Shares of Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) rallied by more than 2% during the late trading session on Wednesday after the American electric car market posted smaller losses from their fourth-quarter earnings report as well as an upbeat outlook for its Model 3 vehicle.
Q4 Earnings Report
Prior to Tesla’s earnings release, most investors expected huge losses from the company following the official release of its much-awaited Model 3 vehicle as well as its full manufacturing and production in order to meet the high demands where pre-orders have reached over 400,000 prior to its release.
For the three months that ended in December, Tesla posted a revenue of $3.29 billion compared to their revenue of $2.28 billion during the same period a year ago.
Tesla posted a net loss of $3.04 per adjusted share to $770.8 million with Tesla stating that they expect their revenue growth for the year 2018 to significantly rise during the past year due to the sales of its Model 3 sedans as well as its energy-storage products. Analysts expected Tesla to deliver an adjusted loss of $3.11 per share for the quarter.
Overall losses of the company for the whole quarter amounted to $675 million or $4.01 per share compared to their losses of 78 cents per share to $121 million during the same quarter a year ago.
During the release of the earnings report, Tesla also stated that it expects to produce 5,000 Model 3 vehicles by the end of the second quarter after its production targets have been pushed to a couple of months from the initial release of the vehicle last year.
Tesla shares were up by as much as 3.3% during the trading session on Wednesday.
Tesla 2018 Plans
Following the official release of the Model 3 last year, Tesla is planning to move forward with investing on a Model Y crossover vehicle later this year announced during the release of their financial earnings results on Wednesday.
The capital investments which will start during the third or fourth quarter of the year would allow Tesla to avoid any of the issues it faced during the production of its previous vehicle models where Tesla CEO and founder Elon Musk described spending a holiday working at the Gigafactory.
According to Musk, more details about the Model Y would be revealed during the company’s next earnings call. The Model Y would become the company’s first ever crossover vehicle, a growing business sector among automobile makers in the United States as more and more of the American market shift to SUVs and trucks from cars.
Aside from the initial Model Y plan, Tesla is also expected to boost its efforts further in avoiding any more delays in the delivery and production of the Model 3 vehicle with their current target being able to finish 5,000 vehicles by the end of the second quarter.