Tesla’s first-quarter net income plummeted 55% as falling global sales and price cuts sliced into the electric vehicle maker’s revenue and profit margins.
Excluding one-time items such as stock-based compensation, Tesla made 45 cents per share, falling short of analyst estimates of 49 cents, according to FactSet., Tesla has slashed prices again on some of its electric vehicles and its “Full Self Driving” system in an apparent effort to boost the company's earnings growth.
On Monday, as investors digested the price cuts, shares in Tesla Inc., which is based in Austin, Texas, fell another 3.4%, pushing the year-to-date decline to just under 43%. Since the start of the year, though, the S&P 500 index is up about 5%.In a note to investors Monday, Bank of America Global Research analyst John Murphy wrote that Tesla's shares have been under pressure since the start of the year due to weaker EV sales, and production that exceeds demand.
From January through March, Tesla manufactured 433,371 vehicles and delivered 386,810, making over 46,000 more than it sold. This even after it cut prices last year on some of its more expensive models, and key executive Andrew Baglino, senior vice president of powertrain and energy engineering, announced he was leaving after 18 years.
Some experts, though, don't think any system that relies solely on cameras like Tesla's can ever reach full autonomy. “There's no ambient lighting to illuminate that pedestrian,” Anderson said. “So any optical system including cameras or human eyes dependent on other light to reflect off an object will fail at that kind of job."