First off and as Jalopnik reports in part. Look at this other record for the company we have here. For it seems Tesla went back to back on reporting a $139 million profit in the fourth quarter of 2018. That’s the first time the electric automaker has ever posted back-to-back profitable quarters. Which is more noteworthy: in its 15-year history.
In addition, it was also Tesla’s fourth profitable quarter ever. That’s according to an investor letter published on Wednesday. Tesla generated $7.2 billion in revenue in the quarter, a record for the company.
Total revenue for 2018 was $21.4 billion — another record for the company. Now although Tesla still posted a $1 billion loss across the year. Tesla remains short of CEO Elon Musk’s ultimate goal. For that’s to be generating a full-year profit. Although it has been “clawing back” its losses. Also it finished the year with $3.7 billion in cash.
More interesting was last year. Cause the company lost $2 billion. Musk and CFO Deepak Ahuja wrote in the letter that 2018 was the “most pivotal year in Tesla’s history.”
On a call with analysts Wednesday night, Musk announced Ahuja will be leaving the company in a “few” months.
“There is no good time to make this change,” Ahuja said on the call. “It’s a new chapter, a new year. Tesla has had two great quarters of profitability [and] cash flow, it’s on a really solid foundation.”
The company recently lost its chief accounting officer and its head of global finance. Zach Kirkhorn, vice president of finance at Tesla, will take over Ahuja’s role.
For the entire story on TheVerge.com
Although CNBC reports:
- Tesla is struggling to fix and maintain customers’ cars as its makes and sells a higher volume of them than ever before.
- The company says it was operating 378 service centers worldwide last year, with 411 mobile service vehicles– which bring mechanics to the customers’ door — in its fleet.
- Tesla plans to add shifts to eliminate the backlog at its service centers, and claims 80 percent of repairs can be done off-site, not in the shop.
