The article is from the Financial Associated Press, and the author is Shi Zhengcheng
On Thursday, local time in the United States, Tesla, which just released a more than expected earnings report, plunged 11% with a barefoot line. Although there are expectations that insufficient chip production capacity will affect the growth rate of performance, how did such well-known bearishness cause the wealth of Musk, the world's richest man, to evaporate by $25.8 billion (equivalent to 164.2 billion yuan) overnight?
Counting the 11% of last Thursday's plunge, Tesla's stock price has fallen by 21% this year. Although such a decline is not uncommon in the company's history, the current technical graphics have not yet appeared to find a signal of support, superimposed on the uncertainty of the external environment, this round of shocks is bound to continue.
(Tesla daily chart, source: TradingView)
The results are bright enough, but the growth anxiety looms
Objectively speaking, Tesla's Q4 performance is good enough: revenue of $17.72 billion (market expectations of $16.5 billion), net profit of $2.32 billion surged nearly 760% year-on-year, also better than expected. Gross margin continued to rise to 27.4%, while operating margin nearly tripled year-over-year to 14.7%.
In contrast, GM's operating margin is only 9.5%, while Ford's is only 2.2%. This may also partly explain why Tesla is able to enjoy a valuation ten times that of the latter two.
At Thursday's closing price, Tesla's dynamic price-to-earnings (TTM) ratio is 150 times, while GM's is 6.88 times.
However, the price-earnings ratio of up to 100 times is not without cost, and once the market is worried about the growth rate of performance, "killing valuation" has become an inevitable situation.
In its performance outlook released yesterday, Tesla continued to vaguely state in the performance guidance section that it would "achieve an average annual delivery growth of 50% over a several-year time frame." However, the company also stressed that the actual output of the gigafactory has been lower than the capacity for several consecutive quarters, and the supply chain bottleneck is expected to continue until 2022.
Tesla delivered a total of 936,000 vehicles in 2021, up 87% from 499,000 vehicles in 2020, if the company's "production is lower than the actual production capacity", Tesla's business data in 2022 can meet expectations will inevitably depend on the face of the chip factory.
(Tesla quarterly delivery data, source: the company's official website, financial associated press)
With the growth of the base, the decline in data growth is reasonable, but the market is worried that the decline rate is too fast to trigger valuation logic adjustments, especially in the context of a number of traditional car manufacturers spending tens of billions of dollars to enter the electric vehicle industry. Once the data shows that Tesla has lost its leading position in the industry, the logic supporting the 100-fold price-earnings ratio will also be shaken.
Anger Biden
Compared with the past, which does not pay attention to traditional car companies at all, Musk's every move is also revealing this anxiety.
This week, U.S. President Joe Biden posted a short video co-produced with GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra on his official media account, praising GM and Ford for producing electric vehicles in the United States at an unprecedented rate. Musk has issued several state attacks in a row, saying that Biden and Mary Barra should be ashamed of such lies, and in a reply to netizens on Thursday, biden was called a "human-shaped wet sock puppet".
(Source: Social Media)
Of course, Musk's opinions about Biden are not new. Because biden's efforts to implement the infrastructure bill includes a provision to significantly increase the subsidy amount of locally produced electric vehicles, this is also seen as a positive for local manufacturers such as GM and Ford, which is naturally not conducive to Tesla. Also this week, Biden's symposium on industrial entrepreneurs at the White House also invited Mary Barra to attend, and Musk unsurprisingly did not receive an invitation from the White House again.
Deeper concerns: pickup trucks have not appeared The entry-level new car has also disappeared
If supply chain bottlenecks and increased competition are more or less expected changes in the external environment, such as Cyberruck's repeated ticket jumps will be somewhat disappointing to investors.
Musk confirmed on Wednesday that it will be difficult for the company to launch any new models in 2022 due to a global chip shortage. The sentence also means that Cyberruck, which was scheduled to go public in 2021, will be postponed until at least 2023.
In the context of Tesla's efforts to absorb existing orders, large manufacturers including Rivian, General Motors, And Ford have launched a battle for the electric pickup truck market in the US market. Deliveries of Rivain's R1T began late last year, and pickup truck giant Ford's electric version of the F-150 will also hit the streets of the United States this spring. Veteran rivals GM's Hummer and Chevrolet have also announced their participation in the "pickup war" this year and next year.
In addition to the pickup truck market, the long-rumored "$25,000" entry-level Tesla has no signs of leaving. The Financial Associated Press previously quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that "there is no basis for the listing of Model Q in 2023". Musk also confirmed on Wednesday that "there is enough on the company's plate at the moment" and that the company is not currently advancing the entry-level Tesla project, which may eventually start at some point in the future.