Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Tesla Motors fourth quarter 2012 financial results Q&A call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Mr. Jeff Evanson. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Patrick. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Tesla Motors' fourth quarter financial results question-and-answer conference call. I'm joined today by Elon Musk, Tesla's Chairman, CEO, and Chief Product Architect, and Deepak Ahuja, Tesla's Chief Financial Officer. We announced our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2012 shortly after the close of the market today. The shareholder letter, financial results, and webcast of this Q&A session are all available at our investor relations website at ir.teslamotors.com. Today's call is for your questions, and we would like to keep the call to 45 minutes today. We will conduct the Q&A session live, so please press star 1 now if you would like to ask a question, and I would like you to try to limit your questions to 1 question plus 1 follow-up question.
Now, during the course of this call, we may discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements. Such statements are predictions based on management's current expectations. Actual events or results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those mentioned in our most recent 10-Q filed with the SEC. Such forward-looking statements represent our views as of today and should not be relied upon after today. We also disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Now, Patrick, could we please have the first question?
Our first question comes from Ben Kallo from Baird. Your line is open.
Hi, thanks for taking my question. I think one of the things that investors will be focused on is the amount of churn. Could you guys just talk about where you're seeing that churn, how much time do you think it takes for it to level off?
Yeah, I mean, I think you may be referring to, I think there was, there have been some articles about, like, Tesla wait time is reduced to, like, a month. Is that maybe what you're referring to, or?
Yeah, we could tie that in there, too, because I've heard this argument out there that, you know, you could call the store and they say that, yeah, I can get my car in a month or 45 days. Maybe you could tie that into also in having the record level of reservations, but then having, you know, kind of some people opt out of or take their money back, their deposit back.
Yeah, absolutely. I think that there was some articles out there that don't really accurately describe the situation. The average wait time now for a car is about five months. However, there are some configurations which are available in more like maybe six-eight weeks, which are the very high-end reservations. It should be pointed out that, like, we're really we are still talking about an average wait time that's on the order of five months. In fact, if we were to close all of our stores right now worldwide and not have any product specialists or salespeople, we would still sell out through the year.
That's maybe an important thing that people don't quite appreciate.
I guess, if you could just elaborate on how you're seeing demand pick up in other places outside North America and what we should expect, you know, as the year progresses there. I'll jump back in queue.
Absolutely. We, you know, right now we've really done almost no Model S sales in Asia, and we've done very limited amount in Europe. In fact, we only have two cars in all of Europe. That's gonna change dramatically in the next few months, and we're gonna start marketing heavily in Europe and then start doing the same in Asia. We feel very confident of achieving a demand level in excess of 20,000 units a year. I mean, I think we'll see quite a bit larger than that number as we expand to Asia and Europe and actually start marketing there. I have George Blankenship here with me.
George, do you wanna add anything to that?
We had a press event, a preview in Europe at the end of October. It was received very, very well. At this point, the interesting thing about Europe is that we're getting a nice response in reservations, and we don't even have any display cars there yet. You know, we will over the next couple of months, as Elon said. We'll be actually sending display cars over there, but right now we're still transitioning out of Roadster and into Model S in the stores without even the display cars and still having a nice pickup in European reservations.
As far as Asia goes, you know, it's announced, we've announced previously that we're opening in China our first store later in the spring, and we expect to have real positive results there. We're just now starting to show Model S in Asia, in Hong Kong and Japan with stores planned for there in the latter part of this year. We really haven't started actually displaying our car to customers hardly at all anywhere outside of North America, yet about 25% of our reservations are outside North America.
Right.
And in North America, you know, you probably saw in Q4, in our stores in North America, we had 1.6 million people go through the stores just in Q4. That's still, you know, it's wintertime, so don't have as much traffic as you do at Christmas. We expect to have lots, you know, a really nice increase in traffic in our North American stores this year.
Right.
The stores are working.
Thanks, guys. Congrats on the progress throughout 2012.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Ben Schulman from Pacific Crest Securities. Your line is open.
Hi, guys. Thanks. Can you give us any idea of what the regulatory credit revenue was in Q4?
