SAN FRANCISCO — Tesla CEO Elon Musk had prepped Wall Street for a first quarter loss but analysts were still stunned by its size: $702.1 million, among the company’s worst quarters in the past two years.

The net loss was more than double what analysts had predicted as Tesla’s sales slumped 31% for the quarter. The loss of $4.10 per share left Musk spending much of a conference call explaining how it happened. But he also extolled his forecast that demand and profit margins will increase as Tesla rolls out updated products and pricing for its three models, and sells more battery storage units.

Demand for Tesla’s Models S, X and 3 is returning to normal in the second quarter after the company delivered only 63,000 vehicles from January through March, Musk said.

“My impression right now is that demand is quite solid, quite strong,” he said Wednesday.

He predicted another loss in the second quarter but said Tesla would be back in the black in the third quarter. The first quarter loss came after two consecutive profitable quarters, the first time that’s happened in Tesla’s 15-year history.

The company said that due to “unforeseen challenges” it was only able to deliver half of the vehicles ordered in the quarter by March 31 as it ramped up deliveries in Europe and China. That pushed a large number of deliveries, and revenue, into the current quarter, it said.

Tesla’s cash balance at the end of the quarter shrunk by $1.5 billion since December, to $2.2 billion. The company attributed the decline to a $920 million bond payment, and Musk said it might be time for Tesla to raise capital again.

Excluding one-time items and stock-based compensation, the company lost $2.90 per share, worse than Wall Street estimates. Analysts polled by FactSet expected a loss of $1.15 per share. Revenue rose almost 40% over a year ago to $3.5 billion. But it still fell short of analyst estimates of $5.42 billion.

Despite the less-than-stellar numbers, Tesla’s stock was little changed in extended trading Wednesday following the earnings report.

The company said one-time items cost it $188 million during the quarter, including a loss for predicted increases in return rates for cars that had been sold under Tesla’s used car price and buy back guarantee programs. Tesla has guaranteed the value of the cars after certain time periods and will buy them back for a guaranteed price.

The company still expects to produce 360,000 to 400,000 vehicles this year, and if a new Chinese factory hits volume production at the end of the year, it could make 500,000.

Tesla likely is nearing its “cash floor,” the amount it needs in the checking account to pay all the bills, said Gartner analyst Michael Ramsey.

“It’s anxiety provoking,” Ramsey said. If Tesla continues burning cash at the first quarter rate, it would run out of money in less than six months.

But Ramsey said that’s not likely. If Tesla can produce and sell all the vehicles that it predicts in the current quarter, it will generate a lot of cash, easing its problem. Tesla said it believes deliveries will hit 90,000 to 100,000 vehicles from April through June.

Tesla, Ramsey said, has many supporters and shouldn’t have trouble borrowing money or issuing more stock to generate cash. The fact that Musk said it may be time to raise capital means “you can pretty much count on it,” Ramsey said.

Musk also told analysts that the company has become more efficient as it tries to save cash.

“I think it’s healthy to be on a Spartan diet for a while,” he said.

Chief Financial Officer Zachary Kirkhorn, meanwhile, hinted on the conference call that Tesla will build its new semi starting next year at its factory near Reno, Nevada. That’s where the battery and electric drive units will be made, he said.

And Musk said the company will decide in the next few weeks whether it will build the Model Y small SUV in Nevada or at its Fremont, California, factory. Deliveries are scheduled to start in the fall of 2020.

Musk also said Wednesday that average prices for the Model 3 mass-market car are running around $50,000, with very few taking the $35,000 version.

Another problem for Tesla is fading sales of its higher-priced models S and X as the vehicles age. But Tuesday night, the company announced updates to both, including a new drive system that increases the range by 10% per electric charge. Long-range versions of the S will be able to go 370 miles per charge, for example. The vehicles also will get new suspensions, faster acceleration and more comfortable rides, Tesla said.

Profit margins on the S and X, which can run well over $100,000, should rise because the improvements actually save the company money, Musk said.

Tesla has lost more than $6 billion since setting out to revolutionize the auto industry 15 years ago, but Musk foresees a profitable future fueled in part by a ride-hailing service made up of electric cars driven by robots.

