2024-07-24
한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina
After the market close on Tuesday,TeslaThe company released its second quarter financial report, in which total revenue was higher than expected, but operating profit and earnings per share (EPS) were lower than expected.
Data shows that Tesla's second-quarter revenue was US$25.5 billion, compared with market expectations of US$24.8 billion and US$24.927 billion in the same period last year; second-quarter operating profit was US$1.605 billion, down 33% year-on-year, compared with market expectations of US$1.81 billion; adjusted earnings per share was US$0.52, lower than the market expectation of US$0.6.
It seems that Tesla has not yet recovered from the unfavorable situation of slowing sales and large-scale layoffs this year. In the conference call after the release of the financial report, Musk also responded to the concerns of the outside world about Robotaxi, FSD (Tesla's fully autonomous driving system), and humanoid robots.
Financial report data shows that Tesla's revenue in the second quarter of 2024 increased by 2% to US$25.55 billion from US$24.93 billion in the same period last year. Among them, car sales fell 7% to US$19.9 billion from US$21.27 billion in the same period last year.
According to the second quarter production and delivery report released by Tesla, as of June 30, Tesla's second quarter production volume was 411,000 vehicles and delivery volume was 444,000 vehicles, a year-on-year decrease of 4.8%.
Tesla's competitors' U.S. electric vehicle sales grew 33% year-over-year in the first half of 2024, while Tesla's sales fell 9.6% during the same period, according to data tracked by Cox Automotive.
As competition from rivals intensifies, Tesla has had to take a series of measures to boost sales.
Taking the Chinese market as an example, on April 21, Tesla China’s official website showed thatTesla Model 3The price of the entire /Y/S/X series in mainland China has been reduced by 14,000 yuan. The adjusted starting price of Model 3 has been reduced from 245,900 yuan to 231,900 yuan.Model YThe starting price dropped from 263,900 yuan to 249,900 yuan, a price reduction of 5.3%.
The price cuts have also reduced Tesla's profit margins to a certain extent. In the second quarter of this year, Tesla's net profit fell 45% to $1.48 billion from $2.7 billion in the same period last year.
For the Cybertruck pickup truck, which has been produced in small batches since November last year, Tesla kept the specific production quantity confidential, but revealed some production details of the Cybertruck.
"Cybertruck production more than tripled month-over-month and is on track to be profitable by year-end," the company said in a letter to shareholders.
At the same time, Tesla also revealed the progress of two other vehicles: plans for low-cost cars are also advancing, with production expected to start in the first half of 2025; and preparations are continuing for the production of its commercial truck Semi, which is "expected to start production at the end of 2025."
In sharp contrast to the declining automotive business, energy storage business sales increased by 100% year-on-year to $3 billion. In addition, the gross profit margin of the business was close to 25%, an increase of 6 percentage points year-on-year.
The energy storage business is becoming a "key trump card" in Tesla's hands. Before the release of the financial report, Tesla and the US new energy company Intersect Power announced an agreement on July 18. According to the contract, Tesla will provide Intersect Power with 15.3GWh of Megapack battery energy storage systems to support its solar + energy storage project portfolio by 2030. This contract, worth more than US$3 billion, also refreshed Tesla's single contract record in the field of energy storage.
Behind the mixed financial report data, Musk is also looking for new profit growth points for Tesla and releasing more positive information to the outside world.
Musk once said, "In fact, we should be regarded as an artificial intelligence or robotics company. If you think of Tesla as just a car company, then fundamentally, your understanding of Tesla is one-sided."
Tesla shares have risen 40% since the end of May, largely because investors are betting that Musk can successfully reinvent Tesla as an artificial intelligence company that operates a driverless taxi service and sells humanoid robots that can efficiently perform manufacturing and other tasks.
In the conference call after the earnings report was released, there were many questions about Robotaxi, FSD, and humanoid robots.Optimus Prime” (Optimus) The issue has undoubtedly become the focus.
Tesla has finalized the latest time for the delayed release of Robotaxi: it will be released on October 10. Musk also admitted in the conference call that his past predictions on autonomous driving may have been "too optimistic."
In April this year, Tesla announced that it would release Robotaxi on August 8. But earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that Tesla planned to postpone the event by about two months. Musk later acknowledged this fact in a social media post and said that Tesla would spend more time on Robotaxi to make important design changes to the front of the vehicle and show some other things.
During the earnings call, Musk said he wanted to "make some important changes" to the car, which will likely be called the Cybercab, and said delaying the launch would give Tesla a chance to "show off a couple of other products."
During this conference call, Musk not only introduced the progress of his own Robotaxi, but also criticized General Motors for indefinitely suspending Cruise's "Origin autonomous vehicle production."
He said GM's cancellation of the Origin project was not motivated by regulatory concerns. "Obviously the real reason they canceled it was that GM couldn't make it work," he said. "Don't blame the regulators, that's misleading."
At the same time, Musk also praised Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet (Google's parent company), a company that develops self-driving cars, saying it "performed very well."
Regarding FSD, Musk said in the earnings call that the Robotaxi business, which is an extension of FSD as a general solution, is like Airbnb on wheels, and all vehicles in the existing fleet can join. However, Musk also said that similar FSD solutions outside the United States are far behind the capabilities of FSD in North America.
"We are about to apply for regulatory approval for FSD in Europe, China, and other regions, and expect to receive approval before the end of the year," Musk said.
From this point of view, it is highly certain that Tesla FSD will enter China this year. When Tesla built a factory in Shanghai, it led to the rapid development of the entire new energy vehicle industry. I wonder if the landing of FSD in China this time can also stir up the rapid development of the entire autonomous driving industry.
As for the humanoid robot, Musk said, "Optimus is already performing tasks in our factory," and he also expects to start limited production of Optimus 1 version for Tesla use early next year.
Tesla launched the first generation of Optimus robots, called Bumblebee, in September 2022. This year, Tesla released a video of the second generation of humanoid robots folding T-shirts at the Tesla factory. As for price and cost, Musk said in March this year that the price of Optimus will be less than $25,000 or $30,000, and the production cost is expected to be "less than half of the car."
Musk also told investors on the company's earnings call that Tesla would double down on its Dojo supercomputer because of the high prices of Nvidia's GPUs.
Previously, Musk tweeted, "By the end of the year, Dojo 1 will have about 8,000 H100s online training. Not big, but not small either."
It is not difficult to see from the report card submitted by Tesla that the challenges Tesla faces in its automotive business are actually very obvious. In the financial report, Tesla did not give a new full-year sales target, but it warned that "the growth rate of vehicle sales in 2024 may be significantly lower than the growth rate in 2023."
Some argue that Tesla’s “real story” lies in the company’s potential to realize its robotaxi ambitions. If Tesla succeeds in this area, factors such as gross margins and delivery volume will become a “supporting role” in comparison.
But many people are skeptical about Musk's vision of Robotaxi, believing that its realization is not optimistic.
However, Musk has already said, "If you believe we can solve autonomous driving, buy our stock, or sell it."
(This article was first published on Titanium Media App, author: Han Jingxian, editor: Zhang Min)
Collect and organize the latest news information and make it available for free for everyone to read