Deepak, do you wanna comment on that?
No, I think for us, the way we look at regulatory credits is that it's great to get that. It's a positive stream of revenue, but it's unpredictable. As we look forward, we are much more focused on getting to profitability and achieving our targets without the benefit of the regulatory credits.
Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. In fact, maybe just to kinda clarify it further, as people may recall, there were three, you know, firm things that I promised we would do, that we would start production last year earlier than July, and we started in June, that we would get to 20,000 units a year and that by the end Sorry, that we would deliver 20,000 units in 2013, and that by the end of 2013, we would exceed 25% gross margin. I wanna be clear that 25% does not include regulatory credits.
Okay, great. Can you maybe give us an update on the quality control situation just in terms of what % of the cars are still getting some sort of post-production touch-up work?
We actually don't have those figures handy. Wasn't expecting that question. It's dropped dramatically.
I think, the ability for us to produce cars at a steady rate of 400+ a week is very much linked to our ability to produce quality cars online. Those go hand in hand, and it's continued to improve significantly.
Yeah. There was a time several months ago where every car that came off the line would require some degree of rectification, but now that is that is a fairly small percentage. I don't know the exact percentage on hand, but it's a fairly small percentage. The other thing that's also worth noting is that anything which is software related can be addressed by an over-the-air update, which is something that no other car company can do. I think that's actually worked quite well.
Great. Thanks, guys.
All right.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Patrick Archambault from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
Great. Thank you very much. you know, I guess my, you know, first question is, just given what you've said, you know, when you're looking at, net reservations, you know, I think you said cancellations were going to be similar to what you saw in Q4. Production, you have the, obviously the guidance of 4,500. you know, obviously dependent on sort of what you do in terms of reservations during the quarter, but it sounds like that net reservation number is probably gonna grind down a little bit, you know, in Q1, maybe even Q2 before kind of peaking up again. you know, is that correct?
Sort of how do you think about the trajectory of that overall net reservation number for this year?
Sure. Well, our intention is really not to have people wait 6 months for a car. We'd much prefer that our demand generation and production are closely synced so that when you order a car, you get it within less than 1 month, really. You'd ideally wanna get a car within maybe a few weeks or something like that. It's not our intent to have a long waiting list. I think that's pretty inconvenient for people. The limitation on production, I mean, where we said, you know, we think we can do at least 4,500 this quarter. That is not in any way a demand, just to be clear, in any way a demand-related thing.
That is purely a function of us being able to do steady state production and do so efficiently. Our focus in Q1 is on production efficiency, improving gross margin, and making sure customers are really happy when they receive the car. It's important for us, I think, to operate at that steady state for a bit, before we try to drive the number higher. I do wanna emphasize, we are not demand constrained. We're intentionally production constrained. Yeah, I mean that's I think a really important consideration. Yeah.
Thanks. Yeah, that's helpful color. If I can just squeeze one quick one in for Deepak, on cash flow, you know, I think you said Q1 would be breakeven. Can you just, you know, help us from a modeling standpoint think about the cash flow cadence, you know, as we're working through 2013? When is it that you would expect to move to positive? You know, understanding that there's obviously, you know, some seasonality elements to the production and working capital and what have you.
Patrick, our focus, as Elon indicated, is on a variety of cost reduction and operation stabilization projects, which are all gonna help us continue to generate more cash from our operations as each quarter goes by. Not sure if I can give you any further guidance beyond that. We feel very comfortable where we are as we look at our cash flows from operations. I think we're in a good place.
Yeah.
Okay. There will be, you know, it will swing to positive during the year, I guess would that be?
Oh, yeah.
Of course.
Absolutely.
Right. Of course. I think the key focus here is that, you know, we're starting the quarter in 2013 here being profitable, and then we just continue to grow on that.
Yeah. I mean, I think it's perhaps worth emphasizing this point, which is we really have very high confidence that we will have a profitable first quarter. This is only the very first quarter that we actually have been at our target production rate. We've had very little time to work on production efficiencies, improvements to gross margin, and all that. Despite all that, due to an enormous amount of hard work by a really dedicated group of people at Tesla, we're gonna be profitable. That's I think that's a pretty big deal. I mean, it's really enormous amount of blood, sweat and tears to get there.
