Tesla stock looks like the “Bad News Bears” of the auto industry.
Tesla (TSLA -12.34%) stock fell 11% through 11:45 a.m. ET Wednesday after the company badly missed analyst forecasts for earnings Tuesday night.
Heading into the second-quarter report, Wall Street forecast the electric car leader would earn $0.62 per share on sales of $24.8 billion. Tesla exceeded the latter expectation, reporting Q2 sales of $25.5 billion. But this sales growth came at a cost to profit: Earnings were only $0.52 per share.
Tesla profits collapse
Not all Tesla’s news was bad. Notably, the company’s energy generation (i.e., solar panels) and storage (i.e., batteries) division — which believe it or not is now more profitable (with an 18.9% gross profit margin) than the automotive business, doubled in size to $1.5 billion in sales. And free cash flow for the quarter increased nicely to $1.3 billion.
Automotive sales, however, fell 7% year over year….
