After the U.S. stock market opened yesterday night, Tesla's stock price plummeted by 11.55%, and the market value evaporated by 100 billion! At the same time, it also brought down a number of new car-making forces, luxury electric vehicle brand Lucid fell 14.1%, Wei Xiaoli fell 6.84%, 12.57% and 6.54% respectively, and the overall U.S. new energy vehicle sector fell by 8.42%.
The root cause is that Tesla's fourth-quarter financial report released after the day before and after the market is inseparable.
According to the financial report, Tesla's operating income in the fourth quarter of 2021 was as high as $17.72 billion, an increase of 65% year-on-year; net profit reached $2.321 billion, an increase of 760% year-on-year; earnings per share was $2.05; adjusted EPS was $2.54, and the overall data exceeded market expectations. For the full year of 2021, Tesla's operating income reached $53.823 billion, an increase of about 71% year-on-year. Among them, the automotive business revenue was US$47.232 billion, an increase of about 73% year-on-year, and GAAP net profit was US$5.519 billion, an increase of 665% year-on-year.
In addition, Tesla's profitability has improved significantly, the gross profit margin in the fourth quarter was 27.4%, an increase of 0.8 percentage points from the previous quarter, of which the automotive business revenue was 15.97 billion US dollars, an increase of 71% year-on-year, and the gross profit margin of bicycles was as high as 30.6%, which can be said to be very amazing in the automotive industry.
But after the release of such eye-catching data, Tesla fell 6% during the after-hours trading session of the US stock market on January 26, but soon turned red, and on January 27, it turned down and expanded the decline during the intraday, showing that some hidden dangers in this financial report caused concerns in the market.
The first is the supply chain problem, Tesla stressed in the financial report that the supply chain is currently the main factor restricting Tesla's development, and the company still faces chip restrictions in 2022, which will not be alleviated until 2023.
Secondly, the trend of slowing down the growth rate, although Tesla's performance is still beyond market expectations, but the excess part is far less than the previous two years to break through the market imagination, and with the rise of new car-making forces in various countries around the world and the transformation of traditional car companies, the new energy vehicle track is becoming more and more crowded, when the choice becomes more, Tesla's market share decline is an inevitable result.
Third, the progress of new models and 4680 batteries is slow, and Musk said on the conference call that Tesla will not launch new models in 2022, saying: "If we launch new cars, then due to various restrictions, there will be no growth in total car production." Therefore, we will not introduce new models this year. There is no point in doing so. For the electric pickup truck Cyberteruck and electric supercar Roadster, which have previously earned enough attention, it may be postponed until next year. While the 4680 self-built battery factory and supplier capacity are in the process of construction, Musk said that Tesla is producing a Model Y equipped with 4680 batteries at its Austin plant, and the first batch of 4680 battery cars will be delivered this quarter. Contrary to rumors, the Berlin plant did not take the lead in using the 4680 battery, and the first models of the Berlin plant will continue to use the 2170 battery.
In addition to some of Tesla's own development reasons, the plunge in the stock price is also inseparable from the role of the general environment, and now the certainty of the Fed's interest rate hike is getting stronger and stronger, once the interest rate hike lands, the stock price of new energy vehicle companies that have been injected with a large amount of bubbles in the large release water may be difficult to maintain a high level.
Tesla, which has such a bright performance support, has fallen by 31% since the beginning of 2022, and other new power car companies that have not yet delivered on a large scale are even more miserable, such as the electric pickup truck company RIVIAN has eliminated 70% of the bubble since November. The U.S. new energy vehicle sector has fallen 25% so far on January 4.
It is undeniable that new energy vehicles are one of the few tracks in the world that has both growth and certainty, but after the frenzy of 2021, the valuation of new energy vehicles has gradually become the consensus of the market, and as the bubble subsides, the inner volume of new energy vehicles may really begin.