When Tesla unveiled its results for its third quarter, analysts and the financial press mostly focused on how far the numbers fell short of the already negative forecasts. The pre-Halloween report indeed uncorked one of the year's most ghoulish surprises, given that few enterprises in the annals of financial markets have inspired the kind of unbridled optimism with which Wall Street has showered the EV giant.
Tesla posted its lowest quarterly earnings per share in two years at 66 cents, a figure that lagged consensus estimates by 10%. The stunningly bad numbers spooked investors, who sent its stock tumbling over 13% from $254 at the market close on October 17 to $220 by the early afternoon of October 19, a drop that erased over $90 billion of market capitalization.