It really can't be difficult for me to overstate the level of difficulty. But we're gonna do it. You know, that's, I think, somewhere we're really, really, really proud of that. I feel like we're halfway through the first quarter and we can say that with confidence.
Great. Thanks a lot, guys.
Our next question comes from Adam Jonas from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Evening, guys. This is EJ in for Adam. Could we step through your 1Q guidance for a bit? Given your guidance for 4,500 deliveries, mid-teen gross margins, and that you're calling for a 15% reduction in R&D versus 4Q and for SG&A to increase moderately, I'm having a bit of trouble getting to, you know, the slightly positive net income on a non-GAAP basis. Is there any re-bucketing of R&D costs going on, or are there other significant developmental service revenue that we're missing here?
I think, if you consider, the combination of, you know, Model S sales, our powertrain sales, our development revenue, and mid-teens gross margin, I think the guidance would probably lead you to somewhere along those lines close to something in the break-even range to slightly positive. Should be close to break even. We're hoping to beat that.
Okay. There's not really any re-bucketing of R&D going on?
No.
Okay.
We're not playing any accounting games, and this is very much a function of Model S, not other things.
Got it. Switching gears to CapEx for a second. I think you guys had previously expected about $240 million of CapEx for full year 2012, but ended up, I think, a little over $270 million. Is that something that you pulled forward from 2013 or is there something structurally that we should be looking out for here?
We had some amount of pull ahead of completion of production tooling and completion of some of our equipment in-house, which resulted in higher CapEx, as well as some of the infrastructure for the store and IT infrastructure. Overall, I think it was a bit of a pull ahead, but, you know, it's not surprising in the end.
Okay, great. Thanks very much.
Our next question comes from Aaron Chew from Maxim Group. Your line is open.
Hey, good afternoon, guys. Thanks for the question. Wondering if you could just drill a little bit deeper into the slower pace of reservations in January and set to date following the price hike going into effect at year-end. Is it safe to say what you're saying is it's down from December, but still over the October, November levels? You know, maybe just given the big jump from 3Q to 4Q, if you could just highlight if it's, you know, pacing above 3Q and below 4Q or where are you at a little bit more in detail?
Actually, I'm not sure what I recall offhand what our third quarter numbers were. I think, Aaron.
17 maybe.
You know, maybe the key point to bear in mind is like, as mentioned earlier, it's like we have enough reservations right now to fill out the year, you know, with maybe And just on sheer momentum, sell every car we make, even if we closed every store we've got. You know, there were certainly cancellations in January that were as a function of asking people to confirm. We're trying to clean out basically anyone who wasn't serious about buying the car. I don't think those are indicative of demand for the rest of the year.
It was higher than Q3.
Okay, sorry. George just confirmed, yeah, it's definitely higher than Q3.
Okay.
If you exclude the sort of reservations that were or the cancellations that were just as a function of asking people to confirm their order or not. We have a lot of demand in North America. I'd say for, you know, well in excess of half of our 20,000 unit per year demand, you know, or production target. You may have heard me say this before, where I think kind of demand breaks down between Asia, North America and Europe is something like 10-15 in North America, probably 10 in Europe, and maybe 10-15 in Asia. It'll take us some time to build up Asia, particularly China.
It doesn't really affect, I think, this year all that much. I mean, I'm quite certain that we'll deliver more than 20,000 cars this year. That's not really a concern. Like I said, literally, we could say goodbye to every store and every salesperson and still meet that target. We wanna make sure that we've laid the groundwork for an improvement above 20,000 units a year in 2014. As we're thinking about demand generation, it's really not about this year. It's about how do we exceed the 20,000 unit number next year.
Right. Okay, excellent. If I could shift real quick to the production side. Now that you've fully reached your target rate of production for the 20K pace, just wondering if you've been able to identify sort of how much flex you may have in that on a weekly basis. I mean, especially if you're thinking of 4,500 in 1Q. You know, is that up to 425 potentially, 450? Or is there a way you can maybe quantify that just so we can understand sort of how you're able to meet that 20K sort of in the back half?