Musk believes Tesla’s technology is capable of letting the vehicles drive themselves. That terrifies some critics who worry Musk’s plan to transport passengers in self-driving Teslas without a human to take control in emergencies will maim and kill people.

____

Krisher reported from Detroit.

(Bloomberg) — Beyond Meat Inc. piled on the market value, serving up the year’s best first day for a U.S. initial public offering.

The maker of vegan beef and sausage substitutes soared, rising as much as 192 percent from its IPO price of $25 share. The shares, which opened at $46, closed their first day of trading Thursday up 163 percent to $65.75 in New York, giving the company a market value of about $3.8 billion.

The first-day pop eclipsed the 81 percent gain by Silk Road Medical Inc. in its U.S. debut last month and was the best for a U.S. listing raising at least $200 million since before the 2008 financial crisis. Globally, Beyond Meat bested the debuts this year of all but a handful of small listings, none of them larger than $22 million.

Beyond Meat raised $241 million from the sale of 9.63 million shares on Wednesday, after increasing its marketing range for them to $23 to $25.

Beyond Meat Makes History with Post ’08 Crisis IPO Pop

The company’s business and Hollywood celebrity backers, including Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and actor Leonardo DiCaprio, helped explain the investor zeal, along with a growing consumer appetite for meat alternatives.

Investor and actress Jessica Chastain, who is a vegan, said she cooks Beyond Meat products at home, to the approval of her non-vegan husband and friends.

Toronto Burger

“I love any plant-based product,” Chastain said in an interview at the Nasdaq exchange. She said she invested in Beyond Meat after being on set in Toronto and being unable to find a Beyond Burger at an A&W restaurant. “I tried for four months in Canada to get one and it sold out everywhere,” she said.

Chief Executive Officer Ethan Brown doesn’t expect a conflict between making environmentally based decisions and those that serve shareholders.

“Consumers are looking for products that enable them to be healthier and reduce their footprint,” he said in an interview. “Every time we’re making a sale we’re furthering our mission and increasing sales.”

International Potential

One food-industry consultant said investors are taking a lot on faith with money-losing Beyond Meat.

The company’s valuation in its IPO is “entirely reasonable if it’s got internationalizable potential and a great product, and has capacity to make money in its core profit structure,” said Robert Lawson, chief executive officer of London-based Food Strategy Associates. “But it’s not clear that Beyond Meat is that.”

The company will need to expand its product range to succeed outside the U.S., where burgers aren’t as popular, Lawson added.

Beware Vegan ’Meat’ Peddled by Venture Capitalists: Bloomberg Opinion

Consumers are looking for more plant-based meat alternatives because of concerns about health, animal welfare and the environment. Startups like Beyond Meat are tapping into that demand by offering beef-like versions of the veggie burger and other meat products.

Supermarket sales of meat alternatives surged 19.2 percent to $878 million for the year ended Jan. 5, according to data from Nielsen. The field is crowded, with Silicon Valley-based Impossible Foods also placing its meatless burgers in thousands of restaurants, including all Burger King locations. Nestle SA makes a plant-based Incredible Burger, which is available in McDonald’s Corp.’s German locations.

TGI Fridays, Del Taco

Beyond Meat is sold in grocery stores nationwide and is also increasingly being featured on restaurant menus, including TGI Fridays and Carl’s Jr. and now under a new deal with Del Taco Restaurants Inc. Its burger patties, with no cholesterol and 5 grams of saturated fat, are made of pea protein and beet juice, which makes them “bleed” when cooked. That compares with 80 milligrams of cholesterol and 9 grams of saturated fat for a 4-ounce patty of 80 percent lean beef.

And despite the company’s mission, Brown said the company will choose the customer over the planet when necessary.

“Our packaging is not great,” he said, referring to the plastic wrap. “That runs counter to what I believe in in terms of ability to recycle things and the overall footprint of that packaging, but we care about the quality of the product. So we will make trade-offs that make sense for the product and market instead of the most environmental path.”

