This morning Tesla announced that their Q4 2017 earnings release date is on February 7th, 2018.  That is less than 2 weeks away.

Here’s Tesla’s full statement: “Tesla will post its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31st, 2017 after market close on Wednesday, February 7th, 2018.  At that time, Tesla will issue a brief advisory containing a link to the Q4 and full year 2017 Update Letter, which will be available on Tesla’s Investor Relations website.  Tesla management will hold a live question and answer webcast that day at 2:30pm Pacific Time (5:30pm Eastern Time) to discuss the Company’s financial and business results and outlook.”




Starting at 2:30pm on Feb 7th, you can hear the live conference call by going to ir.tesla.com .  The conference calls feature Elon Musk and key management from Tesla, and usually last a bit over an hour.  Analysts ask questions about Tesla’s previous quarter, and usually Elon shares various tidbits of valuable information into either the state of production, challenges their facing, or the type of approach and thinking Tesla is taking.

The first highlight of the Q4 earnings will be an update to the Model 3 production rate.  As I highlighted earlier in this article, Tesla is targeting a 1,000 Model 3 cars/week production rate by the end of January.  We’ll have a chance to hear if Tesla has reached that goal.

If Tesla has reached 1,000 Model 3 cars/week, then there would be an increased probability that Tesla is on track to reach their 2,500 Model 3 cars/week by end of Q1 (end of March) and 5,000 Model 3 cars/week by end of Q2 (end of June).

The second highlight of the Q4 earnings report will be Tesla’s growing revenue numbers.  On Jan 3, 2018, Tesla reported record quarterly delivery numbers of 29,870 vehicles.  Further, they announced they delivered 101,312 Model S/X vehicles in 2017, an increase of 33% from 2016.

source: TSLA Q3 2017 shareholder letter

Total quarterly revenues have been growing steadily for Tesla.  Q2 2017 total revenue was $2.8B and Q3 2017 revenue was almost $3B.  Q4 2017 revenue will likely exceed $3.2B with the increased deliveries of Model S/X/3 and also growing Tesla Energy sales.

Another highlight of the Q4 earnings reports will be Tesla’s cash balance.  Tesla reported in Q3 earnings that they entered Q4 2017 with a cash balance of $3.5B.  It’s going to be interesting to see how much cash balance Tesla exited Q4 with.  If cash balance is less than $2.5B, then I would anticipate Tesla doing a capital raise within a few weeks after Q4 earnings.  Perhaps raising $1.5B or so in cash to give them more cash cushion for the next several months as Model 3 production ramps.

Tesla has also yet to share any new Gigafactory locations, so Q4 earnings report might be a good time to announce a new Gigafactory location perhaps in China.  This could also be used as a reason to do a capital raise following Q4 earnings.

Lastly, Tesla will likely give guidance into some expected delivery numbers for 2018.  How many Model S/X vehicle deliveries in 2018 will they gives guidance for?  And how many Model 3 vehicle deliveries in 2018 will they give guidance for?  And also, will they share their expectations to become profitable this year?