It's very interesting to read back over their 2018 Q4 report. They knew that starting up international deliveries would have a significant impact on recognizing revenue on all the vehicles they were able to build, whereas selling locally they can count on selling them pretty much as they came off the line;
> While the number of Model 3 vehicles produced should increase sequentially in Q1, deliveries in North America during Q1 will be lower
than the prior quarter as we start delivering cars in Europe and China for the first time. As a result of the start of Model 3 expansion into
Europe and China, deliveries will be lower than production by about 10,000 units due to vehicle transit times to these markets.
What actually happened was that production rate fell by ~10,000 from 86.5k to 77.1k and they also had deliveries fall behind production by 15,000 instead of their expected 10k;
> In Q4 2018, Tesla produced a total of 86,555 vehicles, and delivered 90,700 vehicles. In Q1 2019, Tesla produced 77,100 vehicles and delivered 63,000 .
I'd have to research the cause of the production drop, but that combined with a larger than expected delivery lag (compared to the prior quarter where they actually over-delivered vs. their production rate) is why they had such a tremendous loss. On top of all that I'm pretty sure gross margins also fell, and the S/X/3 mix became significantly more 3 dominant as the tax credit dropped.
So while I would not dispute that there are tricks that can be pulled, mostly in this case that would come down to the level of CapEx, which for Tesla is now below their depreciation. That's a metric which typically shows a slowing growth company, but in the case of Tesla could just be more reflective of how wasteful their spending actually was in the past (e.g. trying to fully automate production al la "alien dreadnought" and failing).
But in the case of Q4 2018 vs. Q1 2019 really what happened is they had significant issues with production, deliveries, and margins all at once driving down revenue well past anything they could correct by controlling spending.
Not to carry on about it, but any company can decide how much they want to invest in future growth, and if they will raise money to finance that, or if they will constrain their expenses based on their revenue and margins. That's not financial engineering or an accounting trick, that's just basic risk management and calibrating your spending based on your growth opportunity versus your cost of capital.
What we've seen in 2019, I think, is a focus on aligning the company for profit before the next push. I would not expect Tesla to have increasingly large profits each quarter, because it would be strange for them to sit on an increasing cash hoard ($5B+) when they have so many good ideas on how to spend it. Namely, building more factories for Model 3 & Y, getting into battery cell production, and whole new lines needed for the upcoming truck, and Semi production.