Yeah, I mean, I think our production rate will be in excess of a 20,000 unit a year annualized rate in the second half of the year. The, you know, for this quarter and for probably most of next quarter, you have to decide what the relative focus is, and I think the important thing for us to focus on right now is production efficiency and improving gross margin rather than scaling up production. You know, right now we've got a pretty large number of temporary workers and that essentially were hired to deal with manufacturing inefficiencies.
It's really important that we improve those, the manufacturing efficiency and can reduce the number of temps essentially. We still expect to see an increase in full-time employees from beginning Q2 to end of the quarter, but it's really important that we make significant progress in reducing the size of the temporary labor force and addressing the manufacturing inefficiencies. Any company, you've gotta focus on what's important at any one time. Production efficiency is the thing to do. If we wanted to, we could raise production right now to 500 units a week. That's probably what we could do right now.
It would do so at the expense of efficiency, and we'd have a lot of overtime and that kind of thing. Right now it's really just production efficiency. At the risk of being repetitive, sorry.
All right. Very helpful. Thank you so much for the question.
Okay.
Our next question comes from Amir Rozwadowski from Barclays. Your line is open.
Just following up on that question of focus, Elon, is really sort of optimizing your workforce the primary barrier to getting to that 25% gross margin target, given that you are, you know, relatively a stone's throw away from sort of your optimal production rate?
There's a number of things. I mean, I'd say generally speaking, you know, the car business is a pretty cost-efficient business. I mean, it may not be great at a lot of things, you know, sort of breakthrough technology and that kind of thing, but it's pretty good at cost optimization. So in order for us to be competitive, it takes a lot of work on all fronts. It's certainly reducing the labor hours and the amount of overtime.
I mean, in December, even though we were cash flow positive, and, you know, sort of, you know, profitable on a per car basis when all things are considered, the amount of overtime that was required to achieve the 400 cars per week was pretty extreme. That has improved dramatically just coming into January and then February. You know, we've gone from, like, I think it was an average of over 60 hours a week, almost 70 hours a week in December.
Wow.
Yeah, exactly. With something In fact, it was somewhere between 50% and 70% above 40 hours. In other words, it was like an average 68-hour week that people worked in December, which is also like, it's a tough thing for people to sustain just on a burnout level. It also drives the cost to a pretty extreme level, because above 60 hours a week, you're actually in double time. Above 40 hours a week, you're in overtime. Now we've gone down to the point where we're at maybe a 50-hour week.
Almost a 70-hour week average in December to about a 50-hour week now, and then driving that to kind of the mid-40s in March. In addition to reducing the total number of people needed to get the car. The labor hours per car are dropping dramatically. That's maybe the single biggest factor, but close behind it are things like logistics, and supplied parts. Another thing that we had to do that was really inefficient in fourth quarter was we had to fly a lot of stuff.
When you fly something, it can cost as much as 10x what it costs to ship it by sea or rail or truck, particularly if it's heavy. We had to do some, you know, pretty dumb things like fly tires from the Czech Republic. I kid you not. That was just like one of the I want to punch myself in the face for that one. I'll at the risk of boring you, I'll just give you like a little anecdote there are like 100 things like this. As it turns out, we have a supplier for the 21-inch tires that's in the Czech Republic.
It was taking, we have terms of, we have 30-day payment terms with them. When they were shipping the tires, it actually took longer than 30 days to get to us. The tires would get to us and would be past due. That happened like a number of months, then they put a hold on the shipments because we hadn't paid on time. Even though we weren't getting the tires before we were getting the bill. They put the hold on that, then we start. Anyway, that was just a big desperate way to fly a bunch of tires from the Czech Republic to keep production going.
