Tesla Inc on Wednesday posted a surprising profit of US$143 million in its latest quarter, raising hopes the electric vehicle company might be turning the corner after posting mostly losses during its first decade as a publicly held company.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet had projected Tesla would lose about US$253 million in the third quarter. The positive results saw Tesla’s shares soar 20 percent to US$306 in extended trading.
The performance represents a measure of vindication for Tesla cofounder and chief executive officer Elon Musk, who has been facing more questions about whether he is the right person to be steering the company at this critical juncture.
Photo: Reuters
Musk reiterated a pledge to sell at least 360,000 vehicles this year. Tesla will have to sell about 105,000 vehicles in the final three months of the year, after delivering a record 97,000 in the third quarter.
The company fared better during the same period last year with a profit of US$311 million. That means net income for this year’s quarter was down 54 percent from a year earlier.
In a conference call, Musk promised to remain “highly focused” on reaching decisions that help bolster the company’s long-term prospects.
Even so, Tesla will almost certainly post another annual loss this year, just as it has done every year since its initial public offering in 2010. Since then, Tesla has amassed more than US$5.5 billion in losses.
Separately, Ford Motor Co’s third-quarter net income tumbled nearly 60 percent as the company booked US$1.5 billion in charges mainly for restructuring, and Chinese and US sales fell.
The Dearborn, Michigan, automaker knocked about US$500 million off its pretax earnings guidance for the full year.
Ford now says it will make US$6.5 billion to US$7 billion.
Ford’s net income from July through September was US$425 million, or US$0.11 per share.
Excluding charges for restructuring, the company made US$0.34 per share. Its revenue fell 2 percent to US$36.99 billion, partly because the company bungled the launch of the Ford Explorer SUV.
Meanwhile, Daimler AG pledged to intensify efforts to cut costs and conserve cash as lingering emissions investigations collide with mounting expenses for the industry’s shift to electric vehicles.
The German manufacturer reported higher operating earnings in the third quarter, despite weaker margins for its cars and trucks divisions.
It said its outlook could come under pressure, as provisions made to cover probes into questionable diesel emissions might not suffice.
“In order to master the transformation in the next few years, we need to increase our efforts considerably,” Daimler chief executive officer Ola Kallenius, who took charge in May, said in a statement yesterday. “We have to significantly reduce our costs and consistently strengthen our cash flow.”
Daimler’s third-quarter earnings before interest and taxes rose 8 percent to 2.69 billion euros (US$2.99 billion), compared with analyst forecasts of 2.54 billion euros. The profit margins for the critical Mercedes unit narrowed to 6 percent from 6.3 percent a year earlier.
The automaker kept its outlook for unit sales, while reducing its revenue forecast for trucks to “flat.”
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
NATURAL PARTNERS: Taiwan and Japan have complementary dominant supply chain positions, are geographically and culturally close, and have similar work ethics Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and other related companies would add ￥11.2 trillion (US$78.31 billion) to Japan’s chipmaking hot spot Kumamoto Prefecture over the next decade, a local bank’s analysis said. Kyushu Financial Group, a lender based in Kumamoto’s capital, almost doubled its projection for the economic impact that the chip sector would bring to the region compared to its estimate a year earlier, a presentation on Thursday said. The bank said that 171 firms had made new investments since November 2021, up from 90 in an earlier analysis. TSMC’s Kumamoto location was once a sleepy farming area, but has undergone
RSS