Stellantis Chief Muses EV Margins, Targets Tesla

On Wednesday, Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares suggested that Tesla’s profitability was on the decline due to the automaker having to confront some of the issues of a legacy manufacturer.

"They are entering my world, the world of tight pricing, cost competitiveness, and the operational issues that a big company like ours may face," Tavares told the press during a presentation of Stellantis’ half-year financial report. 

Since everyone loves a little industrial drama, the statement became national news. But is Tesla really on the decline because it’s finally on the level of other multinational automakers or is Tavares just coping? 

Read more
Report: Engine Issues Will Cost Hyundai and Kia $2 Billion In Q3

Hyundai Motor Group's Theta II GDI engines are costing the company a fortune, with the company recently acknowledging the troubled powertrain will leave the manufacturer $2 billion leaner for the third quarter of 2022 alone. While that hit will be split between Hyundai and Kia brands, it still represents a healthy slice of their quarterly revenue.

Read more
Tesla Takes $331 Million in 5th Consecutive Profitable Quarter

Tesla continued to prove itself as the electric automaker par excellence by posting its fifth profitable quarter in a row on Wednesday. The California-based (for now) automaker reported a net income of $331 million and a 39 percent improvement in revenue to $8.8 billion.

Of course, a huge amount of that money came via regulatory credits Tesla sold to its rivals. By nature of being an EV manufacturer, the company was able to sell $397 million in environmental absolution while helping its own bottom line. Though third-quarter deliveries were quite strong as automotive revenue jumped 42 percent to $7.6 billion.

Read more
Toyota Maintains Black Ink in Last Quarter

An ongoing pandemic and serious North American sales hit weren’t enough to bring Toyota to a loss in the quarter ending June 30th.

The automaker posted its weakest fiscal first-quarter return in nearly a decade, but last quarter’s operating profit, despite plunging 98 percent on a year-over-year basis, still came out in positive territory. While the road ahead is rocky and paved with uncertainty, Toyota says it was surprised as how quickly it bounced back.

Read more
Grey Skies Gonna Clear Up: Honda Reports Bigger Loss, Sees Light at the End of the Year

Honda reported a $765 million loss in the fiscal quarter ending June 30th, a marked downturn in its financial standing when compared to the quarter before.

Hardly shocking, though, given the virus-related global sales plunge and the production shutdown that afflicted the American manufacturing scene in April and May. Honda’s characterizing it as a “nowhere to go but up” scenario.

Read more
Fiat Chrysler Posts Slightly Smaller Loss; North America Profitable

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles revealed a second-quarter loss of $1.24 billion on Friday, down slightly from the $1.8 billion net loss posted for Q1.

As before, the pandemic weighed heavily on the automaker’s finances, though this spring’s two-month shutdown of domestic manufacturing and the revenue drop arising from the virus didn’t spell red ink for its all-important North American region.

Read more
Ford's Earnings Report Not Nearly As Dismal As Feared

Ford Motor Company made many investors happy on Thursday, reporting a less-than-feared loss in the second-quarter of 2020.

Despite the company’s chief financial officer predicting a Q2 loss of $5 billion or more three months ago, the automaker’s actual earnings before interest and taxes was only in the red $1.9 billion — a minor miracle given the stormy backdrop.

Read more
Daimler Sees Positive Earnings by Year's End, Reliance on Big Glitz

Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler reported its second-quarter earnings Thursday, revealing a net loss of nearly 2 billion euros and a revenue drop of more than 12 billion euros. Thanks, coronavirus.

While the red ink spilling from Daimler’s balance sheet is cause for concern, the automaker put on a happy face, regarding this year’s financial blows as mere setbacks. The company expects pre-tax earnings to return to the positive side of the scale by the end of the year. To help grow future profits, the Mercedes-Benz brand plans to turn its focus to the toniest of products.

