Text/Zhou Xiongfei
As usual, Tesla took the lead in handing over the results of the first quarter of this year compared with other car companies.
Early yesterday morning, Tesla released the first quarter of 2022 financial report data, its first quarter to achieve total revenue of 18.756 billion US dollars, an increase of 81% year-on-year; in terms of net profit, Tesla recorded 3.318 billion US dollars in the first quarter, an increase of 658% year-on-year.
In addition to the substantial year-on-year increase in revenue and net profit, tesla's gross profit margin has also become a major highlight. According to the financial report data, Tesla achieved a gross vehicle gross profit margin of 32.9% in the first quarter of this year, and with this performance, Tesla has also become a new energy vehicle company that has broken through the 30% mark in the gross profit margin of the whole vehicle.
Tesla's 2022 Q1 financial report data, screenshot from the financial report
Although Tesla's first quarter earnings report this year seems bright, there are also some hidden worries behind it.
In terms of revenue and net profit, although there was a substantial increase year-on-year, if from a month-on-month perspective, the growth of net profit has slowed down, and the growth of revenue has shown a sharp slowdown trend. In addition, in terms of revenue structure, although automobile sales are still the largest contributor, the revenue of this part has only a slight increase compared with the fourth quarter of last year, while the revenue obtained through carbon credits has increased significantly from the previous quarter.
The biggest reason for these changes is that the sales growth of Tesla's products has begun to slow. Tesla achieved total sales of 310048 vehicles in the first quarter of this year, although it has a 68% year-on-year increase, but from a sequential point of view, it is only 4.5% higher than the fourth quarter of last year, almost the same as the previous quarter.
For the slowdown in sales growth, Tesla attributed the reason to the impact of the epidemic in the earnings report, and in the view of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the impact of the epidemic on Tesla is likely to continue in 2022.
It is worth noting that according to Tesla's financial report, "a large part of the revenue in the first quarter of this year came from the price increase of its products to offset the shortage of raw materials and the income after the price increase." In other words, if Tesla does not raise the price of its products several times this year, its revenue in the first quarter may achieve less growth or even decline.
According to Musk revealed on the earnings call, no new product will be launched this year, and the main task is to ensure the improvement of production capacity and the stability of the supply chain.
On the one hand, the continuous impact of the epidemic on sales and production capacity, on the other hand, there will be no new products launched this year, based on these two points in the industry's view, Tesla wants to achieve Musk's "1.5 million vehicles" target this year is not easy.
Perhaps Musk is also aware of this problem, in order to boost the confidence of the market and investors in Tesla, he began to draw a "pie". He not only said on the earnings call that he would launch new products in large quantities next year, including robotaxi models that can achieve autonomous driving and the humanoid robot Optimus, but even proposed a Flag that will achieve annual sales of 20 million units in 2030.
In this way, for Musk and Tesla, the pressure to maintain sustained growth in 2022 is not small.
1. The hidden worries behind the eye-catching financial reports
"Get rid of the baggage."
Musk began with this phrase on yesterday morning's earnings call, which he would say also based on Tesla's debt repayments. According to Tesla's earnings report, as of the end of the first quarter, the company's outstanding long-term debt (excluding auto and energy product financing) has been less than $100 million, according to Musk's words, "all but gone" ”
Tesla can do this, but also thanks to its more eye-catching performance in the first quarter of this year.
According to the financial report data, Tesla achieved total revenue of $18.756 billion (about 120.571 billion yuan) in the first quarter of this year, an increase of 81% year-on-year compared with the first quarter of last year; this revenue far exceeded the $17.92 billion expected by Bloomberg analysts.
Similar to revenue, there was also an increase in net profit. In the first quarter of this year, Tesla recorded a net profit of $3.318 billion (about 21.475 billion yuan), an increase of 658% year-on-year compared with the first quarter of last year, which although it reached triple digits, was not as good as the 759.63% year-on-year increase in the fourth quarter of last year.
2022Q1 and 2021Q1 Tesla revenue and net profit comparison, data from the financial report, wired travel mapping
From the perspective of year-on-year growth. Tesla's revenue and net profit performance in the first quarter of this year is indeed considerable, but if you look at it from a sequential perspective, it is a different scenario.