Shrinking Losses

Beyond Meat shrank its 2018 loss, while its revenue more than doubled for the second year in a row, according to its filings. Last year, it lost $29.9 million on revenue of $87.9 million compared with a 2017 loss of $30.4 million on revenue of $32.6 million.

The company had significant shortages in 2017 and 2018 and has since made significant investments to keep up with demand, Brown said.

“Now it’s about sequencing customers,” he said. Quick-service restaurants have thousands of locations, so supplying them requires a huge jump in output. To keep up, Brown said, the company has been staggering rollouts.

Brown said he wants to eventually lower the price of the company’s products, which currently can cost twice as much as standard ground beef. Beyond Meat wants to sell its products for less than animal protein in the next five years, he said.

McDonald’s Ex-Chief

Beyond Meat’s investors include former McDonald’s Chief Executive Officer Don Thompson and venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers LLC, which owns 16 percent of the company, and Twitter Inc. co-founder Ev Williams’s Obvious Ventures with 9 percent, according to its filings.

Its backers had included Tyson Foods Inc., the largest U.S. meat producer. Tyson sold its 6.5 percent stake in Beyond Meat, according to a statement in April. Tyson’s shares were sold both to insiders and new shareholders, Brown said.

The offering was led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Credit Suisse Group AG. Beyond Meat trades on the Nasdaq Global Market under the symbol BYND.

Juul founders Adam Bowen and James Monsees, who were named to the 2019 TIME 100 list, called vaping’s potential for helping adult smokers ditch combustible cigarettes “one of the greatest opportunities for public health in the history of mankind” at the TIME 100 Gala on Tuesday.

Juul has dominated the e-cigarette market with its sleek devices, which deliver nicotine without many of the harmful, cancer-causing substances in combustible cigarettes. But while the devices are designed to give adult smokers an alternative to cigarettes, Juul and other brands have developed a massive following among teenagers — despite laws that prohibit anyone younger than 18 from buying them.

Widespread use by teenagers, which has been called an “epidemic” by top public-health officials, has prompted concerns about nicotine addiction among young people. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in March introduced proposed regulations meant to significantly restrict the sale of many flavored e-cigarettes, which are thought to be especially appealing to young people. A few months before that proposal was officially announced, Juul elected to stop selling many of its flavored e-cigarettes in stores and shut down its U.S. Facebook and Instagram accounts, which have been criticized for appealing to teenagers.

Monsees said removing many flavored products from retail stores has had a “very meaningful and definitely measurable impact on [sales],” but declined to say by how much they have dropped. He also said the company supports proposed legislation to raise the legal age for buying tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, to 21, even though that policy would “absolutely” have an impact on sales.

“We’re more than willing to take any cut in sales or revenue to do the right thing and prevent underage use,” Bowen said.

Bowen and Monsees got the idea for Juul when they were Stanford grad students in 2004. It didn’t take long to take off. They sold 16.2 million of their devices in 2017 alone, enough to secure a $12.8 billion investment from tobacco giant Altria in 2018.

The partnership raised eyebrows from critics who questioned the company’s decision to partner with a tobacco company.

Monsees called that a “reasonable gut reaction,” but said Altria “has the capabilities to accelerate that mission” of helping adult smokers switch to e-cigarettes. “We get access to their database of approximately half of all smokers in the United States,” Monsees said. “That allows us to target the switching message directly to consumers that are using cigarettes.”

The duo also said the company remains focused on cutting down on youth use. Juul recently unveiled a track-and-trace program, through which authority figures can report products that were illegally used by minors to help the company determine how they’re getting into teens’ hands.

“Any underage use is unacceptable, ultimately,” Monsees said.

Even for adults, Juuling may not be harmless. While a recent Juul-funded study found that the devices can help current smokers quit, which could reduce rates of lung cancer, preliminary evidence has also uncovered some potential health risks associated with e-cigarettes, including cardiovascular and respiratory issues.

Walgreens has decided to raise its minimum age for tobacco sales several weeks after a top federal official chastised the drugstore chain for violating laws restricting access to cigarettes and other tobacco products.