Read more
Tesla: A Surprise Profit, a Stock Bounce, and a Factory Site Secured

Everything was moving in Tesla’s favor Wednesday night, with the electric automaker reporting an unexpected quarterly profit — its fourth in a row — for Q2 2020. This positive financial news, made possible by other automakers’ hunger for regulatory credits, sent the company’s already elevated (overvalued?) stock closer to the face of God.

At the same time, CEO Elon Musk announced something long suspected: That Tesla’s next domestic assembly plant will set up shop in Austin, Texas.

Read more
Bad Timing: Nissan Warns of Full-year Loss After Pandemic Slams Finances

Nissan can’t catch a break. Instead of the new decade heralding sunnier skies and calmer seas for a financially compromised Nissan, the first quarter of the year (and counting) brought nothing but grief.

Declining sales and shuttered plants spurred by the coronavirus pandemic further destabilized the automaker’s balance sheet. It was the kind of out-of-the-blue event both beancounters and executives feared, occurring just as the automaker was preparing (hoping?) to exit its present crisis with the help of a new CEO and a new plan.

Clearly, that recovery will have to wait, as analysts are now mentioning 2008 in the same sentence as “Nissan.”

Read more
Gird Your Investor Loins: Ford Predicts $2 Billion Loss

The earnings picture is growing gloomier at Ford, with the automaker now preparing investors for a steep loss in the first quarter of the year. After posting a poor Q4 report for the end of 2019, some of that pre-pandemic weight could carry over onto this report card — where it will mix with U.S. sales that tanked in the middle of March.

If only it was American sales Ford needed to worry about.

Read more
Dismal Earnings Reports Lands, Nissan Cuts Profit Forecast Again

Nissan has handed in its third-quarter 2019 earnings report, and the grades are bad. Missing analyst expectations, the automaker’s operating profit fell 83 percent in the first 9 months of the fiscal year, with revenues down 12.5 percent. That leaves Nissan with an operating margin of 0.7 percent — down three percentage points from this time last year.

Operating profit in Q3 (October-December) was $210 million.

As the automaker attempts to triage its way out of a financial hole that deepened rapidly in early 2019, Nissan has again pared back its full-year profit forecast.

Read more
Record Sales, Lackluster Earnings As Mercedes-Benz Shoves Cash Into Evs

Mercedes-Benz sold a record 2,385,400 passenger vehicles around the globe in 2019, topping the previous year’s tally by some 3,400 units, and subsequently brought in more money while doing it. Revenue rose 3 percent, the automaker said in its end-of-year earnings report, but that intake didn’t translate into more profit.

Far from it.

As the automaker embarks on a cost-cutting campaign aimed at freeing up cash for electric vehicle development, among other things, the German manufacturer announced its net profit dropped to $2.95 billion from $8.29 billion in 2018. As a result, shareholders can expect a paltry dividend payout.

Read more
Model Y Production Already Underway, Tesla Claims

Tesla’s fourth-quarter 2019 earning report, released Wednesday night, gave analysts and investors what they’d been looking for. In the midst of a global production ramp-up, the electric automaker posted a second consecutive quarterly profit ⁠— offering compelling news about a new model in the process.

That vehicle is the Model Y, a Model 3-based compact crossover that’s apparently already rolling off the assembly line in Fremont, California.

Read more
Nissan's Finances Still in the Toilet

Fulfilling earlier promises that the company had hit a wall and might require several years to recover, Nissan reported a 70-percent decline in quarterly operating profit on Tuesday. It also pulled back its full-year operating profit forecast by 35 percent to 150 billion yen, representing the automaker’s worst annual performance in 11 years. The business now expects to see global retail volume somewhere around 5.2 million vehicles (down from estimates 5.5 million).

“We are revisiting all our assumptions, and as you can see that is why we revised down our forecast for sales volume for the full year,” incoming CFO Stephen Ma explained to Reuters after releasing its first-half results for 2019 (ending September 30th). That was swiftly followed by the announcement of an extraordinary shareholders meeting to decide on proposals for current directors leaving their positions ( Hiroto Saikawa, Yasuhiro Yamauchi, Thierry Bolloré) and the new director nominees.

Read more