According to the data, although Tesla's revenue in the first quarter of this year increased by 5.85% compared with $17.719 billion in the fourth quarter of last year, it was still dwarfed by the 28.8% sequential increase in the fourth quarter of last year.
In terms of net profit, the same scenario is presented. Tesla's net profit in the first quarter of this year increased by 42.96% from $2.321 billion in the fourth quarter of last year, which is lower than the 43.45% sequential increase in the fourth quarter of last year.
The sequential decline in revenue is closely related to the revenue performance of the main business.
As a car company, the main source of Tesla's revenue is the income obtained from selling cars. Judging from the financial report data, the sales revenue of vehicles in the first quarter of this year was 15.514 billion US dollars, accounting for 82.71% of the total revenue.
This revenue not only increased by only 3.26% from $15.025 billion in the fourth quarter of last year, but also declined as a proportion of total revenue, because the proportion of vehicle sales revenue in the fourth quarter of last year was 86.57% of total revenue.
At the same time as the proportion of vehicle sales revenue declined, tesla's proportion of revenue from the sale of carbon credits rose sharply.
In the first quarter of this year, Tesla earned $679 million in revenue through carbon credits, accounting for 3.62% of total revenue, compared with $314 million in the fourth quarter of last year, accounting for only 1.77% of total revenue in the quarter. It can be seen that the proportion of revenue in this business has increased significantly in the first quarter of this year.
2022Q1 and 2021Q4 Tesla vehicle sales and carbon credit revenue as a proportion of total revenue, data from the financial report, connected travel mapping
It is worth noting that Tesla also specifically said in the earnings report that the increase in revenue is mainly affected by the revenue from vehicle sales and the increase in the average selling price (ASP) of bicycles. Among them, the increase in the average selling price of bicycles (ASP) is Tesla's adjustment of the price of its pure electric vehicles.
Since the beginning of this year, Tesla has changed its previous role as a "price butcher" and has increased the price of its pure electric vehicle products many times. Last month, for example, prices have risen three times in just one month.
The earliest time was on March 10, Tesla Model 3 high-performance version, Model Y long endurance and high-performance version all increased by 10,000 yuan; five days later, Tesla China once again announced the Model 3 high-performance version and Model Y long-endurance, high-performance version of the price increase. Then on March 18, the price of the domestic Model Y rear-wheel drive version increased to 316900 yuan, an increase of 15,060 yuan compared with the previous 301840 yuan.
For the rise in product prices, Musk has given an explanation due to the rise in global automotive raw material prices and the cost increase caused by supply chain shortages. In other words, Tesla is offsetting supply chain shortages and rising costs by raising prices.
In the industry's view, based on the change in the proportion of vehicle sales revenue and carbon credit revenue to total revenue, as well as the price increase for its products, Tesla achieved revenue growth in the first quarter of this year.
In this financial report, Tesla's gross profit margin performance has also become one of the highlights of everyone's attention.
According to the financial report, in the first quarter of this year, Tesla achieved 32.9% in terms of gross profit margin of the whole vehicle, and the overall gross profit margin also reached 29.11%. With this performance, Tesla has indeed become one of the few car companies in the industry to break through the 30% mark of the gross profit margin of the whole vehicle, but like revenue and net profit, there are also hidden worries behind this performance.
Tesla CFO Zach Kirkhorn talked about the reasons for the increase in gross margin on the earnings call, in his view, one is because Tesla signed a long-term contract with suppliers, and when the spot price is higher, the impact of rising costs is delayed; the second is because about half of the automotive products sold in the first quarter are equipped with lithium iron phosphate batteries, which reduces the cost of the whole vehicle to a certain extent.
This also means that when Tesla's long-term supply contract expires, or whether it can maintain the high gross profit margin it has now, due to supply chain restrictions on the types of batteries that are more expensive to use, it is still unknown.
In this regard, although Tesla's financial report in the first quarter of this year seems to be eye-catching, there are also some hidden worries. Behind these phenomena, there is a great correlation with the dilemma of product sales and production capacity that Tesla is currently experiencing.
2, production capacity is blocked, sales slowed down
At the same time as handing over the performance report card, Tesla also released the sales volume of the product.
According to the financial report data, Tesla achieved production and sales of 305407 and 310048 vehicles in the first quarter of this year, an increase of 69% and 68% respectively year-on-year. Of these, model3/Y sales were 295,000 units, while ModelS/X sales were 15,000 units.
Looking at the country, Tesla's sales from January to March this year were 108,300 vehicles, an increase of 56.3% year-on-year. If you put this achievement into the entire new energy automobile industry, Tesla is also at the forefront of the industry.
According to the data of the Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in the sales ranking of new energy vehicle companies from January to March this year, BYD ranked first with 282686 vehicles, followed by Tesla, ranking second. Behind Tesla, it is the independent car companies such as SAIC-GM-Wuling, Chery and Geely and the new car-making forces such as Weilai, Xiaopeng and Ideal, and the gap in sales is also about 500,000-800,000 vehicles.
From January to March 2022, the sales volume of domestic new energy vehicle companies ranked in the top ten, the data comes from the Association of Passenger Transport, and the mapping of online travel
From the perspective of the entire industry, Tesla has a certain advantage in sales, but if you extend the timeline and look at Tesla's performance in previous quarters, Tesla's performance this quarter is not excellent.
First of all, from the perspective of production, although Tesla's production in the first quarter of this year has a year-on-year increase of nearly 70%, it has a 0.14% month-on-month decline compared with 305840 vehicles in the fourth quarter of last year. This is also Tesla's second quarterly decline in production since Q2 2020.
In Q2 2020, Tesla production was 82,727 units, down 19.4% from the first quarter of the same year, after which its production has been growing quarter by quarter until the first quarter of this year fell into a decline again.
In terms of sales, although it is not like production is in a month-on-month decline, the growth rate of its month-on-month growth has also begun to slow down.
In the first quarter of this year, Tesla's sales increased by 0.45% compared with 308,650 units in the fourth quarter of last year, which also became tesla's lowest growth since Q2 2020, with Tesla's quarter-on-quarter growth rates of 2.70%, 53.58%, 29.42%, 2.33%, 8.89%, 19.91% and 27.86% from Q2 2020 to Q4 2021, respectively.
From this point of view, Tesla's first quarter of this year can be described as falling into a double decline in production and a slowdown in sales, and the trend of rapid quarterly sales growth that it has maintained has slowed down.
Behind these phenomena, it also reveals the fact that Tesla has fallen into a production capacity dilemma.
According to the data given by Tesla in the financial report, Tesla currently has a total of 6 super factories around the world, including three factories in Nevada, California and New York, the super factory in Shanghai, China, plus the Berlin plant that started operations in March this year and the Austin plant in Texas the following month.
According to the plan, the California, Shanghai, Berlin and Texas plants are responsible for vehicle manufacturing, and the Nevada and New York plants are responsible for the production of battery packs, charging piles and solar roofs. In terms of production capacity, the Annual Production Capacity of the Texas Gigafactory is 500,000 units, and the annual production capacity of Tesla's Fremont plant in California and Shanghai is about 450,000 units and 480,000 units, respectively.
Tesla's global factory capacity, screenshot from the financial report
Although the factories have a lot of layouts, the capacity utilization rate of these factories in the first quarter of this year is very low, as Tesla said in the earnings report that "our factories have been operating in a low-capacity state for a long time."
The reason for this situation is the recurrence of the global epidemic.
Shanghai Gigafactory, one of Tesla's most important factories worldwide, delivered a total of 484,000 Tesla vehicles last year, accounting for more than half of Tesla's total global deliveries. It was such an important plant, but it was shut down several times in March this year.
Last month, due to the increasingly severe epidemic in Shanghai and a series of control measures made by the local government, Tesla's Shanghai factory had to stop production for two days from the 16th to the 17th of the same month, and then quickly resumed production. Unexpectedly, a week later, the factory announced a four-day shutdown.
Tesla's Shanghai factory was originally ready to resume work at the beginning of this month, but due to the continued impact of the epidemic prevention and control in Shanghai, it also abandoned this plan, and the factory has been shut down for three consecutive weeks as of the 17th of this month. The shutdown has roughly calculated to have resulted in a loss of production of more than 50,000 Tesla vehicles.
