quarter as we continue to ramp Powerwall 3 production and launch in additional markets.

2025 will be a seminal year in Tesla’s history as FSD (Supervised) continues to rapidly improve with the aim of ultimately exceeding human levels of safety. This will eventually unlock an unsupervised FSD option for our customers and the Robotaxi business, which we expect to begin launching later this year in parts of the U.S. We also continue to work on launching FSD (Supervised) in Europe and China in 2025.

Revenue

Total revenue increased 2% YoY in Q4 to $25.7B. YoY, revenue was impacted by the following items:

Profitability

Our operating income decreased 23% YoY to $1.6B in Q4, resulting in a 6.2% operating margin. YoY, operating income was primarily impacted by the following items:

Cash

Quarter-end cash, cash equivalents and investments in Q4 was $36.6B. The sequential increase of $2.9B was primarily the result of positive free cash flow of $2.0B.

Outlook

Volume

With the advancements in vehicle autonomy and the introduction of new products, we expect the vehicle business to return to growth in 2025. The rate of growth will depend on a variety of factors, including the rate of acceleration of our autonomy efforts, production ramp at our factories and the broader macroeconomic environment. We expect energy storage deployments to grow at least 50% year-over-year in 2025.

Cash

We have sufficient liquidity to fund our product roadmap, long-term capacity expansion plans and other expenses. Furthermore, we will manage the business such that we maintain a strong balance sheet during this uncertain period.

Profit

While we continue to execute on innovations to reduce the cost of manufacturing and operations, over time, we expect our hardware related profits to be accompanied by an acceleration of AI, software and fleet-based profits.

Product

Plans for new vehicles, including more affordable models, remain on track for start of production in the first half of 2025. These vehicles will utilize aspects of the next generation platform as well as aspects of our current platforms and will be produced on the same manufacturing lines as our current vehicle line-up.

This approach will result in achieving less cost reduction than previously expected but enables us to prudently grow our vehicle volumes in a more capex efficient manner during uncertain times. This should help us fully utilize our current expected maximum capacity of close to three million vehicles, enabling more than 60% growth over 2024 production before investing in new manufacturing lines.

Our purpose-built Robotaxi product – Cybercab – will continue to pursue a revolutionary “unboxed” manufacturing strategy and is scheduled for volume production starting in 2026.


Tesla (TSLA) Q4 2024 Earnings News Highlights

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Tesla (TSLA) Q4 2024 conference call transcript

Tesla's earnings results conference call is set to kick off at 5:30 p.m. ET. Keep an eye on this article for a transcription of the earnings call right here.


This article is only meant for educational purposes, and should not be taken as investment advice. Please consider your own investment time horizon, risk tolerance, and consult with a financial advisor before acting on this information.

Full Disclosure:

At the time of this article, Shacknews primary shareholder Asif A. Khan, his family members, or his company Virtue LLC had the following positions:

Long Tesla via TSLA shares