Tesla delivers $311m quarterly profit

Tesla has reported a quarterly profit for just the third time in its 15-year history.

The electric car-maker made a record $311.5m (£241m) in the three months to 30 September, as the pace of car deliveries accelerated.

The result is a victory for chief executive Elon Musk, who had promised a profit to investors earlier this year.

Tesla’s last profitable quarter came in 2016 and it had faced mounting questions about its finances.

In a letter to investors, Mr Musk called the quarter “historic” and said it was a credit to the firm’s “ingenuity and incredible hard work”.

He also said Tesla was on track to be profitable again in the fourth quarter.

Shares jumped more than 8% in after-hours trading in New York.

The results are a sign that the firm has turned a corner, said Nicholas Hyett at Hargreaves Lansdown.

“Normally we’d tell investors to avoid reading too deeply into a single quarter’s numbers, but this quarter really counted at Tesla,” he said.

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Tesla had been under strain after ramping up spending for its launch of the Model 3, its newest car aimed at a wider market.

Following a surge of orders last year, it struggled to meet manufacturing targets and deliver cars to customers.

That prompted worries about Tesla’s finances and fanned concerns that customers would get impatient and cancel orders.

However, less than a fifth of the roughly 455,000 reservations the firm reported in 2017 have been cancelled, it said.

Production has also picked up, driving sales.

Tesla said last month it produced more than 80,000 vehicles, of which more than 60% were Model 3s.

Revenue more than doubled to $6.8bn in the quarter, mostly from car sales.

Job cuts and other reductions in spending also helped the bottom line.