Tesla delivers fewer cars than expected
TESLA delivered many fewer vehicles than expected in the first quarter of the year, according to figures released this week by the electric car manufacturer.
It delivered a total of 63,000 vehicles to customers in the first three months of 2019, 31 per cent less than the previous quarter and down from the 76,000 units expected by analysts surveyed by FactSet.
For the Model 3, the car that is supposed to transform Tesla into a mass producer, the company delivered 50,900 units, compared to 54,600 expected by industry experts.
“Due to a massive increase in deliveries in Europe and China, which at times exceeded 5x that of prior peak delivpected ery levels, and many challenges encountered for the first time, we had only delivered half of the entire quarter’s numbers by March 21, ten days before end of quarter,” Tesla said in a statement.
“This caused a large number of vehicle deliveries to shift to the second quarter. At the end of the first quarter, approximately 10,600 vehicles were in transit to customers globally,” the automaker added.
Due to the lower-than-exdeliveries, combined with price adjustments made during the quarter, “we expect Q1 net income to be negatively impacted,” it said.
But the automaker, whose financial situation is fragile, said that it nonetheless “ended the quarter with sufficient cash on hand”.
Tesla still plans to deliver 360,000 to 400,000 vehicles throughout the year, and its production was 22 per cent higher than first quarter deliveries, with a total of 77,100 cars built, including 62,950 Model 3s. “We are doing everything we can to deliver cars globally as quickly as possible and look forward to continuing to scale deliveries throughout the year,” Tesla said. INVESTORS have raised a glass to the Australian Dairy Nutritionals Group as it continues its shift from white milk to infant formula with the $5 million purchase of an offshore powder processing plant.
The group said the mixing, evaporation and drying plant – which is set to be disassembled and rebuilt at the group’s Camperdown Dairy Park site – has the initial capacity to produce 400,000 to 600,000 tins of infant formula each year, with the company hoping to produce its own branded range of organic infant formula by mid-2020.
The group did not specify where the plant was now located, only that the vendor was a producer and exporter of infant formula into the Chinese market that had outgrown the production capacity.
Shares in Australian Dairy Nutritionals rose nearly 13 per cent to 14 cents late yesterday.
“The board sees the purchase of this plant as a way to accelerate its entry into the organic infant formula market in a sensibly staged manner without the initial, much higher cost of a large dryer having significantly more capacity,” the group told the ASX.
Australian Dairy Nutritionals is in the midst of shifting its focus on low margin commodity milk sales in favour of building higher margin brands and sales through organic infant and toddler formula products.
In December, the company entered the booming organic formula market by finalising its acquisition of Flahey’s Nutritionals for $1.5 million. It said its mixing and drying plant is expected to arrive in Australia in September.
The group said the purchase also included a standalone cheese making plant, which will be used to produce specialty organic dairy ingredients including organic whey.