Wen / Tingting

Source: capital detective (ID: deep)_ insights）

Is Tesla worth $400 billion? In the last quarter, when it released its earnings report, the market had a lot of debate on this topic. Another quarter has passed, people who like Tesla or dislike Tesla are still the same, and in the dispute, Tesla has always maintained a fierce growth momentum:

In the third quarter, Tesla delivered 139000 vehicles worldwide, up 44% year-on-year, a record high.

The net profit of gantesla increased by $15.7-8.0% year-on-year, and realized the third largest profit of $15.7 billion.

At the same time, Tesla has taken a step further in autonomous driving technology. It has announced that it will launch a full-automatic driving test version to a small number of users on the evening of 21. Musk also said in a telephone conference that Tesla is expected to launch full-automatic driving function by the end of this year.

In contrast to its impressive performance, Tesla was caught in a whirlpool of public opinion several times in the third quarter.

In one of the most important markets in China, Tesla News continued, with one of the funniest of them, Sina Technology reported that Tesla banned employees in China

Tesla versus

A few days ago, there were rumors on the market that Tesla Model 3 will reduce its price to 199000 yuan, although Tesla China General Manager quickly responded to the group

Since Tesla entered the Chinese market in December 2013, the official price range of its Model S、Model X、Model 3 and Model Y, models has been adjusted about 59 times, according to media statistics. Frequent price adjustments have left Tesla in a huge dispute in China,

Old car owners put up banners to protect their rights

The Chinese team is struggling with this, but in sharp contrast, Musk on the other side of the ocean is still in high spirits. The market value of Tesla stock has reached an average of US $250 billion in six months. As long as Q3 Tesla's revenue or profit meets certain targets, musk will have the opportunity to unlock the fourth batch of options.

On the one hand, there are many new achievements, on the other hand, there are endless doubts and disputes. In this strange contradiction, Tesla still has a fierce momentum.

A record quarter

Once again, musk has achieved his bragging prowess.

In September, in an internal e-mail, Musk the company

At the same time, in terms of sales volume, Tesla also performed well, with a vehicle sales volume of 145000 in the third quarter, up 51% year-on-year. This is also the best figure in history, and also indicates that Tesla's next quarter delivery volume is also worth looking forward to under the premise of guaranteed capacity.

With regard to production capacity, the annual production capacity of model 3 / Y in California plant has been increased to 500000 vehicles, and the annual production capacity of model 3 in Shanghai factory has reached 250000 vehicles, and will realize the mass production of model y in 2021. At the same time, the Berlin plant is also expected to be put into operation in 2021. It can be predicted that, with the expansion of sales volume, Tesla will have a large increase in production capacity next year.

The main force contributing to the sales volume is still the relatively inexpensive model 3 series models. According to calculation, the average price of Tesla bicycle is 53000 US dollars, which is lower than that in the first two quarters of this year. At the same time, in the Chinese market in October, the Tesla Model 3 series price cut again, and the average price of a single bike may be lowered again.

Tesla's idea of reducing the average unit price of cars and expanding the sales scale has achieved good results, and its operating revenue has also increased significantly in the third quarter: the total revenue reached 8.77 billion US dollars, with a year-on-year increase of 39%; among them, the sales revenue of complete vehicles was 7.34 billion US dollars, with a year-on-year increase of 43.1%.

In addition to the increase in revenue and delivery volume, the most noteworthy point in Tesla's financial report is the re optimization of its profitability.

In the third quarter, Tesla achieved a gross profit of $2.06 billion, up 73% year-on-year, and its gross profit margin increased to 23.5% from 18.9% in the same period last year. Among them, the gross profit margin of vehicle sales increased from 21.8% to 27.0%.

In the third quarter, Tesla realized a net profit attributable to ordinary shareholders of $870 million, up 157% year-on-year, and the corresponding net profit margin increased to 10%.

The growth of sales volume and revenue is more from the market recognition, and Tesla's profitability improvement reflected in this financial report more shows the gradual maturity of the company's own operation ability.

In terms of cost control, Tesla's performance was stable, and the operating expense rate decreased slightly to 14.3% compared with the previous two quarters. But it should be pointed out that part of the increase in Tesla's management fees is used to pay Musk's incentive compensation. Since this year, the talented CEO has unlocked several options.

With the release of Q3 financial report, Tesla's adjusted EBITDA reached $1.81 billion in the third quarter, which means that Tesla's adjusted EBITDA has exceeded the $4.5 billion mark for four consecutive quarters. Musk has obtained the key to unlock the fourth option and may obtain another $3 billion in salary income.

From any point of view, this is enough to satisfy the market. Ever since Tesla surpassed Toyota to become the world's top auto company in terms of market value, there has been a discussion about whether it is not worthy of its name. The growth potential and growth potential reflected in Tesla's financial reports have repeatedly disappointed short sellers.

Sales are king

Behind the continued good performance this year is Tesla's series of radical measures against the market.

The performance of the third quarter reveals the unique features of Tesla. Even though the company has been caught in a storm of public opinion for several times, there are not a few doubters and short sellers, but the market always favors Tesla.

At the beginning of this year, Tesla proposed an annual delivery target of 500000 vehicles. Under the influence of the epidemic, the global vehicle market shrank as a whole, but Tesla still maintained a good growth momentum. Musk said in the company's internal email in early October that the company's auto production is still expected to reach 500000 this year.

To achieve this goal, Tesla needs to deliver 182000 vehicles in the fourth quarter,

Under this goal, Tesla has lowered its price in North America, Europe and China since this year. Under the appearance of its radical pursuit of sales, there is a deeper strategic appeal.

First of all, compared with fuel vehicles, the market share of electric vehicles is still very low. Compared with traditional automobile enterprises, Tesla and other new forces still have a gap in scale.

