Shares of US electric car maker Tesla Motors tumbled nearly 12 percent in after-hours trading to US$156.41 on Tuesday after the automaker’s third-quarter results fell short of expectations.
Tesla said it sold just over 5,500 of its Model S sedans in the July-to-September period, which was a record for the automaker, but lower than some analysts had predicted. Barclays analyst Brian Johnson, for example, had expected Tesla to deliver 5,820 cars during the quarter.
In a conference call after its earnings release, chief executive Elon Musk said the company’s production has been constrained by its battery supplies, but that should ease next year thanks to a recent deal with Panasonic Corp that increases battery shipments to Tesla.
“It doesn’t make sense to amplify demand if we can’t meet that demand with production,” Musk said. “We have to figure out how to ramp up faster.”
Tesla also invested heavily in its network of US and European charging stations and in opening new stores. The company’s development costs increased as it prepares for next year’s planned launch of its Model X crossover.
Tesla lost US$38.5 million, or US$0.32 per share, in the third quarter. Its revenue jumped to US$431 million, up 6 percent from the second quarter and up from US$50.1 million in the July-September period last year.
That was far short of the US$547.5 million forecast by analysts, according to FactSet. Analysts had been expecting earnings of US$0.8 per share.
The quarter was a disappointment for Tesla’s investors, who have sent its stock up more than 400 percent this year as the company finally became profitable and the Model S became a critical success.
The US$70,000 Model S, which can go up to 300 miles on a battery charge, is Tesla’s only vehicle on the market right now.
The company said it plans to deliver 6,000 Model S sedans in the fourth quarter, for total sales of 21,500 this year. That is up from 2,650 sales last year, when the Model S went on sale.
Musk said the company remains on track to begin selling the Model S in China in the first quarter of next year.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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