How quickly will the US group be able to ramp up production?
(Photo: IMAGO/Political Moments)
Dusseldorf The billion-dollar takeover bid by CEO Elon Musk for Twitter, the week-long plant closure in Shanghai and high inflation in the important US market: Tesla shareholders are currently busy. Investors will find out exactly how the business of the electric car manufacturer is currently doing on Wednesday evening after 10 p.m. German time – then Tesla will publish the results for the first quarter of the current year.
It is still unclear whether Musk himself will be there. The Tesla boss announced last July that he wanted to stay away from the presentation of the quarterly business figures and the subsequent analyst conference – unless “there is something really important I want to say”.
However, the self-imposed timeout only lasted half a year, and Musk was back with the latest quarterly report. There he reported on delivery problems and announced that autonomous cars would be launched by the end of the year.
Also this week there would be some good reasons why the richest person in the world could be present at the presentation.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
These are the top three areas and numbers that experts will pay attention to:
1. How well are the new plants in Grünheide and Austin getting off to a good start?
Tesla is in a critical phase: the demand for the carmaker’s vehicles is strong. For example, all production for the base version of the Model Y is sold out for this year, according to the Tesla website.
A pleasant thing for Tesla at first glance. But in order not to frustrate customers with long waiting times, the company will have to significantly increase its production capacity this year. “By the end of 2022, Tesla will have a total production capacity of around two million units, while it’s currently around one million,” said Dan Ives, analyst at Wedbush Securities.
>> Read also: Electric cars are conquering the USA – and politics is fueling the boom
In order to achieve this, Tesla must ramp up the new gigafactories in Grünheide near Berlin and Austin smoothly. Both just opened a few weeks ago. But it will be months before the plants can produce the targeted 500,000 vehicles per year. Analysts will therefore look closely at the current development of production capacity.
The factories are all the more important because Tesla had to close its factory in Shanghai for around three weeks last month due to the corona lockdown. According to the analysis company Rystad Energy, this has already reduced production capacity by 24,000 vehicles.
The Chinese plant has been struggling with problems for weeks – there are no workers due to the corona lockdown.
(Photo: IMAGO/VCG)
China is cracking down on a new outbreak of Covid-19 in the metropolis, with quarantines and lockdowns on entire neighborhoods. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, production at Tesla is said to have started again on Monday, but only with one shift. At the end of April, the plant is scheduled to work again with two shifts, provided there are enough workers available.
2. Is Tesla exceeding sales expectations?
Analysts are expecting quarterly revenues of $17.6 billion on average. That would be a slight decrease from the approximately $17.7 billion in the previous quarter. However, that is an unfair comparison. Traditionally, car manufacturers generate particularly high revenues in the last quarter of a calendar year. Buyers of electric cars, for example, want to take state subsidies with them, which companies use to beautify their annual figures.
A comparison with the same quarter of the previous year shows how far Tesla has come. After that, Tesla would have achieved a huge increase of around 70 percent.
It’s also quite possible that analyst estimates will turn out to be too low and Tesla will surpass them. A few factors speak for this. In the past few weeks, the company has raised its sales prices twice by a total of up to ten percent.
Depending on the equipment, the SUV from Tesla costs well over 100,000 euros – around a third more than the Model Y.
(Photo: Tesla)
The company also delivered almost 15,000 Model S and X models in the first quarter, compared to around 12,000 in the fourth quarter. The numbers for the Model 3 and Y remained almost constant. Model S and X are significantly more expensive than the other two vehicles. If their share of the total delivery goes up, that helps the total proceeds.
3. Should Tesla fear Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter?
Musk made an offer to Twitter shareholders last week to take over the short message service for $43 billion. Tesla stock fell in response. Investors are rightly worried: Can Musk lead Tesla, space company Space X, and several smaller companies while transforming Twitter?
Musk plays a huge role in all of his businesses. But at Tesla it is particularly important. The aerospace company Space X has a clear number two, COO Gwynne Shotwell relieves the 50-year-old there. Tesla does not have the position of Chief Operating Officer.
Any statement by Musk about how he intends to finance the takeover or what his specific goals are on Twitter would be exciting. If the Tesla boss does not attend the analyst conference, such questions will take a back seat. In any case, the stock market is still skeptical about the purchase: Twitter’s share price is currently far below Musk’s offer.
More: Elon Musk’s billion-dollar offer for Twitter is met with skepticism by investors