Every public company has to report its progress every quarter and every public company goes through the same motions. The executive team presents to the world or press on how the business is doing to outsiders and questions are asked about the past and future performance. When the results are positive and operations are moving in the correct direction, the meetings go much easier. When there are concerns the issue is how does the company address the problems. The better the results, the higher the expectations each quarter and what happens if the company does not meet expectations?

In an article by Jack Ewing of the New York Times News Service, two of the companies which have the highest expectations every quarter are Appple and Tesla. The later reported it would build a factory in Mexico to build lower cost Tesla models which was a good thing. The issue is Tesla has been one of the world’s dominant maker of electric vehicles, how does it keep its dominant position?

The company offered a seminar on its manufacturing processes, supply chain organization and software. The message was that Tesla is eons ahead of other automakers in technology and efficiency. Tesla wishes to double its production of vehicles, but the analysts were wondering how?

For a number of years, Tesla had the market to themselves, but the competition both at the higher end models and less expensive models every year is heating up, how will Tesla do? Does investor day exceed expectations?

Linking to dividend paying stocks, every quarter public companies have an investor day to tell their story and if you are an investor the sessions are worth listening or reading about. From the dividend paying perspective after the company has said it made a profit and can pay a dividend, ideally raising the payment, you will want to know how will it continue to execute on its strategy. If you like the answers, you can do nothing, if you begin to see holes in the strategy, you will want to seek alternatives.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.