Record figures and not all related to direct vehicle sales. The first quarter of 2022 has left some great data for Tesla, which is already aiming to deliver 50% more vehicles than in 2021, despite supply problems. This is your data.
record Q1. Tesla’s figures in the first quarter of 2022 leave results that delve into the growth that the company is experiencing. In total, Tesla invoiced in the first quarter of this year 18,756 million dollars, above the estimates of 17,700 million expected dollars and far from the 10,389 million dollars that it invoiced in the same period of 2021.
The net result is profits worth 3,318 million dollars. This figure is 43% higher than the previous quarter, the last of 2021, when it achieved a profit of 2,321 million dollars. But, above all, it is much higher than the 438 million dollars of profit that was achieved in the first quarter of 2021. Specifically, 658%.
without selling cars. Part of the secret to Tesla’s strong results is that the company is making money off its competitors. In Europe, companies can “buy” polluting emissions from other manufacturers, through bonds (“regulatory credits” in the United States) that allow them to avoid anti-pollution fines in exchange for paying third parties a lower amount. A very similar system is used in the United States and China.
Tesla gets a large part of these bonuses for free, since it only manufactures electric vehicles and has a wide margin to sign up for polluting emissions before reaching the maximum limits allowed. So much so that in the last quarter it has earned 679 million dollars through this financing channel, for the 314 million dollars it got in the last quarter of 2021. That is, only with them, Tesla has earned more money than in the same period of 2021.
higher margin. In a really complicated world context, with rising prices for raw materials and a broken supply chain due to the lack of chips, Tesla has managed to increase its gross margin per vehicle to 32.9%. The strategy has been the same as that of other companies: sell more expensive cars.
In recent months, Tesla has managed to raise the prices of its Model 3 and Model Y, the cheapest vehicles in its offer, without suffering sales. A result that is key to financing the growth of its production and the reduction of costs.
Quantitative jump. With all this, and despite the forced closure of its Shanghai factory, Tesla points out that this year it will be able to manufacture about 1.5 million vehicles, with a growth of 50% compared to what was already produced in 2021, when they left their factories 930,422 units. In addition to the production increase with the Berlin and Texas factories, Musk assured that they will recover the ground lost in China during the Covid-19 closures and will be able to deliver all the expected units.
Good prospects. The data obtained by Tesla, especially those related to the increase in its profit margin and the increase in its productive capacity, suggest that the company is moving in the right direction and is no longer so dependent on regulatory credits related to anti-pollution standards. Its previous dependence led some analysts to think that the company’s shares would decline when other manufacturers did not need to buy these bonds.
However, this week it has been suggested that Tesla could multiply its share price by four in the coming years if its plans related to autonomous driving go ahead. The company, which is already the best valued automaker in the world, has announced the arrival of a robotaxi in the coming years, although its Autopilot remains in the crosshairs of US institutions.
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism