Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) Earnings: Electronic Car Maker To Beat Street In Q2?

Tesla Motors Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) reported fiscal 2014 second-quarter earnings of 11 cents per share, excluding items, on $858 million in revenue, compared with earnings of 2 cents a share on sales of $551.95 million a year earlier.

Shares of Tesla edged down 0.67 percent on Thursday to $223.30 in after-hours trading.

Wall Street expected Tesla to report fiscal 2014 second-quarter earnings of 4 cents a share, excluding items, on revenue of $810.57 million, analysts polled by Reuters predicted.

Meanwhile, the electric car maker reported net income of $17 million, or 12 cents per share, on revenue of $713 million for the first-quarter.

“The real question with Tesla is how are they going to be able to grow out that infrastructure in a very quick way? They were supposed to announce plans to build a new battery plant, a $5 billion investment,” Keith Bliss, senior vice president and director of sales and marketing at Cuttone & Co., Inc. told IBTimes. “There’s five states in the Southwest of the United States that are looking for that type of investment there. They need that to really substantiate the growth. By their estimates, they’re going to need to pump out about 500,000 new batteries every year.”

Tesla announced plans in February to build a large scale $5 billion battery “Gigafactory” designed to reduce cell costs and, by 2020, produce more lithium ion batteries annually than were produced worldwide in 2013. The company said in May it has not yet finalized the ultimate location for the battery plant and is going to start work on at least two locations at the same time in order to minimize the risk of delays.

“By the time the Gigafactory reaches full, annualized production in 2020, we expect battery pack production capacity to reach 50 GWh and cell production capacity to be 35 GWh,” Tesla said in the company’s first-quarter earnings report.

Tesla posted a record first-quarter for Model S production with 7,535 vehicles and delivered 6,457 of them. For the second-quarter, the company expects to deliver 7,500 units of its Model S vehicle and estimates it will produce 8,500 to 9,000 cars in the second-quarter, a 13 percent to 19 percent increase over the previous quarter.

The company said in May it is expanding its factory capacity to support increased Model S production later this year and plans to introduce the Model X next year. In addition, the automaker said extensive development on the Model X is underway and expects to
have production design prototypes ready in the fourth-quarter.

“We know that their earnings are going to be less from a year ago because they are investing in the business, but I want to see how much they’re investing in the business,” Bliss said. “How much of their Supercharger stations have they built? Can I drive from coast to coast through a variety of channels?”

This year the company plans to increase the number of
Supercharger locations by more than 75 percent from 2013. Tesla recently opened its 100th Supercharger station in New Jersey and plans to install 200 more Superchargers globally this year.
“I think the market has gotten very comfortable with Elon Musk we trust,” Bliss added.

Tesla is scheduled to host a conference call with shareholders at 5:30 p.m. EDT to discuss the company's second-quarter financial results and business outlook for the fiscal year.