Deerfield, Illinois-based Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. said Tuesday that it will require customers to be at least 21 years old to purchase tobacco in any of its more than 9,500 stores nationwide. The policy starts Sept. 1.

Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said in March that Walgreens was a top violator of tobacco sales laws among pharmacies that sell those products. Rival CVS Health Corp. stopped several years ago.

Laws restricting tobacco sales vary nationally.

Most states have set a minimum age of 18, while a dozen have raised that to 21, according to the American Lung Association. Alaska and Alabama set their minimum ages at 19. Many cities and counties also have passed local laws establishing the minimum at 21.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said last week that he plans to introduce legislation to raise the minimum age to 21 nationally. The Kentucky Republican called the legislation a top priority.

(Bloomberg) — Facebook Inc. said it’s banning a number of controversial far-right figures, including Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos and Laura Loomer, for violating the social-media company’s policies on hate speech and promoting violence.

The company is also blocking religious leader Louis Farrakhan, who is known for sharing anti-Semitic views; Paul Nehlen, a white nationalist who ran for Congress in 2018; and conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson. All of these individuals and accounts that represent them are also banned from photo-sharing app Instagram.

“We’ve always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology,” a Facebook representative said Thursday in a statement. “The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision to remove these accounts today.”

Facebook is often chided for failing to stop the spread of harmful speech and misinformation on its platform, and Thursday’s bans show that the company is taking a firmer hand in enforcing its own service terms. Even so, the moves are bound to draw criticism from media and politicians on the far right. Facebook has been accused numerous times of suppressing conservative voices. The company denies its decisions are based on politics, and says these individuals have repeatedly violated its policies around hate speech and promoting violence.

Jones, who peddles conspiracy theories through his media site InfoWars and has frequently said that the Sandy Hook school shooting was staged, was temporarily suspended from Facebook last year. His official fan page was also previously banned, but Jones was allowed to operate a personal account. Now that has been prohibited on Facebook’s sites as well.

Facebook is also banning all fan pages dedicated to InfoWars stories and videos. The company had previously banned the official InfoWars Page in August, and banned 22 more InfoWars-related Pages where Jones was an administrator earlier this year. Now the company will remove all fan pages that promote InfoWars, even if they have no formal connection to the site or its employees.

The Menlo Park, California-based company didn’t give details on what led to the bans this week, though a spokesperson said that Jones, Yiannopoulos and Loomer have all recently promoted Gavin McInnes, founder of the violence-prone far-right group the Proud Boys, whom Facebook banned in October.

When it comes to dangerous individuals who promote hate speech or violence, Facebook can ban users for actions they take in the real world, or on other services, like YouTube. In Jones’s case, he hosted McInnes on his show late last year andpromoted him on Instagram earlier this year. A Facebook spokesperson says Yiannopoulos and Loomer have also publicly promoted McInnes. The company didn’t specify other posts or actions taken by any of the individuals blocked on Thursday.

Yiannopoulos, the former editor of Brietbart News, and Loomer, a far-right activist who is also known for spreading conspiracy theories, have both previously been banned from Twitter Inc.’s social-media service. Twitter permanently blocked InfoWars and Jones in September for violating its harassment policies.

When Facebook bans an individual or organization, it typically also removes posts from other users who praise or support them. In this case, a Facebook spokesperson said that people will be able to post about or praise these banned users, though they won’t be allowed to share any of their views or opinions that Facebook considers hate speech or calls for violence.

“Our work against organized hate is ongoing,” Facebook said in the statement. “We will continue to review individuals, pages, groups and content against our community standards.”

(Bloomberg) — Netflix Inc. lost as much as $8 billion in market capitalization in a few minutes of trading on Walt Disney Co.’s news of its upcoming — and cheaper — rival streaming service.

Disney unveiled details of the service on Thursday after the close, saying it would launch Nov. 12 at a price of $7 a month or $70 a year. That undercuts Netflix, whose most popular U.S. plan costs about $11 a month.

Netflix shares fell as much as 5 percent to $349.36 shortly after the open in New York Friday, sending its market as low as $152.5 billion.

