They're investing aggressively in new factories and new product lines. If they wanted to show profits today they could give up building and expanding factories and stop entering new product categories. But that would be stupid.
* You're cherry-picking 2018Q3. So it's not exactly 2 years, it's actually 1.75 years (2018Q3 - 2020Q2).
* But now you're saying pre-covid too, so now it's actually 1.25 years (2018Q3 - 2019Q4).
That period in question is the time after Tesla finished ramping Model 3 production (using a tent!) at Fremont in 2018Q3, and before they finished building the factory in Shanghai in 2020Q1.
So... doesn't it seem reasonable that production gains would be a bit "lumpy"? They go up every time a new factory is finished, and they stay flat until the next one.
2 years ago flat?
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.
Tesla production will be around 100k+ per quarter until they open a new factory (Berlin, july 2021) or expand current ones.
If they're still production limited the only growth in production numbers for the next 12 monthes will be in their China factory and may be a bit in Fremont (p7 of PDF).
Tesla announced they hope to be close to 500k produced vehicules in 2020 (p10 of PDF) so that makes 157k/quarter for the next two quarters. I don't think they'll reach 500k in 2020.
But of course the thing you have to look at is results from other automakers (hint: ugly).
Though it could be the case that their investment in new product development reduces their ability to meet current demand and therein throttles revenue; not sure if the 10Q references their order backlog.
That said, I think tesla is WILDLY overpriced (and I used to own tesla stock).
Can you show me in the financial statements where this "aggressive investing" in factories is, and how it affects net profit? Why are they doing it if revenues are stagnant?
They are doing it because they need more capacity to increase revenue, because their ASP is lower in the new markets they've entered. And because they need local factories to reduce tariffs. And do you really think that comparing this quarter YoY is a good way to evaluate their revenue growth?
What's your point? That if we exclude all expenses from their income statement they'd be profitable? Unfortunately, they can't do that.
>They are doing it because they need more capacity to increase revenue
Are any of their factories running near capacity?
>And do you really think that comparing this quarter YoY is a good way to evaluate their revenue growth?
Probably not. Q1 y-o-y wasn't great either though.