At the end of a day many Americans spent adjusting to the election of Donald Trump as president, SolarCity Corp. reported its third-quarter results. Despite these being potentially the last ever set of numbers as a public company, they were even more downplayed than usual, with no accompanying analyst call.
This might seem strange, given shareholders are due to vote in about a week on whether to approve the company’s merger with Tesla Motors Inc. and that Trump’s elevation is widely seen as a yuge risk to the incentives underpinning the solar leasing business (the stock dropped 4 percent on the day). Bear in mind, though, that last week’s Q&A with the management of the two companies wasn’t the most convincing sales pitch. On that basis, maybe it was best to let the figures speak for themselves.
Not that they were entirely convincing. The first thing to note was the cut to guidance on installations, something SolarCity has now done in all three of this year’s quarterly updates.
