Introduction to the stone: The continuous improvement of the gross profit margin of new car sales and the substantial improvement of operating profit have completely eliminated the market's doubts about Tesla's insufficient hematopoietic ability.
Li Ping | author
1
The performance is new high, and electric vehicles can be more profitable
Not long ago, Tesla announced the fourth quarter of 2021 and the full year of 2021 financial reports. According to the financial report, in the fourth quarter, Tesla's new car deliveries were 308,700 units, an increase of 70.8% year-on-year and 27.9% month-on-month, another record high. For the full year of 2021, Tesla delivered 936,200 vehicles worldwide, an increase of 87% year-on-year.
The Chinese market has become the key to the continued surge in Tesla's new car sales. According to regional statistics, in 2021, the Shanghai Gigafactory delivered a total of 484,100 vehicles, an increase of 235% year-on-year, accounting for more than half of Tesla's total global deliveries, and this figure is close to Tesla's global deliveries in 2020 (499,600 units).
Benefiting from the substantial increase in new car deliveries, Tesla's total revenue in the fourth quarter reached $17.72 billion, an increase of 65% year-on-year, and the net profit attributable to ordinary shareholders was $2.321 billion, an increase of 760% year-on-year and 43% sequentially, the highest quarterly operating margin of an automaker.
From the data for the whole year of 2021, Tesla's total operating income reached $53.823 billion, compared with $31.536 billion in 2020, an increase of 71% year-on-year; net profit was $5.519 billion, compared with $721 million in 2020, an increase of 665% year-on-year.
In addition, due to the procurement and manufacturing in China, the production cost of new cars at Tesla's Shanghai plant has been significantly reduced, which has led to a further increase in the gross profit margin of Tesla vehicle sales. According to the financial report data, Tesla's gross profit margin in the fourth quarter was 27.4%, of which the gross profit margin of bicycles reached 30.6%, an increase of 0.1 percentage points over the third quarter.
Compared with peers, tesla's vehicle business has a gross profit margin of up to 30%. The data shows that the gross profit margin of global mainstream car companies such as Toyota and Volkswagen is usually less than 20%, and the gross profit margin of some car companies is only maintained at about 10%. In addition, considering the pressure on raw material costs and supply chain tensions faced by the entire automotive industry, Tesla's continuous improvement in gross profit margin is even more extraordinary.
In this regard, Tesla said in the earnings report that the company achieved an operating profit of $2.6 billion in the fourth quarter, with an operating margin of 14.7%, the highest among mass production car companies, "which means that the feasibility and profitability of electric vehicles are no longer questionable, proving that electric vehicles are more profitable than gasoline vehicles."
In terms of business, tesla vehicle sales business in 2021 achieved revenue of $44.125 billion, an increase of 79% year-on-year, accounting for 81.98%; selling points revenue of $1.465 billion, down 7% year-on-year, accounting for 2.72%; car rental revenue of $1.642 billion, an increase of 56% year-on-year, revenue accounted for 3.05%; service and other business revenue was $3.802 billion, an increase of 65% year-on-year, revenue accounted for 7.06%; in addition, The company's energy business achieved revenue of $2.789 billion, an increase of 40% year-on-year, accounting for 5.18% of revenue.
It is worth mentioning that the Tesla vehicle business in 2020 is still in a state of loss. According to the data, in 2020, Tesla's points sales revenue was 1.6 billion US dollars, and the net profit was 721 million US dollars, which was deducted from the two phases, indicating that Tesla's bicycle business was still in a state of loss, which also made Tesla once questioned the lack of hematopoietic ability.
The release of the 2021 financial report finally made Tesla completely take off the hat of "selling carbon". Musk's first principle is also strongly supported by Tesla's financial report data.
Musk believes that the first-principles way of thinking is a way of looking at the world, peeling off the appearance of things layer by layer, until you see the essence of things, and then starting from the essence to find the fundamental solution. The reason why Tesla bet on the pure electric route in the early days was to see the potential for improved battery performance and the relative advantages of modular production of electric vehicles, and came to the important conclusion that "electric vehicles will have higher performance and lower prices than fuel vehicles".
