Author: Yellow Warbler
Title image source: Tesla official WeChat
Tesla today announced its Q4 2021 earnings report and updated its full-year data: total revenue of $53.823 billion and net profit of $5.519 billion in 2021, with a total of 930,422 vehicles produced and 936,222 delivered for the full year.
Among them, R&D investment is one, and the Q1-Q4 of 2021 is 666 million US dollars, 576 million US dollars, 611 million US dollars and 760 million US dollars, respectively, and the full year is 2.613 billion US dollars.
Source: Tesla earnings
According to the European Commission's R&D ranking of 2,500 companies in the world released in December last year, Tesla is in the 27th place in the list of R&D investment in the automotive & parts industry: R&D investment in 2020 was 1.215 billion euros, or $1.495 billion (exchange rate 1.23).
Source: EU; Production: Corporate Patent Watch
Looking at the growth of R&D investment in 2021, Tesla R&D has increased significantly, increasing by about $1.118 billion compared to 2020. If you compare Tesla's R&D investment from 2010 to 2020, this increase last year is quite large, or it is the only increase in recent years.
Source: Statista;
In 2021, in addition to tesla's Localized Shanghai R&D Center put into use, there are not many news reports about Tesla's increase in R&D investment.
But in March 2021, there were rumors (and no official confirmation) that Tesla had joined Avanci, the world's largest automotive patent pool. Avanci members include Qualcomm, Ericsson, Nokia and a number of other giants in the field of mobile communications, with more than half of the 3G/4G standard essential patents SEP, and the 5G patent licensing program may be launched this year.
So, does the $1.118 billion in Tesla's growth include patent royalties? It is not yet possible to confirm Tesla's financial classification of patent royalties in the financial report. Therefore, it can be assumed that the $1.118 billion increase includes the cost of the Avanci patent pool.
But according to the cost of the Avanci patent pool, even if Tesla chooses the highest-end 4G solution , $15 per vehicle , it's only $14,043,330 ($14.04 million), or a fraction of $1.118 billion, based on the annual delivery of 936,222 units.
Source: Avanci
Could it be that Tesla, a trillion-dollar giant, only needs to pay less than $15 million a year in patent licensing fees? Obviously, it's not that simple.
Let's take a look at the US technology giant Apple, which is also a trillion-dollar market capitalization, and the annual patent licensing fees account for about 1% of its revenue:
"According to data disclosed in a lawsuit in the UK, Apple's cumulative cost of royalties is about 1% of its sales."
If apple revenue in 2020 is calculated at $274.5 billion, its royalties in 2020 are about $2.745 billion per year, accounting for about 4.78% of its profit ($57.4 billion).
So if Tesla only pays $15 million a year in patent royalties to Avanci, it means that the patent royalties only account for 0.028% of its 2021 revenue of $53.823 billion and 0.27% of its net profit of $5.519 billion.
This figure is much lower than Apple.com.
Although the patent charging model of the automotive industry is still forming, the gap is so obvious that it may not truly reflect the actual situation of Tesla's patent licensing fees.
Because Tesla's behavior is so low-key, even if it joins Avanci, it is an unconfirmed rumor, which means that Tesla may be "secretly" dealing with some patent licensing or payment matters, which are not found in public reports and records, but can be reflected financially.
Assuming that According to Apple's 1% license fee ratio (this proportion is already very low in the industry, and the proportion that Chinese companies need to pay is often several times that of Apple), Tesla's patent license fee of 538 million yuan in 2021 is not an exaggeration.
The gap from $15 million to $538 million is so large, which position in the middle is Tesla's actual patent royalty cap?
In fact, if you carefully observe Tesla's performance in the patent litigation market, you will find a very strange phenomenon: Tesla, a star car company with a trillion market value, has a pitifully small number of patent lawsuits in the United States, and there were only three lawsuits last year, including a patent dispute with Onscreen that we reported on about touch screens.
Source: RPX
Tesla's lawsuits in the first half of 2020, which we have also reported before, are only five, and we can see that these include the Sisvel and Converse of Avanci members, which shows that the Avanci members joined the Avanci car patent pool after a struggle with Tesla.
Tesla's patent litigation in the first half of 2020
But even so, the number of patent lawsuits Tesla has encountered in the past two years is much less than Apple's average of 80-100 patent lawsuits in the United States every year.
This is a rather strange phenomenon in the United States, a market with a developed NPE industry, is npe not looking for Tesla's trouble? Because Musk opened up all of Tesla's patents, or because of Musk's lofty greatness?
Probably not.
The United States is a realistic society, and entities with good patents in their hands will definitely go to the "big fat sheep" to liquidate, and with Tesla's performance in the market in recent years, the attractiveness will definitely not be worse than Apple.
However, Tesla's number of patent lawsuits involved in 2021 is surprisingly small, and R& D expenditure has risen sharply, and one of the possible reasonable explanations is that many people who come to Tesla to collect patent fees have settled privately, that is, Tesla has used money to solve a lot of potential patent fees and litigation problems.
So Tesla's patent licensing fee in 2021 may be far more than $15 million, but how many NPEs come to the door and how much money they spend to resolve these disputes, these will always be a mystery to the public, but from the total amount paid, even if the patent licensing fee is added up, compared with Tesla's revenue, it is only a dime.
Time is more precious than money.
If you can understand what I am writing today, even if you dare not bet that Tesla's market value can be two trillion yuan to buy its stock, but with your professional knowledge, I think you should be able to grow with Tesla and achieve financial freedom.
Because Tesla is most likely a licensee to willingness.