Tesla made a profit of $143 million in Q3 2019 on record deliveries

Enlarge / Workers on cranes install the Tesla logo at the new Gigafactory in Shanghai, China. (credit: VCG | Getty Images)

Between June and September 2019, Tesla delivered 97,000 electric vehicles to customers. That's a new record for the decade-old carmaker and a strong performance for its Model 3 sedan; around 6,000 cars per week found new homes during the quarter. But sales of the higher-margin Models S and X have dropped precipitously this year, and ever since the early October deliveries news, speculation has been rampant as to what that means for the company's bottom line.

Now we have that answer. On Wednesday afternoon, Tesla announced that it made a profit of $143 million during the third quarter of 2019. The other headline figures from Q3 2019 are that, at the end of September, the company had $5.3 billion in cash and cash equivalents and $371 million in operating cash.

For comparison, Tesla lost $408 million in Q2 2019, which followed even heavier losses in Q1 2019. In a presentation to investors ahead of a conference call this afternoon, Tesla stated that this newfound profitability "was possible by removing substantial cost from our business." Despite the fact that average sale prices have decreased (as consumers buy many more, cheaper Model 3 variants and many fewer Model 3 Performance or Models S or X), Tesla says its automotive gross margin is now 22.8%. That's higher than it's been previously in 2019.

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments