Tesla profits plunge despite selling more vehicles in past three months

Tesla, the car company run by Elon Musk, has reported that it sold more vehicles in the past three months after boycotts hit it hard earlier this year but profits still fell sharply.

Third-quarter earnings at Tesla fell to 1.4 billion dollars (£1.05bn), or 39 cents a share, from 2.2 billion (£1.65bn), or 62 cents a share, a year earlier.

That marked the third quarter in a row that profit dropped. Excluding certain charges, earnings were 50 cents per share, down from 72 cents per share a year ago and below the 56 cents forecast by Wall Street analysts.

Revenue rose to 28.1 billion dollars (£21.03bn) from 25.2 billion (£18.86bn) in the June through September period, beating Wall Street’s forecast.

Tesla shares fell 3% to 425.90 dollars in after-hours trading.

The stock slipped as Mr Musk, as he has done for most of the year, sought to shift investor attention away from selling cars to other businesses: its driverless robotaxi service, its AI product and its Optimus robots for the home and factories.

“It’ll seem so real, that you’ll need to poke it,” he said of the Optimus, predicting it will likely become “the biggest product of all time”.

Mr Musk also said he was confident enough in the robotaxi to remove “safety monitors” from the driver’s seat by the end of the year in its first market, Austin, Texas. He added that the service, which is also available in San Francisco, will roll out to as many as 10 other metro areas also by the end of the year.

Financial analysts have been upping their estimates of revenue since Mr Musk announced earlier this month that sales of electric vehicles, one part of the multi-pronged business, rose 7% in the quarter after plunging for most of the year.

The sales were boosted by customers rushing to take advantage of a 7,500 dollar federal tax credit for those EV purchases before it expired on October 1, possibly stealing sales from the current quarter.

Tesla was also helped by surging sales from its separate battery storage business but the EVs still make up much of the overall revenue figures.