Tesla record profit $18.76 billion in revenue

Tesla just released its first-quarter profits for 2022, and both the top and bottom lines surpassed analysts’ estimates. The important figures are listed below. After-hours trading saw shares rise as much as 6%. Automotive revenue increased by 87 percent year over year to $16.86 billion. Tesla reported a gross profit of $5.54 billion in its primary business, pushing automotive gross margins to a new high of 32.9 percent. For the quarter, regulatory credits accounted for $679 million in automotive revenue. According to Tesla’s shareholder presentation, revenue growth was fueled in part by an increase in the number of cars delivered and an increase in average sales pricing.

Tesla announced vehicle deliveries of 310,048 for the first quarter earlier this month, the closest estimate of sales provided by the firm. In the three months ending March 31, 2022, Model 3 and Model Y vehicles accounted for 95 percent of deliveries, or 295,324.
Tesla’s CFO Zachary Kirkhorn and CEO Elon Musk claimed during the firm’s earnings call that they are sure that the company can grow by at least 50% by 2021. However, due to Covid-related shutdowns, the company has lost nearly a month of “build volume” in Shanghai, according to the executives. “We’ve resumed limited manufacturing and are aiming to return to full production as soon as feasible,” Kirkhorn added.

“It is plausible that we’ll be able to produce one and a half million cars this year,” Musk said despite the slowdown. Customers who order now face a long waiting, and some of their items will not arrive until next year, he said. Musk also admitted that the development of self-driving cars was taking longer than he had planned. “Of any technology development I’ve ever been engaged in, I’ve never seen more false dawns when it appears that we’re going to break through but we don’t,” he says. He urged people to enrol in Tesla’s FSD Beta programme, which requires Tesla customers to first purchase or subscribe to Tesla’s FSD premium driver assistance package, and then earn a high driver safety score. (FSD does not make Tesla vehicles fully autonomous and costs $12,000 up front or $199 per month.)

Musk was tight-lipped about a “futuristic” robotaxi that the company was working on in early April. Tesla plans to have a robotaxi event next year and is “aiming for volume production in 2024,” according to him. In the first quarter of 2022, Tesla’s solar deployments fell by over half to 48 MW, compared to the same period last year. The company installed 846 MWh of lithium ion-based battery energy storage systems, up 90% from the previous quarter but down from the previous year.

The business said that delays in importing key components, which were beyond Tesla’s control, were to blame for the drop in solar deployments. Tesla’s global vehicle inventory decreased to a three-day supply in the first quarter of 2022, owing to inflationary pressures, components and semiconductor chip shortages aggravated by the ongoing pandemic, and Russia’s ruthless invasion of Ukraine. This compares to an eight-day supply of worldwide car inventory in the first quarter of 2021 and a four-day supply in the previous quarter.

Tesla’s shareholder deck stated, “Our own factories have been running below capacity for multiple quarters.” The firm did not provide specific delivery predictions for the future, but it did say it expects 50 percent annual growth over the next few years and warned that supply chain restrictions are likely to persist through 2022. Musk also stated that he feels inflation is more than it has been reported and that it will continue throughout the year.