Tesla (TSLA) is about to release its fourth quarter 2017 results – here’s what to expect

Tesla (TSLA) is set to release its fourth quarter 2017 financial results on Wednesday, February 7 after market close. As usual, the release of the results will be followed by a conference call and Q&A with Tesla’s management at 2:30pm Pacific Time (5:30pm Eastern Time).

Here we take a look at what both the street and retail investors are expecting for the quarterly result.

Deliveries

As usual, Tesla’s deliveries drive most of its earning results since vehicle sales represent the automaker’s main revenue stream at the moment.

Tesla already confirmed its fourth quarter 2017 deliveries: 29,870 vehicles – a new record for the company.

They ended up delivering 15,200 Model S vehicles, 13,120 Model X vehicles, and 1,550 Model 3 vehicles.

Those numbers are adjusted slightly during the earnings.

Additionally, 2,520 Model S and X vehicles and 860 Model 3 vehicles were in transit to customers at the end of the quarter, according to the company.

Here are Tesla quarterly global deliveries of all current vehicles in production since their launches:

Revenue

Wall Street’s revenue consensus is $3.299 billion for the quarter and Estimize, the financial estimate crowdsourcing website, predicts almost the same result: $3.302 billion in revenue.

It would be a record quarter for revenue if those estimates are accurate.

The record delivery numbers for Model S, Model X, and Model 3 resulted in this increase on the results quarter-to-quarter from Tesla’s actual revenue of $2.985 billion during the last quarter, which was also a record.

The predictions for Tesla’s revenue over the past 2 years – Estimize predictions in blue – Wall Street consensus in grey – Actual results in green:

Can anyone see a pattern on that chart? Of course, with Tesla’s revenue being currently closely linked to vehicle sales and Model 3 deliveries increasing through the production ramp up, revenues are expected to increase significantly this year.

Earnings

Earnings per share, or rather loss per share, is expected to plunge again for the quarter.

Like for revenue, the expectations are again close for both the street and retail investors. The Wall Street consensus is a loss of $3.19 per share for the quarter, while Estimize’s prediction is a loss $3.11 per share.

Earnings per share over the last 2 years – Estimize predictions in blue – Wall Street consensus in grey – Actual results in green:

And again can anyone see a pattern on that chart? That’s Model 3 production ramp-up delays for you. Tesla is investing each quarter for the production of 5,000 Model 3s per week and it is not achieving anything close to that, which results in increasingly wider losses until production catches up.

Other expectations for the shareholders letter and analyst call

Obviously, we expect that a fair amount of the conference call and shareholders letter to revolve around Model 3 production and how it has evolved since the end of the quarter.

In its production and delivery results last month, Tesla said that it had reached an extrapolated production rate of 1,000 units per week at the end of December and that they aim to increase that to 2,500 units per week by the end of March.

Analysts and investors are going to be looking for an update on this goal and of course, the bigger goal of reaching 5,000 units per week by the end of the first half of 2018.

I think that’s going to be the focus of the call and shareholder letter, but I also think that Tesla Energy could take an increasingly more important part of the results.

We have seen a lot of developments in current weeks that management could elaborate on, like the reason behind expanding its sale presence to 800 Home Depot stores and what a giant project like this new 50,000-home virtual power plant in Australia means for Tesla Energy.

Join us on Electrek on Wednesday after market close for our report on the results and shareholders letter. You can stick around after for the conference call with management at 2:30pm Pacific Time (5:30pm Eastern Time) and you can join on the call through Tesla’s investor relations website.