Success is also the first battle, defeat is also the first battle, Tesla, which took the lead in the first battle, was deeply involved and was counterattacked. Recently, Tesla released its annual earnings report, which is very sluggish compared to the past.
Over the past year, Tesla has delivered a total of 180860,000 new vehicles, exceeding the lower limit of Musk's annual delivery target set in January 2023, of which Tesla Model Y is responsible for 1.2 million sales. Tesla's full-year revenue reached a new high of 967$7.3 billion, up 19% year-on-year, but operating profit was only 88US$9.1 billion, down 35% year-on-year. The total gross profit margin was 176US$600 million, down 15% year-on-year, with a gross margin of 182%, down 735%, compared to Tesla's full-year R&D of 39$6.9 billion.
This is the first time in seven years that Tesla's annual profit has declined, and the main reason is still the first war. Tesla also did not announce its sales growth target for the new year as in previous years, and Musk also stressed that there will be a period in the future when our growth rate may not be as high as before.
In fact, as early as the third quarter of last year, Tesla had already responded to the decline in gross profit. Unlike independent brands that have increased their weight in the first battle, Tesla has gone against the norm and has raised prices several times against the trend. In the third quarter of 2023, Tesla's total revenue will be 23.4 billion US dollars, equivalent to about 171.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9%, and its net profit will be about 1.9 billion US dollars, equivalent to about 13.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 44%. Under the pressure of huge revenue, the five consecutive rises of new cars in a single month seem to be traceable, which is also in stark contrast to the first war launched at the beginning of the year.
However, judging from the overall annual data, Tesla's revenue has not changed dramatically, and it will continue to continue even for a long time to come.
In 2023, Tesla will take the lead in launching the first war, forcing major brands to join it either actively or passively. At first, the effect was also very significant, as the initiator of the ** war, Tesla became the biggest winner. From January to June in the first half of 2023, Tesla delivered a total of 8890,000 units, up 57% year-on-year, nearly half of the annual sales target of 1.8 million units. In the same period of 2022, Tesla delivered 5650,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 463%, which means that Tesla's price reduction strategy has an immediate effect.
Tesla's primary purpose in launching this war is to digest inventory and increase sales. But for most other players in the new energy market during the same period, this battle is a matter of life and death, and it is necessary to go all out. Therefore, the new energy market has officially ushered in the era of involution. Under the coercion of this torrent, Tesla can only start a series of price reduction modes until the financial report problems begin to appear.
Coupled with the new energy market, new cars continue to emerge, the competitiveness is not the same as in the past, more and more brands look at the Model 3 and Model Y out of the brand, ZEEKR 007, Xpeng G6, ZEEKR 001, Zhiji LS6, Zhijie S7 and other new cars have caused a lot of impact on Tesla. For Tesla, with the Model Y that has been on the market for more than 4 years and the Model 3 that has been on the market for nearly 8 years, it once became a leader in the new energy industry and has created a myth of a new era, but now it is embattled and faced with the crazy beating of the back waves, but no new car can cope with it.
Some time ago, Tesla's first pickup truck model, the Cybertruck, officially started delivery, but it still faces production capacity hell and has been bounced many times. At the same time, as a niche model, its high price is also doomed to the Cybertruck to not reach the height of the Model series.
In terms of low-cost models, it has been recorded in the new version of "Elon Musk's Biography" that Musk has planned to launch a small, cheap, and popular model in 2020, priced at $25,000. But in the end, Tesla vetoed the model. It is undeniable that the aging Model 3 and Model Y still have strong product strength, and the latter has even become the world's best-selling single model in 2023, and has been the best-selling pure electric model in the Chinese market for many months in a row.
However, with the intensification of the involution of the new energy market, independent brands have chosen to continue to increase their weight, and there are 20990,000 yuan of ZEEKR 007,19990,000 yuan Xpeng G6,17The 580,000 yuan Galaxy E8, and even many models use the latest 800V SiC high-voltage platform. Tesla's competitiveness is constantly weakened, being chased away, as the saying goes, it is easy to attack, difficult to defend, and after nearly 8 years of defense, Tesla has to serve the old.
In addition to product pressure, Tesla's once good days of high gross profit have also been fully gone. In the fourth quarter of 2023, although Tesla delivered 480,000 new vehicles, setting a new record again, the gross profit margin was only 176% compared to Q4 2022**62%, a new low since 2019. This means that the more cars Tesla sells in the later stage, the lower the gross profit margin will be. The reason for this is Tesla's initiative to launch a **war, exchanging price for volume, resulting in a profit proportion.
As early as the third quarter of last year, Tesla's new CEO continued to emphasize that the company's focus is still on reducing vehicle costs, and Tesla is also thinking about how to further reduce costs by improving the efficiency of the first-chain process to improve utilization.
Therefore, 2024 will inevitably go through a period of scarcity for Tesla, the absence of new cars and the decline in profit margins, Tesla urgently needs to adjust quickly, at least to play a big card in 2025, and not just rely on price cuts to consolidate its dominant position.