Tesla shows up OG carmakers by crushing earnings with a delivery record, but China is complicating its future
Taking a break from Twitter... Between tweeting about buying Twitter, posting Shiba Inu memes, and hopping on Tesla's earnings call, Elon is having a busy month. Despite supply struggles and China’s Covid lockdowns, Tesla crushed earnings expectations yesterday.
- Above and Elon'd: The electric-car leader reported that sales were up 81% from a year ago, while profit more than 7X'd. The stock spiked 5% after hours.
- Tesla managed to deliver a record 310K cars last quarter, up from 308K the previous quarter. The Model 3 and Model Y (its least pricey models) made up nearly all deliveries.
It goes Elong way... Tesla emerged victorious from "an exceptionally difficult" quarter thanks to #versatility. Its software prowess allowed it to swap hard-to-find chips for ones that were less supply chain-ed. Others weren’t so lucky: while Tesla deliveries were up 70% from the year-ago quarter, OGs like GM and Toyota reported big sales declines because of parts shortages.
- Showing up: Tesla nearly doubled deliveries last year, to 936K, and recently started shipping cars from its two new Gigafactories in Germany and Texas.
- Catching up: Tesla’s production numbers are moving closer to being on par with traditional luxe carmakers like Mercedes and BMW. It’s already pulled ahead of Volvo and Subaru.
China’s clouding the picture… for Tesla and for everyone. While some analysts think Tesla could sell 2M cars this year, China’s zero-Covid crackdown is complicating projections. Tesla had to halt production at its key Shanghai factory for weeks because of citywide lockdowns. Yesterday, Elon said “Shanghai’s coming back with a vengeance” (sleeping bags and all). But the plant’s closure is expected to knock 50K cars off this quarter’s output.