Tesla beats revenue, profit estimates on record deliveries

Elon Musk’s Tesla blew past Wall Street expectations in its first quarter earnings report on Wednesday, posting yet another record profit despite investor jitters about supply chain issues and inflation.

The electric automaker posted $18.8 billion in revenue during the January through March quarter — significantly above analysts’ expectations of $17.8 billion and a whopping 81% higher than the $10.4 billion revenue reported during the same period last year. 

The automaker delivered more than 300,000 cars in the first quarter — an all time record for Tesla — and padded its profit margins by raising prices at a rate that outpaced inflation. 

“Price increases are nicely exceeding cost inflation,” said Roth Capital analyst Craig Irwin said. 

Tesla’s first quarter profit stood at $3.7 billion, handily beating analyst expectations of $2.6 billion. 

The company’s shares surged 6.4% in after hours trading. 

Some analysts have questioned whether the ongoing lockdown in Shanghai — home to a massive Tesla plant — will snarl the automaker’s deliveries in the second quarter.

“The China zero Covid policy remains a slowly fading overhang on the stock,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said. 

But Irwin is confident that Tesla will keep its momentum thanks to new facilities in Texas and Germany. 

“Chinese production issues seem well managed, and we expect Austin and Berlin to make up the slack from Shanghai’s 19-day outage,” Irwin said. 

However, Tesla cautioned that coronavirus outbreaks, chip shortages and the surging prices of raw materials continue to complicate production. 

“Our own factories have been running below capacity for several quarters as supply chain became the main limiting factor, which is likely to continue through the rest of 2022,” Tesla said in a statement.

Musk is expected to speak during Tesla’s quarterly earnings call later Wednesday, which comes as he’s also mounting a $43 billion bid to take over Twitter. 

Some investors have expressed concern that Musk may sell or borrow against his Tesla  shares to finance the pricey bid.

With Post wires