Tesla profits drop 55% as Elon Musk dodges cheap car questions

Enlarge / Tesla shares rose by almost 11 percent in premarket trading despite the disastrous financial results. (credit: CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)

Tesla had a terrible first quarter of 2024, according to its financial results, posted yesterday. We already knew that it was a bad three months in terms of delivering cars—the automaker built tens of thousands of cars it couldn’t sell as deliveries dropped by 8.5 percent, year on year. If anything, the quarterly results paint an even worse picture.

The company has been engaged in a series of heavy price cuts, and that’s showing up on the balance sheet. For all of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s statements about artificial intelligence being the future of the company, the vast majority of its income is still derived from automotive sales. These amounted to $16.5 billion in Q1, nearly $2.5 billion less than for Q1 2023. (Regulatory credits remain pretty steady at $442 million for the quarter.)

Total revenues were down by 9 percent, year on year, with gross profits down 18 percent. But the net profit, once generally accepted accounting measures were applied, fell by 55 percent to $1.1 billion. (Non-GAAP net profit was down 48 percent.)