Tesla makes a profit of $104 million in Q2 2020

Enlarge (credit: Tesla / Aurich Lawson)

On Wednesday afternoon, Tesla announced that it ended the second quarter of 2020 with a GAAP profit of $104 million. That is now the fourth profitable quarter in a row for the US automaker, which may help the company move to the S&P 500 index. It took home $143 million in 19Q3, $105 million in 19Q4, and $16 million in 20Q1. However, the past 12 months' profits still don't offset the company's $408 million loss in 19Q2.

Tesla ends 20Q2 with a positive free cash flow of $418 million and $8.6 billion in cash and cash equivalents. Tesla says in its presentation to investors that lower operating costs and greater income from regulatory credits, plus recognizing $48 million in payments for its "Full Self Driving" feature, were big helps to the balance sheet. These contrast the costs it bore for having to shut down the factory due to a raging pandemic, as well as having to pay CEO Elon Musk $101 million for one of his compensation milestones.

The automaker had already released data on its 20Q2 deliveries earlier in July, but to reiterate, it built 6,326 Models S and X, delivering 10,614 of the same. Model 3 and Y production clocked in at 75,946; in total, it delivered 80,277 of these vehicles for the three months in question. Impressively, total deliveries are actually up 3 percent quarter-on-quarter and only down 5 percent year-on-year-not bad for the middle of a global pandemic that has cratered new vehicle sales across the globe. In total, the company's automotive business brought in $3.9 billion for the quarter.

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