In this way, pre-orders represent guaranteed future profit.
Guaranteed? Do we know what the refund/cancellation policy is? $100k in preorders looks pretty good until a customer panics and wants to cancel (just ask Terrahash or BFL, both of whom now prohibit refunds).
I'd also like to point out, had BFL considered their earliest pre-orders "guaranteed profit", they would most certainly be disappointed now. Singles that were purchased for $1-2k early on are now being priced at $2,500. This leads me to believe, after going into production, they learned that this hardware was not profitable enough at original pricing. I don't claim to know what any of the hardware costs them, but they're going to be giving out a lot more of it to early orders in order to keep their hashrate promise.
TL:DR - don't count your chickens before they hatch.