Tesla claimed it expects to spend ~$1.5 billion this year on capital expenses, including a lavish investment in a new battery factory.
Tesla claimed it had revenue of $3.2 billion in 2014, up from about $2 billion in the previous year. Nevertheless, the darling of Wall Streets peculators reported a net loss for the year of $294 million, compared with a loss of only $74 million in 2013 even though sales rose slightly during the period.
During Q4, Tesla had revenue of $957 million, an increase from $615 million during the same period a year earlier. As always, other charges eroded the returns for investors and speculators.
Chief booster Elon Musk, and holder of 35,528,859 shares of Tesla stock with sole voting power, said in a letter to shareholders – not without billions in self interest – that the company expected to begin deliveries of the Model X in Q3 during this year – a long delay from original promises. Musk said he expected the margins on the Model S to improve this year, but warned these gains would be offset by the costs for introducing the delayed SUV.
Tesla expects to spend $1.5 billion this year on capital expenses, including a lavish investment in a new battery factory. Operating expenses are projected to grow about 50% this year, after doubling in 2014.
In his latest bold statement – where is the SEC on these? – Musk said that in 2015, “we expect to deliver about 55,000 Model S and X vehicles, representing more than a 70% increase over 2014 deliveries. About 40% of these deliveries are planned for the first half of the year. First quarter production is expected to be about 10,000 vehicles due to it being a shorter quarter than in Q4 and approximately a week of factory downtime to allow the workforce to rest and tooling upgrades. Cars in transit to Europe and Asia must grow to support those markets, so we plan to deliver approximately 9,500 vehicles in Q1, an increase of over 47% from Q1 last year.”