In addition to the cost advantages brought about by the localization procurement of the Shanghai Gigafactory, the scale effect is also another key factor in Tesla's profitability jump. Due to the obvious characteristics of economies of scale in the automotive industry, tesla's rising gross profit margin is closely related to the continuous expansion of its production capacity. According to the data, Tesla achieved a new record in the fourth quarter with an annual production capacity of more than 1.22 million vehicles.
However, Tesla also admitted at the earnings conference that in 2022, the company will still face challenges from the global supply chain, logistics and transportation, labor and other aspects. Therefore, expanding production capacity and increasing sales will be Tesla's main tasks this year. To this end, Tesla will continue to select a new gigafactory site on the basis of improving the capacity efficiency of the original four factories, and will not launch any new models in 2022.
2
Production capacity is paramount, and no new models will be released
Up to now, Tesla has four electric vehicle production plants in California, Shanghai, China, Berlin, and Texas. The Fremont plant in California plans to produce 500,000 Model 3/Y models and 100,000 Model S/X models, mainly for the North American market. Tesla said in its fourth-quarter earnings report that the Fremont plant achieved record production in 2021 and believes that the capacity of the Fremont plant has the potential to exceed 600,000 vehicles per year.
The Shanghai Gigafactory mainly produces the Model 3 and Model Y, two main sales models, and is also Tesla's main export center. In the whole year of 2021, the Shanghai Gigafactory delivered a total of 484,100 vehicles, of which more than 160,000 were exported to more than 10 countries in the Eurasian region.
Up to now, Tesla has built a Shanghai Super Factory, a Shanghai Super Charging Pile Factory, a Shanghai R&D Innovation Center and a data center in Shanghai. At the same time, the localization rate of parts in Shanghai Gigafactory has exceeded 90%, and the Model 3 and Model Y models can share 75% of the parts.
According to the information disclosed in the fourth quarter earnings report, Tesla's Berlin plant in Germany and the Texas plant in the United States have entered the equipment test state from the state under construction. According to the plan, the Austin plant in Texas will take the lead in producing model Y, and then produce Cyberteruck, Tesla Semi and other models; the Berlin gigafactory has a design capacity of 500,000 units, and has begun to prepare for large-scale production of model Y, and Tesla's European website has also updated the delivery forecast time in March 2022.
The market generally expects that Tesla's production capacity is expected to exceed 1.5 million units in 2022, and with the commissioning of the Berlin factory in Germany and the Texas factory in the United States, Tesla's production capacity will exceed 3 million vehicles, which will effectively ensure the achievement of Tesla's annual sales growth rate of 50%. By then, Tesla will most likely achieve tens of billions of dollars in net profits, becoming a real money-making machine. In addition, Musk also said on the conference call that Tesla is looking for a new factory location.
From the perspective of existing capacity planning, Tesla has focused on the SEXY family, while the three projects of electric pickup truck (Cybertruck), electric truck (Semi) and supercar (Roadster) are still not as far as market expectations.
According to the data, Tesla held its first Cyberruck conference as early as November 2019, and people were shocked by its subversive appearance at that time, and the Cybertruck was called the "most sci-fi" electric pickup in history. The day after the launch, Cybertruck received 146,000 orders.
However, cyberruck, which started well, suffered a mass production crisis, and Tesla repeatedly postponed its production and delivery plans. So far, Tesla Cyberruck has received more than 1.2 million orders, but there is still no definite delivery date.
Musk said at the earnings conference that due to supply chain problems, especially chip shortages, the mass production of Cybertruck had to be postponed. In addition, a large number of cutting-edge technologies applied to Cybertoruck are also a major reason for the current limitation of its production capacity.
Another new product that has repeatedly jumped tickets is the electric truck Semi. The electric truck, which was scheduled to go into production in 2019, didn't deliver the first 15 new vehicles until January this year.
As for the specific mass production time of Cybertruck, Semi and sports car Roadster, Musk only said "I hope next year (2023) can be."
"If we do introduce an additional product, then there needs to be a lot of attention and resource investment in the complexity of the additional product, resulting in a reduction in the number of vehicles actually delivered." The same is true this year. So we're not going to launch a new model this year," Musk said.
Iron Man's statement may make many people regret, but from the perspective of the main contradiction, Tesla's current main contradiction is obviously the pressure of new car delivery brought about by insufficient production capacity, and the launch of new models is not conducive to the resolution of this contradiction, and expanding production capacity is Tesla's primary task.
