Here is where the gross profit (and the 700M net loss comes from).
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Looking at gross profit
If you look at total automotive revenue ($2.735b)/ total automotive cost of revenues ($2.195b) = gross profit% of 24%
Company overall of revenues ($3.4b) / cost of revenues ($2.9b) = overall gross profit% of 15%
It drops overall because service runs at a small loss right now (the far majority of vehicles are still under warranty - this will change over time), and the solar business & energy storage margins are tiny right now.
Net Loss
Anyway, so with all the profit, where do the losses come from then?
Take the $456m gross profit, and deduct:
$367m for R&D -> this is R&D on the Model Y and Tesla Truck. Not proportional to numbers of existing models they sell
$150m for for interest expenses -> Sins of the past. Not proportional to numbers of cars they sell.
$686m from general sales & admin -> See below
That gives the $784m net loss.
Sales & admin
Of course I 100% expect you'll come back saying if they don't spend the sales & admin money they won't sell any cars. That's true - some of that is showroom expenses which are proportional to vehicles sold - the rest are fixed.
Compared to 12 months ago, Tesla's quarterly revenue is up $712m while the sales & admin expenses increased by $83m. That's 12% - so let's attribute 12% of sales & admin expenses as being directly proportional to vehicle sales. That's 12% of $686m, which is $80m. It would be nice decreasing the other $600m fixed expenses as well but either fewer or more vehicles being sold doesn't make a difference there.
I'll throw in another one. Not shown above, but $50m of vehicle revenue came from ZEV credits, which shouldn't exist in the first place and are meaningless in the long run. Add $50m to the $80m proportional sales & admin expense, and subtract $130 from the vehicle revenues.
Vehicle profit
With the $130m of soft expenses, it means vehicle revenue goes down to $2.6b at direct expenses of $2.2b. Even with all proportional cost attributed to vehicles included in there, they are still making ~18% profit on vehicles.
So when someone says "Tesla is losing $13k on every vehicle sold", it is utter B/S. The more vehicles they sell the more money they get - which by definition is gross profit. Simple as that.
There is only one thing they need to do to actually be net profitable as well: Sell more vehicles. Which at this point means
make more vehicles. Tesla still has to prove that they can actually do that of course.
