Tesla (TSLA) releases Q4 2023 results: slight miss on earnings

Tesla (TSLA) released its financial results and shareholders letter for the fourth quarter and full-year 2023 after market close today.

We are updating this post with all the details from the financial results, shareholders’ letter, and the conference call later tonight. Refresh for the latest information.

Tesla Q4 2023 earnings expectations

As we reported in our Tesla Q4 2023 earnings preview yesterday, the Wall Street consensus for this quarter was $25.640 billion in revenue and earnings of $0.73 per share.

Now, did Tesla meet, beat, or miss the expectations?

Tesla Q4 2023 financial results

Just after the market close today, Tesla released its financial results and confirmed that it did miss expectations with earnings of $0.71 per share (non-GAAP) and revenue with $25.167 billion during the last quarter.

The actual GAAP earnings are actually much higher at $2.27 per share. Tesla explained:

One-time non-cash tax benefit of $5.9B recorded in Q4 for the release of valuation allowance on certain deferred tax assets.

Tesla’s gross margin on vehicles is down again this quarter, albeit slightly: 17.6% down from %17.9.

That’s due to price cuts, which are still coming at a higher pace than cost-cutting. The automaker still managed to reduce cost in Q4:

Cost of goods sold per vehicle declined sequentially in Q4. Our team remains focused on growing our output, investing in our future growth and finding additional cost efficiencies in 2024.

We will be posting our follow-up posts here about the earnings and conference call to expand on the most important points (refresh the page to see the most recent posts):

Here’s Tesla’s Q4 2023 shareholder presentation in full:

Here’s Tesla’s conference call for the Q4 2023 results: