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Tesla reported a fourth-quarter profit that beat Wall Street estimates, setting a record for the electric-car maker, but the shares fell after the company said supply-chain troubles will limit production into 2022.
The automaker, headquartered in Austin, Texas, reported fourth-quarter earnings of $2.88 billion (€2.5 billion), or $2.54 a share, excluding some items, on strong sales of its mass-market models. That was above analysts’ estimates of $2.36 a share and a record.
Revenue grew 65 per cent to $17.7 billion, compared with estimates of $16.6 billion, the company said Wednesday.
“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 2022,” Tesla said.
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Vehicle deliveries
The company delivered more than 936,000 vehicles worldwide in 2021, up 87 per cent from the year before and above the 50 per cent average annual expansion projected over the course of several years. Most other major automakers saw sales tumble last year due to shortages of semiconductors and other key parts that limited their output of vehicles.
Shares of Tesla fell as much as 6.1 per cent in extended trading after the results were announced before recovering somewhat. The stock advanced 2.1 per cent to $937.41 at the close Wednesday in New York and is down 11 per cent this year.
Chief executive Elon Musk is expected to join a conference call later Wednesday to update Tesla’s “product roadmap”. That may include new information about the Cybertruck, a prototype that Musk recently tweeted he is personally testing at Tesla’s new factory in Austin. It will be the first call Musk has joined since he announced in July 2021 that he would only attend if he has “something really important that I need to say”.
The quarterly results allowed Tesla to turn a profit in consecutive years for the first time since its founding in 2003. - Bloomberg