Tesla grows revenue 42%

Tesla withstood disruptions to production in China and the high costs of scaling up new plants in Texas and Germany to report a 57 percent jump in adjusted earnings per share in its latest quarter, Report informs, citing the Financial Times.

The electric carmaker’s second-quarter results brought a degree of relief after the company had warned of production and supply strain stresses. Revenue, at $16.9 billion, was up 42 percent from the year before, though the figure fell slightly short of the $17.1 billion Wall Street had been expecting.

Tesla also revealed that it had largely unwound last year’s contentious $1.5 billion bet on bitcoin, as it converted three-quarters of its stake into fiat currencies in the face of tumbling cryptocurrency prices.

Chief executive Elon Musk’s enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies meant the carmaker was one of the first companies to park a portion of its cash in digital assets.

Musk warned in an internal email last month that he had a “super bad feeling” about the economy.

Asked on Wednesday whether demand was weakening, the Tesla boss said “some, maybe”, but added: “We have so much excess demand that it’s not an issue for us.” Chief financial officer Zach Kirkhorn said any fall-off in demand was “not material”.

Instead, Musk said Tesla’s “problem is overwhelmingly that of production”.

Supply chain pressures and the Covid 19-related shutdowns in Shanghai have left the company needing about 935,000 vehicle deliveries in the second half of the year to reach the 1.5 million total for which many analysts have hoped, or an increase of 70 percent from the same period of 2021.

Musk did not give a production forecast for the rest of the year except to say that the company was likely to achieve “record” output. He also said Tesla’s plans called for it to reach full production by the end of the year, at an annualised rate of 2 million vehicles.