Tesla: Strip Out SpaceX And The Tax Benefit, And You're Left With $77 Million

I previously called the SpaceX optionality, and that call was dead wrong. The business underneath it got worse, so I'm downgrading to a sell. Texas registrations quadrupled in six weeks. Cars actually driving unsupervised: still about twenty. Registered isn't driving, and I need unsupervised autonomous driving. Strip out the SpaceX mark and the tax benefit, and roughly $77 million of profit is left on $28.2 billion of revenue. A 1.4% operating margin is the real quarter. I'm watching two things into late October: does the driverless fleet finally grow, and does SPCX bounce back? If they do, this downgrade ages badly.

Two-thirds of Tesla's (TSLA) reported profit this quarter traces back to a stock Elon Musk's other company just took public. Equity gains, or stock gains, because there are quite a few tech