Tesla’s latest quarterly numbers beat analyst expectations on both revenue and earnings per share, bringing in $8.77 billion in revenues for the third quarter.
With the report that Tesla had already beaten Wall Street’s expectations for deliveries earlier this month, the question for today’s earnings call was how much efficiency (and by extension, profit) the electric car and battery company was able to wring out of its manufacturing processes.
Now we have the answer, as Tesla reported net income of $331 million* on revenues of $8.77 billion for the third quarter. That’s up 39% from the year-ago period. Wall Street had expected $8.36 billion in revenue for the quarter, according to estimates published by CNBC.
Revenue grew 30% year-on-year, something the company attributed to substantial growth in vehicle deliveries, and operating income also grew to $809 million, showing improving operating margins to 9.2%.
And while the automotive business is clearly still the star of the show, both Tesla’s solar and storage businesses showed marked improvements in the third quarter.
Energy storage reached a company record 759 Megawatt hours in the quarter, and the company said that megapack production for its large-scale batteries is growing while Powerwall demand remains strong.
“We continue to believe that the energy business will ultimately be as large as our vehicle business,” the company said.
And the solar business is also improving, according to Tesla. “Our recently introduced strategy of low-cost solar (at $1.49/watt in the U.S. after tax credit) is starting to have an impact. Total solar deployments more than doubled in Q3, to 57 MW compared to the prior quarter, with Solar Roof deployments almost tripling sequentially.”
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