Analysts have been sanguine about Netflix’s rising subscription prices, which haven’t seriously dented its 60 million-strong U.S. customer base. Still, the company has rarely faced a challenge like the deep-pocketed Disney, which is willing to lose money for years on Disney+ as it moves to grab market share.

Disney went the opposite way. Its shares jumped to a record high, adding as much as $25 billion in market value, for a total of about $235 billion.

The entertainment giant presented Disney+ on a sound stage used to make the original “Mary Poppins,” delivering an Apple-style presentation of the online product. The service will live or die based on its content — and that’s where Disney made a big statement. Disney+ will feature an arsenal of kid-friendly programming, including 13 classic animated movies, 21 Pixar features, original series, and material from its Marvel and Star Wars franchises.

(COPENHAGEN, Denmark) — Pilots for Scandinavian Airlines on Friday launched an open-ended strike following the collapse of pay negotiations, forcing the company to cancel virtually all its flights — 673 of them, affecting 72,000 passengers.

The Stockholm-based carrier said talks on a new collective bargaining agreement with the SAS Pilot Group, which represents 95% of the company’s pilots in Sweden, Denmark and Norway, collapsed early Friday.

In airports throughout the region, SAS staff in yellow vests were assisting stranded passengers to rebook or obtain refunds.

Mina Kvam Tveteraas and her friend Bettina Svendsen were stranded at Stavanger Airport in Norway after their flight to Copenhagen was canceled.

“We have booked a hotel for three nights and the rooms are not refunded,” Kvam Tveteraas told Norway’s TV2 channel. “I have no idea what to do and I’m mad.”

The pilots’ negotiations that started in March mainly centered on salary increases and working hours.

Details have not been released but the pan-Scandinavian union says it wants salaries to be in line with the market rate, while SAS negotiators have called the requests “unreasonable and extreme.” SAS spokeswoman Karin Nyman said the pilots’ demands “would have very negative consequences for the company.”

Wilhelm Tersmeden, chairman of the Swedish pilots association, said SAS employees are facing “deteriorated working conditions, unpredictability in planning work hours and insecurity for their own job.”

“Almost one in four SAS flights is flown by subcontractors and we want to know what our future looks like,” he told Sweden’s TT news agency.

Jacob Pedersen, an analyst with Denmark’s Sydbank, estimated the strike in average would cost between 60 million and 80 million Swedish kronor ($6.3-8.4 million) a day.

The strike “makes it clear that SAS is more vulnerable than we previously expected,” he said. “Competition is tough, and with a European economy moving at a slower pace, SAS may also fight harder for profits this year.”

The company said the strike doesn’t include flights operated by SAS partner airlines, making up approximately 30% of its departures, and is not expected to affect other airlines’ departures and arrivals.

(STERLING, Virginia) — President Donald Trump criticized social media companies after Facebook banned a number of extremist figures, declaring that he was “monitoring and watching, closely!!”

Trump, who tweeted and re-tweeted complaints Friday and Saturday, said he would “monitor the censorship of AMERICAN CITIZENS on social media platforms. ” He has previously asserted that social media companies exhibit bias against conservatives, something the companies have rejected as untrue.

The president’s comments came after Facebook this week banned Louis Farrakhan, Alex Jones and other extremists, saying they violated its ban on “dangerous individuals.” The company also removed right-wing personalities Paul Nehlen, Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson and Laura Loomer, along with Jones’ site, Infowars, which often posts conspiracy theories. The latest bans apply both to Facebook’s main service and to Instagram and extend to fan pages and other related accounts.

Facebook’s move signaled renewed effort by the social media giant to remove people and groups promoting objectionable material such as hate, racism and anti-Semitism. The company said it has “always banned” people or groups that proclaim a violent or hateful mission or are engaged in acts of hate or violence, regardless of political ideology.

On Twitter, Trump cited a number of individuals he said were being unfairly treated by social media companies, including Watson and actor James Woods. He insisted it was “getting worse and worse for Conservatives on social media!”

Woods, one of Hollywood’s most outspoken conservatives, has had his Twitter account locked. Twitter spokeswoman Katie Rosborough said Woods will need to delete a tweet that violated Twitter rules before he can be reinstated.

