Tesla surprises with higher profit margin – quarterly figures

Despite the industry’s gloom, the US electric car manufacturer Tesla earned significantly more in the third quarter than experts on Wall Street expected. There were signs of a price jump on Thursday for the share, which had been doing poorly in recent weeks.

The paper cost $237.74 in pre-market US trading on the Nasdaq, around 11.3% more than at the previous day’s close. However, the annual high of $271 from July is still some way away.

The better-than-expected figures should give the optimists among investors hope that the low point in profitability has been passed and the growth concerns are exaggerated, wrote analyst Joseph Spak from the major Swiss bank UBS. For the coming year, Tesla boss Elon Musk has promised growth of 20 to 30% in vehicles sold. The Tesla skeptics, on the other hand, are likely to see confirmation in management’s statement that the margins from the third quarter will be difficult to maintain in the fourth quarter, according to Spak.

In terms of sales, Tesla narrowly missed analysts’ forecasts. Revenues rose by eight percent year-on-year to almost $25.2 billion (€23.4 billion). An average of around $25.4 billion was expected on the market. The money that Tesla earns from selling CO2 certificates to car manufacturers with combustion engines also played a role. In the pure car business, sales rose by 2% to a good $20 billion.

The bottom line is that Tesla profits rose 17% year-over-year to around $2.17 billion. Earnings per share adjusted for special items were 72 US cents – while analysts had only expected 58 cents. The company benefited from lower costs per car – among other things, raw material and freight costs fell.

Tesla increased deliveries in the last quarter by six percent to almost 463,000 vehicles. The lion’s share of this was made up of around 440,000 cars of the cheaper models 3 and Y. However, the new electric pickup “Cybertruck” now follows them in third place in the ranking of electric vehicles sold in the USA, Tesla announced without providing a specific sales figure.

For the year as a whole, Tesla boss Elon Musk expects a slightly better sales performance than in 2023. Deliveries are likely to increase slightly compared to the previous year, it was said. Last year, Tesla delivered 1.8 million vehicles.

“The booming Chinese market for electric cars is giving Tesla a significant jump in profits,” said industry expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer. While BMW, Mercedes and the Volkswagen Group experienced significant deteriorations in their profit margins in the second quarter and further deteriorations are expected in the third quarter, Tesla has significantly improved its margin compared to the previous quarter. The elimination of 10% of jobs worldwide also contributed to this.

REUTERS

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