Tesla: Record quarter makes Elon Musk even richer

There may be companies that produce faster, nicer, or more comfortable cars than Tesla. But hardly any manufacturer manages to sell its vehicles so profitably. “Tesla is perhaps the most profitable carmaker after Ferrari,” says industry expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer. Tesla has achieved this thanks to high productivity, cost reductions and higher prices.

Even supply chain bottlenecks and rising raw material costs have not thrown Elon Musk and his electric car company off track. On the contrary: The Texans have each achieved record numbers in terms of sales and profits. In the past quarter, Tesla increased its sales to 18.8 billion dollars, which is the equivalent of 17.3 billion euros. The company thus catapulted its own profits by 658 percent to $3.3 billion. The numbers were significantly better than expected on Wall Street. The share started trading on Thursday with an increase of almost ten percent and was last listed on the New York Stock Exchange at 1070 dollars (984 euros).

The 310,000 cars that Tesla delivered from January to March of this year also set a record for the US automaker. The new records in sales, profit and car deliveries make the world’s richest man even richer. This gives Musk the opportunity to purchase an additional 8.4 million Tesla shares at a price of $70.01 each. That’s a discount of more than 90 percent on Wednesday’s close on the Nasdaq ($977.20). This results in a price gain of a total of 23 billion dollars.

Tesla wants to reduce its dependence on China

Tesla achieved the record for deliveries, although the two new plants – Grünheide in Brandenburg and Austin in Texas – were not yet running at full speed. With the factories that have just opened, Tesla wants to reduce its dependence on China and better serve the high demand. In its largest plant in Shanghai, the conveyor belts had recently stood still for almost three weeks due to the corona lockdown.

Despite the production hiatus, Musk said in a conference call on Wednesday that he would increase deliveries to more than 1.5 million vehicles, a 60 percent increase from last year. Musk was also confident that the group could increase deliveries by 50 percent annually for several years.

In the long term, around 500,000 cars per year are to roll off the line in the new factory in Grünheide alone. But we are still a long way from that. Musk said it took Tesla about 12 months to reach the level of 5,000 vehicles per week after production started at other factories.

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