Last week, we reported on comments made by Elon Musk in a company-wide email obtained by Bloomberg. The publication had only published excerpts from the memo at the time, but now that we have the full email, we learn that Elon Musk actually thinks that Tesla could be GAAP profitable in the current quarter – something the company hasn’t achieved in over 3 years.

Here’s the important excerpt from Musk’s email (see in full further down):

“Right now, we are tracking to be a few percentage points negative on cash flow and GAAP profitability, but this is a small number, so I’m confident that we can rally hard and push the results into positive territory.”

Tesla always reports its financial results using its own accounting standards, also referred to as non-GAAP accounting, which fed the company detractors in the financial world for years since Tesla’s actual results under GAAP reporting show wider losses.

As mentioned in the email, Musk now wants to “throw a pie in the face” of those naysayers on Wall Street.

The different accounting standard is mostly due to Tesla’s lease accounting under its resale value guarantee, which actually ended July 1. The impact of the end of the program will start to show in Q3 in Tesla’s non-GAAP and GAAP financial results should start tracking more closely.

Here Tesla explains why it uses non-GAAP for vehicles sold under the now defunct resale value guarantee:

Vehicle deliveries with the resale value guarantee do not impact our near-term cash flows and liquidity, since we receive the full amount of cash for the vehicle sales price at delivery. However, this program requires the deferral of revenues and costs into future periods as they are considered leases for accounting purposes.

The fact that Elon Musk thinks the company can achieve GAAP profitability is actually quite significant. The last time it happened was over 3 years ago during the first quarter 2013 and it sent the stock soaring like never before:

The company reported the profit in May. As you can see, it sent the stock over $100 per share for the first time. It also enabled Tesla to raise more capital, which looks like Musk’s plan again today.

As he is pushing for profitability, he is also telling employees that the company plans to raise more capital in Q4. The company also disclosed the news in a recent filing saying that it’s currently planning another round of financing for Model 3 and Gigafactory.

Here’s the email (dated August 29) in full via Bloomberg: