Tesla’s Q1 2025 financial update is out ahead of the company’s scheduled conference call this evening. We suspect investors will have some serious questions that require some serious answers. The reason? A year-over-year net income drop (attributable to common stockholders) of 71 percent.
You can peruse a summary of Tesla’s current standing and check out the numbers. In addition to the income drop, operating income is down 66 percent. Those are significant declines, and they aren’t the only numbers that point downward. Total gross profit is down 15 percent. Total revenue is down 9 percent. As for vehicles, total production is down 16 percent across all models, while deliveries are down 13 percent.
Photo by: Tesla
According to Tesla’s report, part of the production decline is due to the Model Y update that slowed activity across the company’s four factories for several weeks. The financial hit is partially due to reduced average vehicle selling prices, along with a drop in deliveries and an increase in operating expenses.
The elephant in the room is Elon Musk’s political activities as the head of President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has more than a few people riled up. To that end, Tesla’s Q1 report doesn’t elaborate, but does admit that politics and tariffs could impact the company’s bottom line. Per the report:
‘Uncertainty in the automotive and energy markets continues to increase as rapidly evolving trade policies adversely impacts the global supply chain and cost structure of Tesla and our peers. This dynamic, along with changing political sentiment, could have a meaningful impact on demand for our products in the near-term.’
It’s not entirely doom and gloom, however. The company says there’s “sufficient liquidity to fund our product road, long-term capacity expansion plans, and other expenses.” Moreover, plans for the Tesla Semi and Cybercab are still on track for next year, and new “more affordable models” are still planned for a production launch in the first half of 2025. Since we’re already staring May in the face, there’s just a little over a month left to fulfill that promise.
Stay tuned for more. We’ll be listening to the Q1 report and jump in with updates should new information become available.