That gives you one sort of extreme example of how logistics costs can go bonkers. That's also dropped dramatically in the first quarter. In terms of supplied parts, as I mentioned, there's a huge number of supplier cost reductions taking place, 'cause just as we have inefficiencies, so do our suppliers. One of the biggest challenges we actually had, and I don't mean to unload on you guys all on the call, but the industry estimates for the number of cars that we were making were quite low. For example, there's an organization called IHS, which does industry estimates on production volumes. They had us down at 1,500 units a year.
For a number of our suppliers, when they didn't look at our forecast. They looked at the IHS forecast, and they didn't believe our forecast. They tooled up for some puny number of parts, you know, for a very low production volume. Then were caught flat-footed when we said, "No, we actually did mean the order that we sent you. We're making 20,000 units a year, not 1,500 units a year." We've had a number of such conversations where suppliers finally realized that we weren't kidding about that and took the steps necessary to supply us with the parts.
I think, I think we're starting to get beyond silly things like that, and get into a steady cadence of production. Suppliers are starting to take our volume seriously, and to offer us prices that are actually competitive in the market. Deepak , anything you wanna add to that?
No, I think those are all very good points. Our engineering teams are working closely in identifying efficiencies in material costs, both internally and with our suppliers. That's a huge focus, which is bringing a lot of costs down. Very positive momentum on that.
And, and-
Just to-
Oh, I was just.
Sorry. One other thing I should mention.
Please. Sorry. One thing I should add is like for a number of suppliers, we actually have price breaks that occur at certain volume levels and at certain calendar points. In particular, for example, with that, our deal with Panasonic, that's a huge factor, as the volumes, the cost of the cells in our battery pack drops. That's been quite helpful.
I guess, given where you are in terms of your production now and some of these issues seem to be in the rearview mirror, I mean, how, what is your sort of comfortability in sort of meeting or even exceeding that 25% target?
I'm highly confident that we'll be above 25% gross margin without considering zero emission credits by the end of this year.
Great. Thank you very much for the incremental color.
Oh, you're welcome.
Our next question comes from John Lovallo from Merrill Lynch. Your line is open.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the call.
You're welcome, John.
First question, Elon, would be for you. You know, despite all the noise in the press and all the back and forth, I mean, do you see kind of the potential necessary, additional planning for a driver of an electric vehicle? I mean, do you see that as a headwind? Are you hearing that from anybody?
You know, I think, you know, for a long-distance trip that right now, depending upon where you are in the country, a little bit of extra planning is needed. I think if you're in California or Nevada, it's, you know, we've got a good density of Superchargers for long-distance driving, so you don't really have to worry about it. Like, the ideal density of Superchargers is maybe around every, roughly every 120 to 150 miles. Whereas right now on the East Coast from, D.C. to Boston, it's about every 200 miles, 'cause we only have two.
We have a bunch more Superchargers that are going into the East Coast and across the country into Texas, the, you know, Seattle area, Chicago, and really want to get to the point where you don't even have to think about it. I think we're very close to that point. It's not like this is some distant point in the future. We're very rapidly deploying the network of Superchargers, and we're hooking that into the software in the cars. The navigation system will automatically route you to a Supercharger. You just plug in wherever you wanna go, and it'll just route you and route you through the Supercharger network to get where you wanna go, so you don't even have to think about it.
All that's gonna happen, like, in the next several months. It's not far away. I mean, I think when people actually use the Supercharger system, which is free, by the way, it's like, that seems to be lost in this whole debate. Like, with what car do you have free long distance? It's pretty freaking great, I think. We're continuing to improve the rate at which the Supercharger can put energy into the car. We've deployed some of the solar panels over the Superchargers. We're gonna start deploying a lot more, which cuts that cost of electricity down. It's pretty awesome, I think.
Then there's, you know, we've got a fairly, I think, meaningful announcement about a step change in Supercharging technology coming later this year. That's actually sort of originally what we wanted to do the article with The New York Times about. You know, I don't know. Who knows? Maybe we'll ultimately do it with them. I think that's gonna be, people are gonna be pretty interested in that announcement when it comes out. Yeah, this whole thing of, like, you know, does the car work in the cold? It's like, yeah, it works really well, actually. We're gonna make it work even better over time.
It does lose 10% of its range in winter if it's very cold. So do gasoline cars. People kind of forget about that, too. Yeah.