In addition to the Shanghai factory, because the United States and Europe have also been in the midst of the epidemic, it seems to the industry that the production of Tesla factories in the United States and Europe will also be affected by the epidemic control.
In addition to the impact of the epidemic, Tesla was also adversely affected by supply chain shortages and rising raw materials in the first quarter.
Since the beginning of this year, the price of battery-grade lithium carbonate in the raw materials of power batteries has begun to rise wildly, because the main power of pure electric vehicles comes from the power battery to provide energy, and the cost of this component still accounts for the majority of the cost of the whole vehicle, so with the rise in the price of this raw material, the cost of manufacturing vehicles by various car companies has also risen.
Wired travel has been in the "lithium raw materials price increase, "small workshop" eye heat, "regular army" anxious, when will the power battery recycling war end? The rise in the price of raw materials for power batteries has been elaborated in detail.
In addition, due to the impact of the epidemic, many suppliers of new energy vehicle companies are also in the process of suspension of work and production, coupled with the slow circulation of global logistics, so that many car companies can not get raw materials in time. Based on these factors, Tesla and a number of new energy vehicle companies will make a decision on the price increase of their products.
Today, although Tesla's Shanghai factory has resumed work and production, Tesla is still very worried about the recovery of production capacity in this factory. "The impact of the epidemic and supply chain shortages will continue in 2022, and more impacts should be felt in Q2." Tesla wrote in its earnings report.
This also means that the production capacity of Tesla factories, especially after the Shanghai factory, should be difficult to recover in the short term, which is why Tesla wants to achieve rapid growth in sales and performance in the second quarter of this year, and even in the following quarters, it is difficult to achieve a high probability. Musk also said that considering the shutdown of the Shanghai factory, Tesla's production in the second quarter of this year may be the same as the first quarter, or slightly lower than the first quarter.
At the same time, Musk also began to draw "cakes".
3. Can Musk's "cake" be realized?
On yesterday's earnings call, Musk introduced tesla's many situations in the first quarter of this year, and also unveiled some of his new plans.
Among them, a new model has become a new project that Musk has introduced with more time. According to Musk, this new model is quite different from Tesla's existing models on sale, and the steering wheel and electric door and brake pedal will be removed from the entire cockpit, which means that the car does not need to be manually driven, but controlled by the automatic driving system.
In terms of shape and interior design, Musk did not reveal much, but repeatedly said that the car will be "quite futuristic".
For the use of this car, Musk affirmed that "it will be dedicated to Robotaxi (driverless taxi)", according to his vision, Tesla's Robotaxi will be lower than the current subsidized bus ticket fee.
For Robotaxi, Musk has already begun planning as early as 2019 and is preparing to land a fully autonomous Robotaxi fleet in 2020. It turns out that musk's plan has not landed in 2020, and yesterday, Musk mentioned this plan again.
As in 2019, Musk once again proposed a timetable for this plan to land - unveiled in 2023 and opened large-scale mass production in 2024. Based on his planning of expenses, it can be seen that the ultimate goal of this Robotaxi project is the same as Baidu, SAIC and other companies want to achieve commercialization.
After introducing the RoboTaxi project, Musk mentioned the landing time of the humanoid robot project.
The humanoid robot project was released by Musk on Tesla's "AI Day" in August last year, and according to Musk at the time, this humanoid robot will rely on Tesla's work on neural networks and Dojo's advanced supercomputer to perform some human chores, such as grocery shopping.
Tesla humanoid robot project, image source Tesla official micro
After the project was released, it was once considered Musk's whimsy, after all, artificial intelligence technology is not really mature at present, let alone humanoid artificial intelligence robots. But as Musk said yesterday, the robot project is aiming to launch a beta version next year, "which will eventually be more valuable than the automotive business, more valuable than FSD." ”
As for the 4680 battery and Cyberruck models that have always been announced to be mass-produced and released, which have not yet landed, Musk has not forgotten.
