Tesla CEO Elon Musk Apologizes During Earnings Call

Tesla reported a record $717.5 million net loss this week in its second quarter financial report. The company burned through $739.5 million in cash in the last quarter.

Adjusted for stock-based compensation, Tesla lost $3.06 per share while analysts had been expecting a loss of $2.88 a share.

Despite the loss, Tesla shares broke out after the earnings report because CEO Elon Musk pledged that the company will see net profits in future quarters. Shares saw a 9.3% jump in after-hours trading on Wednesday.

Musk also apologized to two analysts that he had cut off on Tesla’s first quarter call.

That call had led to a sell off after Musk insulted the analysts and said their questions were “not cool” and “so dry.” Musk said, “It’s not right,” to an analyst from RBC Capital Markets. “Hope you accept my apologies.”

He said to Bernstein’s Toni Sacconaghi, “I would like to apologize for being impolite on the prior call. Obviously I think there’s really no excuse for bad manners and I was violating my own rule in that regard. There are reasons for it, I got no sleep, 120 hour weeks, but nonetheless, there is still no excuse, so my apologies for not being polite on the prior call.”

The electric vehicle maker’s leader has said he expects the company to avoid returning to the markets for capital and to be “essentially self-funding on a go-forward basis.”

According to Musk, Tesla would use money generated from sales to fund big projects such as an estimated $2 billion new factory in China and another plant in Europe.

Tesla is expecting to produce 50,000 to 55,000 Model 3s in the third quarter, an increase of at least 75 percent from the first quarter.

The company had finally reached its goal of producing 5,000 Model 3 sedans per week by the end of June and now wants to produce 6,000 per week by the end of August. It also expects to reach 10,000 Model 3s per week “sometime next year.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) and have not been compensated for this article.