Tesla (TSLA) Q3 2024 earnings beat driven by $739 million in zero emission EV tax credits

The Tesla company wasn't able to beat its revenue expectations, but it could have been worse without the federal tax credit program supporting it.

This week, Tesla reported its quarterly earnings results, disclosing how much the company was aided by federal tax credits. The company’s Q3 2024 earnings results came in with a win in earnings-per-share, but a miss on revenue. It just so happens the company also received about $739 million in zero emission EV tax credits offered in federal programs which helped it get closer to only missing that expectation by a hair rather than a notable amount.

Tesla reported its EV tax credits on its balance sheet in the Shareholder Deck supplied with its Q3 2024 earnings results. There, the company reported $739 million under the line item of “Automotive regulatory credits”. This wasn’t enough to get Tesla past the Wall Street revenue expectation of $25.4 billion, but it was enough to cushion the miss with $25.18 billion overall revenue reported for the quarter.

Tesla is still in decent shape despite the Q3 2024 revenue miss. The company still managed to beat on its earning-per-share for the quarter. Its automotive sales revenue was also up from the previous quarter by a few million over its Q2 2024 earnings results. Even so, it could be seen as slightly concerning that a significant portion of Tesla’s success was based on the federal EV credit. In this particular case, the credit was nearly enough of a factor to be the difference between a hit or miss on its earnings results expectations.

With this in mind, Tesla continues to be an interesting company to watch in finance and markets. Stay tuned for more Tesla coverage and updates as they drop right here at Shacknews.