Of course, the US electric car manufacturer could Tesla also achieve new highs in the third quarter – however, both sales and the margin fell short of expectations. Despite the new records, investors reacted with disappointment. After the figures were published on Wednesday evening after the US stock market closed, the share price initially fell by four percent.
Tesla had sales of $21.5 billion in the third quarter. That was 56 percent more than in the same quarter last year, but analysts had recently expected more than $22 billion. The operating margin also fell short of expectations at 17.2 percent, which is impressive compared to other companies in the industry. Operating income was $3.7 billion. The bottom line was net income of $3.3 billion — double the year-ago figure and nearly the previous high in the first three months of 2022.
The CEO’s team named the dampening factors Elon Musk (51) Increased commodity and material prices as well as currency effects due to the strong dollar, which alone reduced the result by around 250 million dollars. They also cited high start-up costs in the new factories in Texas and in Grünheide in Brandenburg, where the company recently produced more than 2,000 cars a week.
The company had already announced the number of cars sold in early October. From June to September, Tesla delivered 343,830 cars – also more than ever, but also less than expected.
The repeatedly formulated goal of increasing deliveries by 50 percent each year in the long term is now questionable. In order to achieve the ambitious value in 2022 as well, Tesla would have to sell more than 1.4 million vehicles for the year as a whole and bring more than half a million cars to customers in the final quarter. Tesla said the growth rate will depend on various factors, including component availability and supply chain stability.
Tesla is valued at just under $700 billion on the stock exchange.