The largest manufacturer of electric vehicles, Tesla, managed to increase its net profit in the second quarter of the year by 20% compared to the same period of the previous year, up to 2,703 million dollars -some 2,115 million euros- thanks to breaking sales records, which is attributed to the price reduction of most of its models. The company led by Elon Musk thus exceeded the forecasts of analysts.
In this sense, adjusted earnings per share was 91 cents, above the market forecast of 81 cents. Likewise, the company’s total income increased by 47%, up to 24,930 million dollars (about 22,237 million euros).
However, the manufacturer’s gross margin -18.2%- was below estimates -18.8%-. The decline is due to discounts it has applied to most of its vehicles to encourage sales amid increasing competition. Despite this, the company noted that its operating margin of approximately 10% “remained substantial.”
Tesla also attributes the reduction in margins to increased operating expenses due to projects such as the Cybertruck pickup truck and the development of artificial intelligence, for example, through the production of Dojo training computers, which will process the video information captured by the cameras of its millions of vehicles that circulate around the world to train Autopilot, Tesla’s semi-autonomous driving system.
In a conference call with analysts and the media, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he is convinced that in the long term autonomous driving will generate “almost infinite” demand. “We believe that future Robotaxi will be in almost infinite demand and the way that we are going to build the Robotaxi is itself revolutionary as well,” Musk explained.
In addition, it expects its Cybertruck electric pick-up to begin production at the gigafactory in Texas (USA) at the end of this year, a period in which it also expects to deliver 1.8 million vehicles, a figure lower than the 1.88 million forecast by analysts, due to the cut in production expected in the third quarter as a result of the stoppage of its factories to modernize equipment.
The adjusted gross operating result (Ebitda) increased in the second quarter by 22.7% to 4,653 million dollars. In total, from April to June Tesla produced a record 479,700 vehicles and delivered 466,140. “This reflects our cost reduction efforts, successful production ramp-ups in Berlin and Texas, and strong results from our Power & Utilities and Other units,” Tesla added.