Okay. That's very helpful. Then, Deepak, the Q4 step-up in developmental services revenue, was that more of a kind of a true-up from the third quarter where possibly some of that Daimler revenue got pushed back?
Partially, yes. That's right.
Okay. Thanks very much, guys.
Our next question comes from Dan Galves from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
Good afternoon. You guys have probably by this point asked most of your current U.S. backlog to configure their vehicle or to confirm. Just wanted to know what you've learned about likely ordering patterns in terms of battery size, options, et cetera. Do you have any sense of where average transaction prices may shake out this year?
It's definitely more people are ordering the larger battery pack than we thought. You know, it seems to be that like I can say, like less than 10% of people are ordering the 40 kWh pack. You know, that's an interesting data point. Not saying that couldn't change in the future, but that's what we're seeing right now, sort of maybe at 10% or less. A majority of people are ordering the big battery pack actually, which is again, I wouldn't count on that in the long term, but a majority of people are actually more than 30% are ordering the 85 kWh pack, which is a positive surprise. Hopefully that continues.
I think that's the best experience somebody could have with the car. Hopefully that keeps going into the future.
Any revenue outlook for this year that you could provide for us?
Um-
In terms of average transaction prices.
I guess our inclination is to take it one quarter at a time, but it's looking, I think, I don't think we'll be disappointed by the revenue numbers this year. I think it's, I think people will react positively to the revenue number that occurs in this year. Then obviously we want to make sure that we've laid the groundwork this year for a meaningful increase in 2014 as well.
Okay, great. One other one, how much in terms of deferrals are you experiencing, you know, as you go through your reservation book? Just wondering, like how many people are really looking for a U.S. leasing option, and if you could provide us any update on the likelihood of a U.S. lease this year, that would be great. Thanks.
Well, we do see some deferrals taking place because there's a new color coming out, which is actually a really great color. I have to admit, it is a really great color. We spent a lot of time on that red. Not that I'm suggesting anyone delay their order, but it is an awesome red. We got a lot of interest in that. There's a segment of people that don't want the air springs, even though I think that's actually something people should really, it's worth getting, but some people don't wanna get it.
There's a little bit of deferral on that front. We're not really seeing deferral. It's mostly deferral 'cause certain options aren't available right now as opposed to other reasons really. Sorry, what was the second question?
Leasing.
Leasing.
Yeah, leasing. All of the sales and all the things I mentioned thus far are with zero U.S. zero North American leasing. We don't even offer leasing in North America. That is something that we do wanna offer, maybe second half of the year. We wanna make sure that the terms of the lease, like the, you know, interest rate and all that are compelling. Even if we did zero leasing in North America, we could still sell all of our production this year. Leasing is entirely optional for us at this point. We only wanna come out with a leasing product that's compelling.
We don't wanna come out with a kind of a lame leasing product. We are talking with some of the major financial institutions in the world about doing leasing, and those talks are progressing in a good direction. In order for us to get the best rates for our customers, I mean, we're not really interested in making a bunch of incremental money from leasing, but we wanna make sure we get a good deal for customers.
It's important for those big financial institutions to feel really comfortable with Tesla, and that's why, you know, one of the reasons it's gonna be really helpful for us to be profitable this quarter and subsequent quarters is to give greater comfort to the large banks in giving us for our customers a good leasing interest rate. I think that's hugely comforting to the big financial companies. I do see long-term, not so much this year, I think this year leasing is gonna comprise a very small percentage of our volume, but I do think next year leasing will be a big factor. Within Europe it'll be at least a moderate factor this year.
We already have a significant leasing deal signed with Athlon, which is one of the major European leasing companies.
Okay, thanks very much.
Our next question comes from Elaine Kwei from Jefferies. Your line is open.
Hi, everyone. Congrats on hitting some pretty big milestones this quarter.
Thanks.
Just following up on the demand generation for 2014, I was curious, you know, what percentage of the new reservations you're seeing coming from stores, and are you seeing a pretty good correlation there with reservation growth and the store openings? I know you probably don't wanna give away any tricks up your sleeve, in terms of just general ideas for, you know, the next steps in marketing, do you know, pursue some traditional automotive channels, or, you know, are you still primarily gonna rely on the stores and perhaps word of mouth or other alternative methods?
Well, there's nothing better than, at the end of the day, than word of mouth, which has really been fantastic. In fact, we see a lot of demand occurring where we've delivered the most cars because that's where the most word of mouth occurs, which I think is a really good predictor for the future. As for the stores themselves, George?
What we're seeing in the stores is that some people come in, they see the car, and they wanna put a reservation down today. "Oh my gosh, how do I get one as soon as possible." Other people, they wanna come back, they wanna ask some questions, and they keep coming back. The beauty of the store is that they're located in locations where people frequent on a regular basis, so they don't have to go out of their way to stop back and ask future questions. That's working really well. I think when we start looking at 2014 and 2015, I think what we need to do is step back and understand that in our segment, the Model S segment of automobile sales worldwide, less than 30% of them are done in the U.S.
There's this massive opportunity for us as we go international, where we haven't even tapped it with one new design store yet. None of the stores we have anywhere in the world are like the stores we have in North America in a high-traffic shopping center. We will start doing those, we'll start doing those this year, so we can start having the same results and getting in front of people elsewhere outside the U.S. like we're doing here. That's one of the things we're gonna do in China. We're opening up in this really, really great shopping center in Beijing in the spring that is a high-traffic location. We've got one scheduled for Hong Kong. We've got one scheduled that we're looking at in a couple of other countries in Europe.
When people come in and interact with us when they're not thinking about a car, it's like the best experience you could have with them. When it comes time to buy a car, they think, "Oh, that's where I wanna buy it, and that's who I wanna buy it from." As a result, the longer a store is open and the more cars that are on the road around those stores, the more effective the stores become. The longer stores open, the better.
Yeah, that's great color. Would you be able to give us an update on Model X reservations at this time? Maybe perhaps some rough timing around when you might start to step up the marketing push on that one?
Sure. You know, because we haven't pushed the Model S at all, in fact, we literally only have one demonstration unit even, so I wouldn't want people to necessarily judge us against the progress with Model X. Rather than comment on it and have people infer something about that number, I'll just say, like I'm pretty happy with how those reservations are going with basically 0 effort. I mean, really the donut. I actually think that we're likely to see buying interest for Model X that is at least 70%, you know, or thereabouts, that of the Model S. In certain countries, I think it'll probably exceed the Model S in demand.
Great. Thanks so much, guys, and congrats again.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Thanks. We have time for one more question. One more caller, please.
Our next question comes from Andrea James from Dougherty & Company. Your line is open.
Hi, thanks for taking my question. You're suggesting positive net income in Q1 and just, I guess, what still needs to happen to get there, if anything, and then would anything, you know, throw that off for the rest of the year as well?
Sure. Good question. I mean, unless there's some force majeure event, you know, like a giant earthquake or something, or big flood or typhoon or, you know, we feel really confident. In fact, I'd say that we will be profitable in the absence of a force majeure event this quarter. The, it's my aspiration and I think it is the aspiration of everyone at Tesla to be profitable in subsequent quarters as well. You know, I'm cautiously optimistic about that, but I don't wanna commit to it until I know more. We're, you know, we're committing to Q1, I think cautiously optimistic about Q2 is a way to think about it. Yeah.
What sort of information would sort of make you know, more constructive on Q2? Like, what do you hope to learn as Q1 goes on?
Well, I mean, maybe I'm hedging too much. I just don't wanna be overconfident, really. I mean, I do think we'll be profitable in Q2, and, yeah, in subsequent quarters too. I guess rather than sort of an absolute commitment, I'd say I'm just really highly confident of that being the case.
No, that makes sense. Thank you so much.
You're welcome.
Okay. Thank you everyone for calling. I wanna thank you all for joining us this afternoon. We look forward to seeing you in the coming weeks, either on a factory tour or on our travels to see you. Goodbye.
All right, thanks.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's program. This concludes the program. You may all disconnect.