Text/Shanshan Liu
"Silicon Valley Iron Man" Elon Musk seems to be increasingly "not doing business."
He not only built electric vehicles, but also sent satellites, star chains, brain-computer interfaces, and vacuum high-speed rails. That wasn't enough, and after having more than 80 million followers on Twitter, it backhanded Twitter on April 25 for a total of about $44 billion and took it private. What's even crazier is that Musk tweeted at 8:56 Beijing time on April 28, saying, "Next I want to buy Coca-Cola and add cocaine back in." ”
Musk's acquisition of Coca-Cola may be just a joke, but its privatization of Twitter's smooth operation has stunned many netizens.
The $44 billion deal is not a small amount, where did Musk money come from?
Sources say $13 billion is borrowed from Wall Street's largest bank, and another $12.5 billion is mortgaged with Musk's Tesla stock. Still, the billionaire has yet to disclose where the other $21 billion in cash he promised will come from, so there are fears he could dump Tesla stock on a massive scale.
According to the latest SEC filings, Tesla CEO Musk sold a total of 4.4 million shares of Tesla stock worth about $4 billion through a series of transactions over a two-day period on April 26 and April 27. Musk responded on Twitter on Thursday night to the round of Tesla stock sales, saying: "After today, there are no plans to sell Tesla stock again." ”
Musk's acquisition of Twitter made the coin circle a carnival, after being elected by Musk many times, Dogecoin rose first, and the price rose by 30% on the 26th; but on the same day, Tesla fell sharply with many large technology stocks, and the market value evaporated by $120 billion, which can buy 2-3 Tweets.
Image source: Tesla
The brazen Musk may have gotten used to the ups and downs of Tesla's stock price. At least from the financial data, Tesla is a unique presence in the automotive industry.
Under the pressure of the epidemic, supply chain, labor and other production aspects, Tesla handed over the first quarter of 2022 financial report that made the industry envious. Its gross profit margin far exceeds that of Toyota, the most profitable in the automotive industry, reaching 2 times that of Porsche, and catching up with apple, the world's most profitable company; tesla's net profit is more than 22 times that of BYD in the case of similar sales scale.
However, Tesla CEO Musk called the annual sales of millions only a "small achievement", bluntly saying that the target sales is 20 million vehicles per year, and is confident that it can achieve 50% growth every year.
Gross margin of 32.9%
In the first quarter of 2022, Tesla's revenue, car delivery volume, operating profit, operating profit margin and other indicators have set records.
According to the earnings report, Tesla's total revenue in the first quarter increased by 81% year-on-year to $18.8 billion. Tesla said that the year-on-year increase in revenue was due to increased car deliveries, an increase in average selling prices, and growth in other businesses.
Image source: Tesla
Tesla delivered 310048 new cars in the first quarter, up 68 percent from 184887 in the same period last year, official data showed. Tesla Model 3 and Model Y models accounted for 95 percent of deliveries, or 295324 units.
According to Tesla's official website, the current Model 3 in China has a car pick-up cycle of up to 5-6 months, and the Model Y pick-up cycle is also about 3 months. "We are also likely to achieve 60% growth in 2022 compared to 2021." Musk also said that customers who order cars now face a long waiting period, and some orders may not be delivered until 2023.
At present, more than half of Tesla's delivered models are made in China. According to the data previously released by the Association of Automobile Manufacturers, Tesla's deliveries in China reached 182,200 units in the first quarter of this year, accounting for 58.8% of its total global deliveries.
Prior to this, Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory was shut down for nearly three weeks due to the epidemic. However, with the "resumption of work and production" of Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory, as well as the production and delivery of the Berlin Gigafactory and the Texas Gigafactory, Tesla's global delivery speed will continue to accelerate. In addition, since Tesla said it would build a second factory in China, a number of cities, including Shenyang and Guangzhou, have competed for Tesla's settlement. Recently, Zhuhai also released the news of competing for Tesla's second factory to settle down, Tesla responded to China News Weekly said: "There is no relevant news. ”
According to Tesla's filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, its domestic market revenue in the first quarter of this year was $4.65 billion, an increase of $1.607 billion from $3.043 billion in the same period last year, an increase of 52.8% year-on-year, and the company's second largest market; the United States is still Tesla's largest market, with its first-quarter revenue of $8.734 billion, up 97% year-on-year.
