I dedicate this tweet to the Tesla haters who-- when confronted with the fact that U.S. legacy sales are in steady decline-- reply, "Sure, but you just don't get it, dummy: *their strategy* is to sell less vehicles!"
$GM $TSLA investor.gm.com/static-files/c…
GM total revenue and EV market share have both fallen to their lowest level in 5 years:
And Cruise is losing more money than ever and borrowing billions from GM Financial to purchase autonomous vehicles GM manufactures. 👀
And GM's automotive free cash flow is negative again this year, so... 😬
“Hey, look!, it just dropped billions and billions of dollars over the last few minutes! It’s working! Only another trillion dollars to go and everyone will know how right I was all along!”
—Jim Chanos, probably
"Quarter-end cash & cash equivalents decreased to $16.1B in Q3, driven mainly by net debt and finance lease repayments of $1.5B, partially offset by free cash flow of $1.3B. Our total debt excluding vehicle and energy product financing has fallen to just $2.1B at the end of Q3."
Tesla here is shaming the major credit rating agencies into an upgrade.
As @garyblack00 argued yesterday, it's preposterous for them to consider leaving Tesla rated below investment grade.
The most common question on the forecast thread I posted last night is why I'm not forecasting Q3 earnings to be a lot higher than Q2's, given that the deliveries rose so much.
I created this waterfall chart to show why. It walks from Q2 Actuals to my Q3 forecast, by line item.
Yes, the volumes were up, and yes, I expect the volume increase to drive additional revenue, but the associated costs will also increase with the volume and higher rates Elon warned of recently (chip shortage, ship shortage, expediting and flying parts all over the world, etc.).
SG&A Expenses will also need to go up related to all of the hiring in Berlin, Austin, and elsewhere around the globe not directly related to the factories, so I'm forecasting that "fixed" expense higher by $0.1B.