This means that the previously rumored $25,000 Tesla cheap model "Model 2" will not appear.
3
Repeatedly jump tickets, can fully autonomous driving land?
In fact, compared with the launch of new models, Musk pays more attention to the landing of autonomous driving technology.
When asked by investors about the $25,000 model production plan, Musk not only said that there are no $25,000 model related development plans at present, but even believed that "the problem itself is wrong." At the same time, Musk believes that FSD full self-driving software is the really important thing for Tesla compared to deliberately developing a $25,000 car, "when the car achieves self-driving, which will reduce transportation costs by 4-5 times."
What needs to be seen is that as traditional fuel vehicle companies accelerate their transformation to electrification, Tesla's first-mover advantage in the field of electric is being weakened, and intelligence is becoming a key factor in its continuous leadership of its peers, and automatic driving technology is undoubtedly the top priority.
Full Self-Driving (FSD) is an advanced driver assistance suite on Tesla vehicles that includes autonomous driving and some other more complex features such as auto-lane change, stop light recognition, and "smart calling."
One concept corresponding to the FSD is the Tesla "Autopilot," which is also the standard suite of driver assistance for Tesla's new vehicles, with features including automatic emergency braking, forward collision warning, lane keeping, and adaptive cruise control.
In contrast, although the standard "Autopilot" is called "automatic assistance system", the key point is "assist", while the key point of FSD is "fully automatic driving". According to the grading standard of autonomous driving, Autopilot is equivalent to L2 level, and FSD is equivalent to L4 level.
According to the latest charging standards, starting January 17 this year, the price of fully autonomous driving system FSD for customers in the United States will be raised from $10,000 to $12,000. In addition, Tesla owners can also subscribe to the FSD function on a monthly basis for $199/month.
However, although Musk himself has repeatedly said that FSD will solve the problem of automatic driving L4, FSD is probably still a certain distance from "full automatic driving".
According to the data, as early as the end of 2018, Musk announced that its "fully autonomous driving technology" will be realized in 2019.
Since then, Musk said at Tesla's annual shareholder meeting in June 2019 that Tesla users can use the autopilot function without human intervention sometime in 2020. All models produced after October 2016 only need to replace the automatic driving chip to achieve full automatic driving function.
In 2020, Tesla launched the FSD Beta version, equipped with fully autonomous driving testing capabilities for urban roads. According to the regulations, only drivers who have purchased or subscribed to FSD and received high scores in Tesla's safety tests can currently qualify for the trial.
However, the much-anticipated "fully autonomous driving" has not yet been achieved. On the contrary, Tesla has encountered many criticisms because of frequent autonomous driving safety accidents. In August 2021, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) officially launched an investigation into Tesla's Autopilot system.
Despite repeated ticket hopping and a crisis of trust in safety, tesla's self-driving technology is still attractive to consumers. According to the data, there are nearly 60,000 vehicles equipped with the beta version of FSD in the United States today, compared with only a few thousand in the third quarter of last year.
With the sale and subscription of FSD kits, Tesla has taken the lead in "software charging". For the full year of 2021, Tesla's services and other businesses, including autopilot software, achieved operating revenue of $3.802 billion, an increase of 65%. This has also attracted domestic Xiaopeng, Weilai and other new forces car companies have opened their attempts at software revenue.
"Over time, FSD will become the most important part of Tesla's revenue stream. My personal prediction is to achieve FSD this year, which will be significantly safer than people driving. Tesla's cars can achieve FSD through software upgrades, which will break the car's attributes as a consumer product and have the potential for continuous appreciation. In addition, the realization of FSD will have a huge impact on improving security and accelerating the world's transition to sustainable energy. ”
As mentioned above, Musk once again made optimistic expectations for the technical landing of FSD. In the future, with the continuous improvement of FSD selection rate and price, software revenue will become an important source of revenue for Tesla, which also means a major change in its business model and a further improvement in profitability.
It is worth mentioning that since FSD achieves completely independent development, Tesla will receive 100% of its sales revenue, rather than having to share with software developers like Apple, which brings more imagination space to Tesla software charges.
However, will Tesla's FSD still jump tickets this year?