For the former project, Musk said that the 4680 structural battery pack actually simplifies the body space, and the real large-scale mass production of its products still needs to wait until the end of the third quarter of this year. For the Cybertruck model that has repeatedly jumped tickets, Musk has also once again promised that "it will definitely be mass-produced in 2023".
According to the landing time of the above products, it is basically concentrated in next year, which is also in line with Musk's tesla fourth quarter earnings call in January this year, "In 2023, Tesla will launch a series of new products." ”
In addition to the landing plan of new products, Musk also announced two sales targets at yesterday's conference call, one is to achieve an annual sales target of 1.5 million vehicles this year, and the other is to achieve an annual sales target of 20 million vehicles at the end of this year.
In other words, Musk aims to get Tesla to achieve its goal of selling 20 million vehicles a year by 2030, and in his opinion, Tesla has now completed 5% of this goal.
Because the above new product plans, or sales targets can be verified as early as next year, the goal of "annual sales of 20 million vehicles" even until 2030, Musk after proposing these, once by the industry as his "painting cake".
"Because there are some flaws in the performance of the financial data in the first quarter of this year, coupled with the impact of the epidemic and the supply chain on Tesla, these will affect the confidence of investors in it, in order to boost the market and investors' trust in it, Musk will choose to draw these 'cakes' now, which is also normal." Sun Hao, head of research and development of a domestic head car company, told Wired Travel.
Facts have proved that under the blessing of Tesla's bright financial report, investors and retail investors are very buying musk's "painting cake". On the day Tesla released its earnings report, its stock price closed at $1008.78 per share, up 3.23%. With the growth of its stock price, its market value on the day also returned to trillions, reaching $1.04 trillion.
Tesla closed its stock price yesterday, screenshot from the Tiger Securities APP
But these "cakes" drawn by Musk are not easy to achieve landing.
The first is musk's Robotaxi business, to realize its vision, this business must rely on L4, L5 level autonomous driving technology. At present, although Tesla has been laying out autopilot technology for a long time, and its FSD autopilot system has also carried out many technical iterations, it has been in the "beta" test stage and has not yet reached the stage of full automatic driving that is truly mature.
Based on this status quo, in Sun Hao's view, even if Musk launches his own Robotaxi business next year, its technical advantages will not be much stronger than the same business done by Baidu, Waymo and other companies; if Tesla's Robotaxi wants to develop in China, it will inevitably be limited by policies and regulations, and it will not be able to achieve true full automatic driving services.
Let's look at the humanoid robot aspect. As mentioned earlier, due to the current artificial intelligence and machine deep learning and other related technologies are still in the stage of development, the technology has not yet reached maturity. "Although the current robot technology is developing rapidly, many machine intelligences that can only meet a single scenario, such as AlphaZero, who has defeated human chess players, can only be very strong in the field of Go." Computer scientist Wu Jun wrote in the book "The Age of Intelligence".
Because of this, if Musk can launch a beta version of the humanoid robot next year, he will not be able to achieve high-level artificial intelligence scenarios such as "helping humans do some housework, such as going to the supermarket to buy vegetables" in the short term.
After the product is finished, let's look at Musk's "pie" in sales.
Musk wants to achieve annual sales of 1.5 million vehicles this year, which is theoretically possible, after all, Tesla achieved annual sales of more than 900,000 vehicles last year, plus Tesla currently has six major factory capacity in the world. But it is undeniable that under the combined impact of the epidemic and supply chain shortages this year, whether Musk can achieve this goal also has to be questioned. Zhang Xiang, a special expert of the China Bo Lian Think Tank, said to The Link Travel.
Tesla Texas factory production workshop, picture source financial report
As for Musk's proposal to achieve 20 million annual sales in 2030, Zhang Xiang believes that this goal itself may be drawing a pie, because to verify whether this goal can be achieved, there is still nearly 8 years to go, there is a lot of uncertainty in this process.
From this point of view, most of the product and sales plans proposed by Musk on yesterday's earnings call may not be easy to achieve. That said, Musk must also draw these "cakes", because only in this way can Tesla be more valuable and support him to do more things, including achieving the goal of acquiring Twitter.
2022, for Musk, is destined to be busy.
(The head picture of this article comes from Tesla's official micro, and Sun Hao is a pseudonym in the article.) ）