Tesla has made its small contribution to the week’s tech ladened quarterly reporting calendar, so tonight (Tuesday) it’s the turn of Apple, Alphabet and Microsoft to bolster confidence by matching Elon Musk’s company’s performance or record quarterly earnings, deliveries and earnings.
Shares in the electric car and battery maker jumped more than 2% in after-hours trading after it topped market forecasts for second quarter revenue and earnings.
That was after Tesla produced and sold more than 200,000 cars in a quarter for the first time in the three months to June 30.
The beat was however very easy because in the June 2020 quarter, the company saw a plunge in revenue and earnings as its factories were closed for six weeks due to the pandemic lockdowns.
Freed to those constraints, Tesla saw a sharp recovery in its fortunes, that would have been even larger but for the continuing shortage of computer chips.
Record deliveries of its vehicles more than offset the impact of the global shortage of those chips. Tesla said deliveries hit all-time highs thanks to sales of cheaper models including Model 3 sedans and Model Y crossovers.
Investors after-hours dealings ignored the delaying of the company’s much hyped electric semi-truck until 2022 – a move anticipated by some analysts.
Revenue jumped to $US11.96 billion from $US6.04 billion a year earlier when its US factory was shut down for more than six weeks thanks to lockdowns designed to control the spread of Covid.
The company reported $US1.14 billion in net income for the quarter, the first time it has topped the $US1 billion level.
Tesla had already reported deliveries (which is its version of sales used by Ford, GM and its peers) of a record 201,250 electric vehicles, and production of 206,421 total vehicles, during the quarter ending June 30.
The second-quarter numbers broke the previous record set in the March quarter, when Tesla delivered 184,800 and produced 180,338 cars. The company does not breakdown production data between its Fremont, California factory and the new factory in Shanghai.
Overall automotive revenues came in at $US10.21 billion, of which only $354 million came from sales of regulatory credits.
CNBC pointed out that that was a lower number for credit sales than in any of the previous four quarters. Automotive gross margins came in at 28.4%, the highest for a year.
Tesla said operating income increased mainly due to volume growth and cost reduction, which offset “additional supply chain costs, lower regulatory credit revenue” and other items including $US23 million in losses on investment in cryptocurrency bitcoin.
Tesla said it is “on track to build our first Model Y vehicles in Berlin and Austin in 2021.”
But it said it has delayed the launch of the Semi truck program to next year,” to better focus on these factories, and due to the limited availability of battery cells and global supply chain challenges.”