“We enforce the Twitter Rules impartially for all users, regardless of their background or political affiliation,” Rosborough said.

Trump, who uses Twitter extensively to push his message, recently met with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey at the White House after attacking the company and complaining that it was not treating him well because he was a Republican. He later described it as a “great meeting.”

The president had more than social media on his mind Saturday. Trump also tweeted that he was holding out hopes for a deal with North Korea on its nuclear program, as well as improved relations with Russia, now that he feels the special counsel investigation is behind him.

Published in partnership with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom based in New York.

Katie Meyler, the CEO and founder of More Than Me, has resigned six months after a ProPublica investigation revealed her charity missed opportunities to prevent the rapes of girls in its care by a senior staff member, Macintosh Johnson, with whom Meyler once had an intimate relationship.

Meyler, who founded the charity in 2009 to save vulnerable girls from sexual exploitation, had been on a leave of absence pending the results of three separate inquiries by the charity and the Liberian government into ProPublica’s report, which concluded that Meyler and charity officials gave Johnson significant power over vulnerable students, were not transparent about the extent of his abuse and failed to make sure that all of his potential victims were tested after it came to light that he had AIDS when he died.

The findings of these inquiries have yet to be made public, but Meyler announced her departure Friday evening on Facebook:

“Over the past few months, false allegations have been circulating around the horrific mistreatment of girls in our program. Some of the false allegations suggest I knew or should have known what was happening to these girls. That’s simply not true,” Meyler wrote.

“Here’s the truth: I first learned about these crimes in June 2014 and immediately ensured the perpetrator was reported to the Liberian authorities; he was in jail four days after I learned of his abuse. I cooperated fully with the police investigation and did everything I could to protect our students.

“However, I recognize that my public role as CEO has become a distraction from the critical mission and incredible and proven work of our team which is why I recently made the difficult decision to resign.”

After the publication of ProPublica’s story and documentary film, More Than Me for the first time apologized, admitting in a statement that it had failed girls in its care and acknowledging, “Our leadership should have recognized the signs earlier.”

The charity said it would provide school-wide HIV testing for students at its academy in Monrovia, the Liberian capital.

The chairman of the U.S.-based board of directors, Skip Borghese, resigned, along with a second U.S. board member and a member of the charity’s Liberian advisory board. Three separate inquiries were announced: One by a committee of U.S. board members, which retained a law firm to conduct an “in-depth, external audit;” one by a panel convened by the charity’s Liberian advisory board; and one announced by the Liberian government, which named multiple agencies that would take part in its probe.

In an interview this month, Liberian Deputy Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection Alice Johnson-Howard said the multi-agency report was still in progress.

A More Than Me spokesperson said on Friday that there would be more information about the charity’s reports next week and confirmed Meyler’s resignation.

This is the full text of Meyler’s Facebook statement:

In 2009, I founded More Than Me with a single goal: help the young women and girls of Liberia. Since then, we’ve founded a Girls Academy, partnered with public schools across the country, and educated thousands of students. Our focus has always been on helping these girls and putting them first.

Over the past few months, false allegations have been circulating around the horrific mistreatment of girls in our program. Some of the false allegations suggest I knew or should have known what was happening to these girls. That’s simply not true.

Here’s the truth: I first learned about these crimes in June 2014 and immediately ensured the perpetrator was reported to the Liberian authorities; he was in jail four days after I learned of his abuse. I cooperated fully with the police investigation and did everything I could to protect our students.

However, I recognize that my public role as CEO has become a distraction from the critical mission and incredible and proven work of our team which is why I recently made the difficult decision to resign.

More Than Me has always been an organization focused on doing what’s best for young women and girls in Liberia. While my role as CEO has concluded, I urge every More Than Me supporter to redouble their efforts to help these vulnerable girls. They need our support.

More Than Me Girls: I started this organization because of my deep and profound belief in you. Please know, nothing can or ever will change that. No one can stop you. You make darkness shutter. Rise, powerful, courageous girls, rise! The world is waiting for you!

With Love Always,
Katie