Status: 07/21/2022 01:44 am
Corona lockdowns in China, material shortages, chaos in global supply chains: The electric car company Tesla had to deal with many problems in the last quarter. Despite this, the company continues to make good money.
Despite pandemic-related production outages in China and ongoing supply chain issues, Tesla nearly doubled second-quarter earnings. The electric car maker earned a bottom line of 2.3 billion dollars, 98 percent more than in the same period last year.
This was announced by Elon Musk’s group after the US stock market closed. In the previous quarter, however, the result was still significantly higher at $3.3 billion. Analysts had nevertheless expected significantly less profit.
Problems in new plants
Tesla shares gained around 4 percent in after-hours trading. The automaker increased its sales by 42 percent year-on-year to $16.9 billion. Measured against the first quarter of 2022, however, this still means a decline. At that time, sales were $18.76 billion.
This ended a string of record sales as Tesla had to temporarily close its Shanghai plant due to a lockdown. There were also production problems in the new plants in Texas and in Grünheide near Berlin. Both factories are currently losing “billions”, said Tesla boss Musk in June.
Group confirms annual targets
At the time, he cited a lack of batteries and supply chain problems due to the situation in the Chinese ports as reasons. Tesla has raised the prices of its vehicles several times this year. Among other things, this should compensate for higher costs for lithium, which is used in the batteries, and for aluminium.
Despite the recent difficulties, the group confirmed its ambitious annual targets and announced a “record-breaking” second half of the year.
Majority of bitcoin holdings sold
Tesla also provided surprising news about its Bitcoin holdings: The company had sold around 75 percent of it at the end of the quarter, which increased the cash balance on the balance sheet by $936 million in the past quarter. Tesla had invested around 1.5 billion dollars in the digital currency in 2021, but sold part of it a little later.