Were Tesla's Dismal Quarterly Numbers Insignificant? This Money Manager Explains

Tesla Motors Inc TSLA reported worse than expected fourth-quarter results on Wednsday post the closing bell.

The company posted a loss of $0.13 per share for the quarter versus analysts expectations of a profit of $0.31 per share.

Although the company built 11,267 cars, which are enough to reach its production target of 35,000 for the whole year, it faltered when it came to delivering the cars on-time to customers.

Andrew Cupps from Cupps Capital Management, was on CNBC Thursday to discuss why Tesla’s fourth-quarter numbers don't matter in the long run.

It’s Now A ‘Real’ Company

“It feels to me a lot like it did about two years ago, it feels like kind of chapter two or phase two,” Cupps said. “I think, there has been many more chapters in the Tesla story than that, but in a big picture, here we are again.”

“Now, it’s a real company, real deliveries, billions of dollars of revenues, but there is analogy back to a couple of years ago when the stock price was $30 or $50 and they were just delivering those first products and the proof point was could they produce the Model S in any type of volume.”

Tesla Is ‘On Course’

He continued, “And here we are, they are not doing that in [space] and we are right in front of their second release and I think that this is a much bigger story than [whether] they are on or off a 1,000 cars in this time period or that period.”

“It’s a bigger picture to journey that Elon Musk has been pretty good about laying out for us and he has delivered and so, you can choose to believe that he is on course or off course. To me there were many more data points suggesting they are on course rather than off.”