On the morning of April 24th, Tesla Weibo announced the launch of the Model 3 high-performance version. The model is priced at $52990 in the US market and 335900 yuan in the Chinese market, and delivery is expected to begin in the third quarter of this year.
On the early morning of the 24th, Tesla released its first quarter financial report and held a conference call, causing its stock price to soar after hours. After the opening of A-shares, Tesla's concept sector rose. Among them, Hanchuan Intelligent and Wanfeng Aowei rose to the limit, while Darui Electronics, Shenghong Technology, Jinzhong Shares, Paislin and others followed suit.
The first quarter financial report shows that due to the slowdown in sales, Tesla's revenue in the first quarter decreased by 9% year-on-year, marking the largest decline since 2012, and its net profit halved year-on-year.
Although there have been reports that Tesla will abandon low-priced models, Tesla stated in its financial report that it will accelerate the production of low-priced models. Tesla CEO Musk stated in a earnings conference call that even if the lower priced models are not this year, they will start production in early 2025.
Although the financial report revealed that the overall sales growth rate in 2024 will slow down compared to 2023, Musk stated in the financial report conference call that he expects sales to increase in 2024.
Net profit decreased by 55%
According to the financial report, Tesla achieved a revenue of 21.3 billion US dollars in the first quarter, a year-on-year decrease of 9% and a month on month decrease of 15.4%; Net profit (GAAP) was 1.129 billion US dollars, a decrease of 55%, halving compared to the same period last year; The total gross profit was 3.696 billion US dollars, a decrease of 18% from 4.511 billion US dollars in the same period last year; The total gross profit margin was 17.4%, a decrease of 1.9 percentage points from 19.3% in the same period last year.
Source: Tesla Financial Report
For the decline in Q1 performance, Tesla stated that it was mainly due to a decrease in vehicle delivery, partly due to the updated Model 3 production line at the Fremont factory and production interruptions at the Berlin factory.
The financial report shows that Tesla produced 433000 cars and delivered 387000 cars in the first quarter. Production and delivery data have both decreased month on month and year-on-year. The production in the first quarter decreased by 12.5% month on month and nearly 2% year-on-year; The delivery volume decreased by 20% month on month and 8.5% year-on-year.
In terms of autonomous driving, Tesla stated that in order to further improve its end-to-end training capabilities, it will continue to increase the amount of core AI basic training in the coming months, with AI training calculations increasing by more than 130% in the first quarter.
The non automotive business is becoming a growing part of Tesla's profits. Tesla stated that with the continuous development of Megapack, a super large commercial energy storage battery, and the continuous growth of its fleet, it is expected that the profits of its non automotive business will continue to grow. The deployment of energy storage in the first quarter has continuously increased to 4.1 GWh. The revenue and gross profit from power generation and storage in the first quarter also reached a historic high. Due to the increase in Megapack deployment, revenue increased by 7% year-on-year and gross profit increased by 140% year-on-year.
In addition, the financial report also mentioned that Tesla's Shanghai Energy Storage Super Factory plans to start construction in May 2024 and complete mass production in the first quarter of 2025.
Tesla stated in its financial report that the company is currently in between two major growth waves: the first wave of growth began with the global expansion of the Model 3/Y platform, and the next wave of growth will be triggered by advances in autonomy and the launch of new products. In 2024, the growth rate of vehicle sales may be significantly lower than that of 2023, and we are committed to launching the next generation of vehicles and other products. By 2024, the energy storage deployment and revenue growth rate of the energy generation and storage business will exceed that of the automotive business.
Accelerate the production of low-priced vehicle models
Tesla's financial report shows that the company has recently carried out a cost reduction activity (layoffs of 10%) to improve operational efficiency, and will continue to strive to reduce costs throughout the company in the future, including lowering the cost of selling each vehicle. Tesla continues to focus on profit growth, including launching new and more affordable products using existing factories and production lines. Tesla's Chief Financial Officer stated on the earnings conference call that the layoffs have been fully completed.
In order to attract more people to subscribe to its full auto drive system system FSD (Full Self Driving), Tesla announced on April 12 local time that FSD launched a monthly payment discount, with the price dropping from $199/month to $99/month, and the buyout price of FSD remained unchanged at $12000.
Musk revealed during the earnings conference call that he is in negotiations with an automobile manufacturer regarding FSD authorization. "If someone doesn't believe Tesla will solve the problem of autonomous driving, I don't think they should become investors in the company."
In addition, Musk also released multiple "good news" during the conference call. For example, lower priced models will start production in early 2025, even if not later this year. Tesla's autonomous taxi Robotaxi will be launched on August 8th. Musk revealed that the company is committed to developing autonomous vehicle technology, and the cumulative investment in the field of autonomous driving this year will exceed 10 billion dollars. Tesla responded during a conference call to investor concerns about the ramp up of Cybertruck production, stating that Cybertruck's weekly sales in April exceeded 1000 units and will continue to expand its scale while focusing on quality and cost reduction. In addition, Musk also stated that it is expected to sell the Optimus Humanoid Robot humanoid robot before the end of 2025.
Currently, Wall Street expects Tesla to deliver approximately 1.8 million vehicles in 2024, which is on par with 2023. A year ago, Wall Street estimated a delivery volume of 2.4 million vehicles in 2024.
