For the second quarter, Tesla Motors widened its loss to $293.2 million, equivalent to a loss of $2.09 per share, compared with the loss of $184.2 million, equivalent to a loss of $1.45 per share, in the corresponding quarter last year.
Elon Musk, the company's visionary CEO and founder, however, remains unfazed despite the struggling financials of Tesla Motors as the company performed much worse compared to Wall Street expectations.
The revenue of Tesla Motors was a bright spot in the company's earnings release, as it raked in total revenues from sales of its electric vehicles and other sources such as services of $1.27 billion, compared with $955 million in the second quarter of 2015. However, offsetting the increased revenue performance is the higher operating expenses of Tesla Motors, which was reported at $512.8 million compared with $383.6 million in last year's second quarter.
Tesla Motors executives remain optimistic that the company will be able to report a profit for the first time by the end of this year. In a conference call, Tesla Motors CFO Jason Wheeler stated that a profitable quarter is achievable if the company is able to properly execute its production and delivery goals for this year's second half.
Perhaps nobody is as optimistic as Musk, as he said in the call that the problems that the company faced in the production of the Model X electric SUV are now solved.
"I feel we're in a good place at this point," Musk said, after the company missed delivery targets over the past several months due to shortages of parts and hubris in adding too much new technology to the Model X.
"Basically we were in production hell for the first six months of this year," Musk said, but the production line of Tesla Motors is now humming with the manufacturing of the Model S and the Model X now stable.
In its earnings release, Tesla Motors said that it produced 18,345 vehicles in the second quarter and ended the period with a consistent production rate of almost 2,000 vehicles per week. The company also said that its production and demand is on track to support 50,000 deliveries for the upcoming second half.
According to Musk and Wheeler, Tesla Motors has been making significant improvements in its manufacturing and factory logistics, an aspect that the company hopes will get even better as it rushes to finish its $5 billion Gigafactory in Nevada to help in meeting the expected demand for the $35,000 Model 3 electric vehicle.
Musk added that he is looking to make the company's factories look like "alien dreadnoughts," as he repeated his goal of perfecting "the machine that makes the machine," referring to how these factories will be churning out the electric vehicles of Tesla Motors.
The Model 3 will be the overwhelming focus of Tesla Motors moving forward, Musk said, as it looks forward to what it expects to be a profitable second half.
