The new Model 3 was released, about 380,000 yuan! Tesla's latest "report card" was announced! Musk said: accelerate the promotion of "affordable new cars", up more than 11% after hours

National Business Daily

2024-04-24 07:37Published on the official account of Sichuan Daily Economic News

Edited by: Du Yu

After the U.S. stock market on Tuesday, April 23, local time, Tesla, the world's largest automaker by market capitalization, released its financial report for the first quarter of 2024. According to the earnings report, Tesla's revenue fell 9%, the largest decline since 2012, and fell short of analysts' expectations as the electric car company endured the impact of continued price cuts.

It is worth noting that Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that he would accelerate the launch of cheaper affordable models, and the stock price soared by more than 11% after hours.

According to the financial report, Tesla's revenue in the first quarter fell 9% year-on-year to $21.3 billion, lower than the market expectation of $22.3 billion, which is not only the first year-on-year decline in nearly four years since the new crown epidemic disrupted operations in the second quarter of 2020, but also the largest decline since 2012, down more than 15% from $25.17 billion in the fourth quarter of last year, mainly due to the slowdown in global demand for electric vehicles.

Negative free cash flow of $2.5 billion in the first quarter resulted in a sequential decrease in cash and its equivalents and investments of $2.2 billion at the end of the quarter, primarily due to a $2.7 billion increase in inventory and a $1.0 billion capital expenditure on AI infrastructure, which will continue to increase core AI infrastructure capacity in the coming months.

Image source: Tesla's earnings report

At the shareholder meeting, Tesla reiterated its pessimistic outlook for 2024 and told investors that "the sales growth rate is likely to be significantly lower than the growth rate in 2023." ”

Tesla's stock price has plummeted more than 40% this year amid concerns about weak deliveries, Chinese competition and the company's continued price cuts. Earlier this month, Tesla reported an 8.5% year-on-year decline in first-quarter vehicle deliveries.

Compared to the same period last year, revenue from Tesla's energy division increased 7% to $1.64 billion, while service and other revenue increased 25% to $2.29 billion.

Image source: Tesla's earnings report

EV sales growth is slowing, and Tesla and its main rivals have been slashing EV prices on and off for months to spur demand. Tesla's gross profit plunged 18% in the first quarter, in part due to price cuts at the beginning of the year.

Tesla said the total sales include revenue from early sales of its advanced driver assistance system, which is dubbed the Full Self-Driving (FSD) option. A feature called Autopark was released in North America, enabling the company to recognize deferred revenue.

Chris Redl, an automotive analyst at Siena Capital, estimates that Tesla received up to $700 million in deferred revenue from FSD this quarter. Excluding regulatory credit, this equates to about 4.3% of Tesla's vehicle revenue.

Tesla began a massive restructuring this month, with two executives, Drew Baglino and Rohan Patel, resigning. Musk said in a company-wide memo last week that the automaker would cut more than 10 percent of its workforce.

Notably, Musk said that the launch of "new cars, including more affordable models," is being accelerated and that these models will be "able to be produced on the same production lines as Tesla's existing product line." Tesla aims to "make the most of" its existing production capacity and achieve "more than 50% increase in production by 2023" before investing in new production lines.

Musk said on an analyst call that production of lower-priced models would begin in early 2025, if not later this year.

These new models, including more affordable models, can be produced on the same production lines as existing models.

Image source: Tesla's earnings report

In addition, Musk said that by the end of the year, Tesla will have 85,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs for training artificial intelligence.

Musk said that the humanoid robot Optimus may be sold by the end of 2025, and by the end of this year, the Optimus humanoid robot will have the ability to complete simple factory tasks.

According to some analysts, Tesla invested $1 billion in AI computing in the first three months of this year, making it more of an AI company than a car company.

Another noteworthy news, in the early morning of April 24, Beijing time, after market rumors, explosive photos and parameter spoilers in the past few months, Tesla finally released a new Model 3 high-performance version on its official website in the United States, and began to accept reservations at the same time.

(Image source: Tesla's official website)

Compared to the previous-generation Model 3 Performance Edition, the new version has 32% more peak power and 16% more peak torque, while reducing drag by 5%. Like its predecessor, the new Performance version is equipped with larger brake calipers to control the more powerful car.

According to Tesla's official website, the new Model 3 high-performance version is priced at 52,990 US dollars (about 383,900 yuan), and the car has a range of 296 miles (about 476 kilometers). According to the official website of the United States, it is decided now, and the car will be picked up in about 5-6 months.

Although the focus of American netizens at the beginning was the range of this car, it was quickly overshadowed by the heated discussion caused by the price - American netizens were surprised to find that due to the current electric vehicle subsidy policy in the United States, the new high-performance version is cheaper than the standard long-range version!

According to the original pricing, the high-performance version of the Model 3 ($52,990) is more than $5,000 more than the long-range version ($47,740), but because the former can get the full $7,500 tax credit for car purchases, and the latter does not receive subsidies now, the high-performance version is $2,000 cheaper.

Musk also reluctantly said that the situation is now far more evolved than the possibility of changing the huge supply chain and production system. At the same time, he also "added confusion" to netizens, saying that the preferential policy for electric vehicles in the United States is applicable to the leased Model 3 long-range version, so the price of renting a long-range version is still lower than that of the high-performance version.

National Business Daily, comprehensive market public information

View original image 472K

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•