Source: Tesla
Of particular note is Tesla's gross margin of 32.9% in the first quarter of GAAP (US GeneralLy Accepted Accounting Standards). This number far exceeds that of traditional car manufacturers and catches up with Apple, the world's most profitable company. The data shows that Apple's gross profit margin in the past 12 months is more than 40%. In the past, Toyota has always been the most profitable car brand, and its gross profit margin can reach about 20%; some ultra-luxury brands also have good profitability, such as Porsche bicycle gross profit margin of 16.7%, Ferrari is 18%; domestic new energy head company BYD is 16%, Wei Xiaoli is around 18%. But those numbers are clearly much lower than Tesla's.
This also makes people wonder, if Tesla has such a strong ability to make money, why has it raised prices many times in the past few months? In this regard, Musk explained: "Due to the long wait for delivery, that is, booking a car now, the delivery may be next year. So we have to consider the next 6-12 months of supply cost changes, logistics costs and other growth, our demand is still a lot, is still limited by mass production capacity. ”
It is understood that in 2021-2022, the cost of Tesla supplier parts has increased by 20%-30%. The data shows that from June 2021 to March 2022, the price of battery-grade lithium carbonate rose from 88,000 yuan / ton to 502,000 yuan / ton, an increase of 470%; the price of battery-grade micronized lithium hydroxide rose from 98,000 yuan / ton to 485,000 yuan / ton, an increase of 395%.
The pricing of Tesla models has always been closely linked to cost, which has also led to a continuous price reduction due to the decline in costs in the period of just achieving domestic production. Nowadays, the entire automotive industry chain is facing the problem of raw material price increases and supply chain tension, and it seems not surprising that Tesla took the lead in raising prices.
In response to questions about whether future models will continue to raise prices, Musk responded, "If inflation continues or raw materials continue to soar, it does not rule out the possibility of subsequent price increases." ”
Daily revenue exceeds 200 million
Tesla's first quarter 2022 financial report shows that Tesla's net profit exceeded $3.3 billion, an increase of 658% year-on-year. Based on the current exchange rate between the US dollar and the renminbi, $3.3 billion is about 21.6 billion yuan, which means that Tesla earned more than 200 million yuan per day in the first 90 days of this year.
Previously, Tesla released its 2021 full-year financial report showing that it achieved a net profit attributable to the mother of 7.64 billion US dollars in the past year, roughly calculating that Tesla made an average daily net profit of more than 100 million yuan last year. Obviously, Tesla's earning power in the first quarter of this year has made a breakthrough.
Make a simple comparison: Tesla's earning power can reach nearly 22 times that of BYD, the leader of domestic new energy vehicles, while BYD's vehicle sales are only more than 10,000 units less than Tesla. According to BYD's first-quarter performance forecast, BYD's net profit from January to March was 650 million to 950 million yuan, an increase of 174% to 300% year-on-year. At the same time, BYD's passenger car sales in the first quarter reached 286329 units, an increase of 422.97% year-on-year. From the perspective of sales, BYD has approached Tesla, but compared with Tesla's net profit of 21.6 billion, the disparity is still significant.
Image source: Tesla
The reason is that at present, Tesla's main sales models are Model 3 and Model Y, and more than 70% of the parts of these two models can be shared, which greatly saves costs. For most auto companies, there are many models, such as BYD models, as many as a dozen, and the cost has also increased.
At the same time, unlike traditional auto companies, Tesla's integrated die-casting technology also greatly saves costs and improves the speed of delivery. For example, the integrated casting technology first used on the Model Y has turned the original 370-part splicing "rear body assembly" into two or three castings, reducing manufacturing costs by 40%. Tesla does not advertise without marketing expenses, and also greatly saves costs. In addition, Tesla's global car inventory in the first quarter was only 3 days, down 63% compared to 8 days in the same period last year.
In addition to the impressive automotive business, Tesla generated $679 million in revenue from the sale of carbon credits, up 31 percent year-over-year, and energy generation and storage revenue of $616 million.
Facing the future, Tesla's new car research and development has also been put on the agenda. Musk revealed that the new model tesla is developing will have no steering wheel and no pedals, and its core concept is to provide all-round optimization for the "cost per kilometer" and achieve the lowest cost. It is reported that the model is expected to achieve mass production in 2024, which will play a crucial role in driving Tesla's financial growth.
However, Musk also admitted that the progress of self-driving technology will take longer than he expected. "Of all the technology developments I've been involved in, I've never encountered a project like the fully autonomous driving project that gives people illusory hope, and we seem to have made a breakthrough, but in reality we haven't."
"We are still in a very early stage, we have just achieved a 'small achievement' of 1 million per year, we expect 20 million per year, so basically we have achieved 5%, there is still a lot of room for growth, we are very confident that in the next few years 50% growth rate per year." Musk said.