Tesla CEO Elon Musk has reason to smile as the company hit several new benchmarks in 2019.
Tesla Inc. enjoyed its best year ever in 2019 and has bigger expectations for 2020, including producing more than 500K vehicles worldwide, positive net income going forward and limited production of the the company’s semi truck will begin.
“We expect positive GAAP net income going forward, with possible temporary exceptions, particularly around the launch and ramp of new products,” the company stated in its earnings report. “Continuous volume growth, capacity expansion, and cash generation remain the main focus.”
This added to the fact that the company has already begun its ramp up of production on the Model Y compact SUV. The next Tesla product was slated to begin production in the final quarter of 2020, but has clearly beaten that goal — a reversal of fortune for CEO Elon Musk who has so often missed his own predicted forecasts that he jokes about it regularly.
(Is Tesla readying to spring a big surprise about the Model Y?)
The company hasn’t revealed yet when the first Model Y utes will be delivered, but there has been plenty of speculation that it would occur sometime in February. Confirmation of production at the company’s Fremont, California plant would seemingly support those predictions.
Setting those achievements aside, the company was not profitable for the full year. The company reported net loss from operations of $69 million on revenue of $24.6 billion for 2019. That was a significant improvement compared with 2018 when it lost $388 million on revenue of $21.5 billion.
If you take the company’s bottom line, its net income, it lost $862 million, or $4.92 per share, in 2019, as opposed to losing $976 million, or $5.72 per share, during the year ago period. However, the full year numbers only tell part of the story.
The company lost money for the first two quarters of the year, but reversed the trend, turning third and fourth quarter profits. In fact, Tesla reported net income of $105 million during Q4 on revenue of $7.4 billion. Its income from operations was $359 million, good for a 4.9% margin.