Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
Tesla CEO Elon Musk
- Tesla is scheduled to report fourth-quarter earnings after Wednesday's closing bell.
- Elon Musk, the electric-car maker's CEO, warned investors and employees two weeks ago that pressure to achieve a profit and make the Model 3 more affordable led to more than 3,000 job cuts at the company.
- Shares of Tesla were trading up 3% ahead of Wednesday's results.
- Watch Tesla trade live.
Tesla is set to report its fourth-quarter results Wednesday afternoon, nearly two weeks after warning that the pressure to achieve a profit and make the Model 3 more affordable led to more than 3,000 job cuts.
Wall Street is expecting profits to fall compared to last quarter. Here are the important numbers to watch, according to analysts surveyed by Bloomberg:
- Fourth-quarter revenue: $7.1 billion. Last quarter, Tesla reported $6.8 billion.
- Adjusted fourth-quarter earnings per share: $2.10. Last quarter, Tesla reported adjusted earnings per share of $2.90 a share, which took analysts by surprise.
Elon Musk, the company's CEO, said earlier this month that the company was targeting a small profit this quarter.
"This quarter, as with Q3, shipment of higher priced Model 3 variants (this time to Europe and Asia) will hopefully allow us, with great difficulty, effort and some luck, to target a tiny profit," he wrote in a letter to employees.
Bullish Tesla analyst Colin Rusch of Oppenheimer told clients Monday that "Model 3 demand, production, and margin" will be the primary drivers of the stock this year.
Read more: A Model 3 update, the China Gigafactory, and a new product roadmap: Here's what one analyst is looking for when Tesla reports.
The past year has been a volatile one for the company, marked by Musk's "funding secured" tweet last summer, in which he expressed a desire to take Tesla private. He later settled fraud charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In Musk's letter earlier this month, he called last year "the most challenging in Tesla's history."
Tesla shares rose by 3% Wednesday to more than $307 apiece. Since reaching a record high of $387.46 last August, they've fallen by 21%.
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