|
After-hours numbers can be somewhat random and "estimates" are often sand-bagged a bit so that companies will beat them. With Tesla, deliveries of the Model 3 look good and the company keeps increasing production capacity so if you're a believer in Tesla, they're going in the direction you want with a new plant in China, increased capacity in California, a new model on the way, and a German plant being planned. I think Tesla's earnings beat expectations, but I don't think Tesla is about making money today. Tesla today is more about scaling up production, making cars in more parts of the world, making a new Model Y, etc. And I think along those metrics Tesla is doing quite well. They're shipping a high-volume car that customers are loving, they'll have a cross-over based on that car available soon, they're proving they can open new plants, etc. If you're a believer in Tesla, they're probably hitting the metrics you're interested in and you have realistic expectations about their current earnings which they probably exceeded. With Facebook, it could be a number of things. Their margins are going down. 2018 had 45% margins which shrank to 34% in 2019. Earnings per share are down 15%. For the quarter, net income was up 8% YoY and margin was only down 4%, but it's not the most encouraging financial numbers. Heck, Facebook increased headcount by 26%, but their daily/monthly active user base is only up 8-9% and revenue is only up 27% so they're employing more people per user and revenue is only scaling with headcount. That's not necessarily bad, but you'd hope that they'd be able to keep margins higher and maybe grow revenue or users faster than headcount. But it might just be that after-hours numbers don't necessarily indicate what investors will think during a full trading day. |