Tesla’s First Quarter Revenue Thrilled The Street

Tesla was one of the latest blue chips to report its earnings this week. The electric car maker reported Q1 earnings on Wednesday and revealed that revenue had more than doubled. Revenue came in at $2.70 billion for the quarter.

The company’s net loss however at $330.3 million was bigger than the $282.3 million from a year ago, mainly due to the company’s acquisition of SolarCity. Tesla reported a loss of $1.33 per share while analysts on average were looking for a loss of 81 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The car maker’s Model 3 is also on schedule for production in July. Looking ahead for the second quarter, Tesla expects year-to-date capital expenditures to be a little over $2 billion by then. This is in line with the company’s previous target range of $2 billion to $2.5 billion.

CEO Elon Musl has a lofty goal of producing 500,000 cars next year which would be six times more than what the company did last year. The company is relying heavily on the Model 3 to help reach this goal.

“One of our challenges will be to eliminate any misperception about the differences between Model S and Model 3,” Tesla noted in its release.

“We have seen a belief among some that Model 3 is the newest and more advanced generation of Model S. This is not correct. The Model S will always have more range, more acceleration, more power, more passenger room” and other features.

Shares of Tesla have increased more than 45% this year so far.

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