With the reform of the automobile industry, although Tesla has become the world's largest auto company in terms of market value, the actual sales volume and delivery data are not consistent with the stock price performance. In this context, one of the most important tasks for Tesla, which is expected by investors, is to accelerate the process of electric vehicle market and narrow the scale gap with traditional automobile enterprises.

Therefore, Tesla has repeatedly adjusted the price of its models, especially the model 3, which is an affordable model, to squeeze the living space of electric vehicles and even fuel vehicles in the same price range, and seize the market share, so as to consolidate the current dominant position.

Secondly, the expansion of automobile hardware shipment can also provide the basis for Tesla to expand the scale of software revenue.

From Tesla's current product layout, the existence of software sales business is becoming stronger and stronger. Tesla said it expects to launch a fully autonomous (FSD) version of the software at $8000 by the end of this year and $64000 in China

It can be imagined that with the introduction and gradual popularization of FSD and more software products, software revenue will become an important part of Tesla's revenue, and the gross profit rate brought by software will be much higher than that of vehicle sales. The premise of software promotion is that the automobile products carrying the software have enough considerable scale.

Tesla's idea is similar to that of apple, which has been increasing investment in software and online services in recent years, focusing on building software ecology. Tesla's investment in software is also a testimony that Tesla is different from traditional automobile enterprises and has the attribute of science and technology enterprise.

In addition, in the Chinese market, the price reduction of model 3 may also need to be attributed to the layout of its automotive product line.

The domestic model y will be launched in 2021, which is between the price of luxury car model s and model 3 of affordable car. In terms of product line layout, Tesla's various models are obviously targeted at different levels of consumer groups. Therefore, the price of model 3 goes down one step ahead of time to open the gap between different models at different prices, so as to create more market space for the upcoming domestic model y.

Tesla automotive product line

For these reasons, Tesla's frequent price cuts are not hard to understand. Although its aggressive promotion strategy has caused a lot of ridicule, Tesla has got positive market feedback at least in terms of financial report realization.

Genius and madman are two common labels on musk. Tesla's rapid development in recent years has confirmed his ability and courage. However, under the radical strategy, Tesla is not without worries.

Tesla automotive product line

Behind Tesla's frequent price cuts, there are more and more questions, but sales are also growing at the same time.

Take the Chinese market as an example. After Tesla's first price cut in April, its revenue in the Chinese market in the second quarter reached $1.4 billion, up 102.9% year-on-year. The results of Tesla's second price reduction in October still need to be explained by the fourth quarter financial report. However, from the existing feedback, the performance is not too bad. Some employees posted on social media that model 3 Orders flooded in, and employees had little time to eat or talk to customers.

Tesla does have

In terms of cost, Tesla's gross profit margin on vehicle sales reached 27% in the third quarter, which supports Tesla to expand its sales volume at the cost of slightly sacrificing profits. If we only look at the model 3 series, as early as 2018, a team of experts formed by German automobile manufacturers concluded that the cost of model 3 was about 28000 US dollars (about 186000 RMB). With the commissioning of the Shanghai plant and the cooperation with Ningde times, the cost of domestic Tesla will only be lower than this figure, which provides enough room for Tesla to reduce prices.

In addition, in terms of technology and brand, Tesla, as a worthy benchmark of the new energy market, is regarded as the most representative of the future automobile enterprises. The fully automatic driving beta version it has just launched, is another technological breakthrough ahead of the times. For consumers of the new era, Tesla is

Brand is one of the core factors affecting consumer car purchase decision. This has been amplified in China, where cars are second only to property for domestic consumers

Price reduction is a means for Tesla to expand the scale and improve the product structure, but the possible consumer rebound is also very obvious. In the

Tesla's unwillingness to bow to the market is extremely consistent with Musk's personal characteristics. No one can deny that musk is a genius. Tesla has a large number of followers and admirers, which is partly due to Musk's personal charm. Musk's high-profile and radical style of conduct is part of his personality charm. However, after this temperament is integrated with enterprises, it is necessary to integrate more refined and friendly consumer operation strategies in order to obtain general market recognition.

With the deepening of market penetration, Tesla has to face those relatively unfamiliar consumers. How to attract these consumers determines Tesla's competitive position in the next stage. From the current point of view, Tesla's frequent price reduction has caused a certain negative impact on its brand, which has even become a breakthrough point for some of its friends.

And musk doesn't seem to realize the problem. In early October, Tesla announced the dissolution of the North American public relations team, which means Tesla refuses to communicate with the media in depth, and corporate news will only be released through official accounts or musk's personal twitter account. Tesla believes that the public relations team in the new media era does not have the necessity of existence. From this move, we can also see the leading business philosophy of musk style.

In the Chinese market, Tesla fell into a brand crisis several times in the last quarter because of price cuts and disputes with pinduoduo, and most of Tesla's official responses were posted on Weibo through its vice president for foreign affairs, Tao Lin

Under the advantages of Tesla's existing technology and brand, the doubts and disputes in the market have not actually hurt Tesla. However, with the continuous technological catch-up of new domestic car makers, it remains to be seen how much tolerance consumers can tolerate Tesla's arrogance. In sharp contrast to Tesla, Weilai, a representative enterprise of newly built cars in China, just takes high-quality car owner service as its enterprise characteristics.

The importance of the Chinese market to Tesla is increasing. In addition to shouldering the heavy responsibility of sales growth, Tesla has announced that it will begin to export model 3 electric vehicles made in China to more than ten European countries, such as Germany, France, Italy and Switzerland, and the Chinese market has become a major center for Tesla's production and sales. Therefore, the brand crisis faced by Tesla in the Chinese market will further amplify the threat to Tesla.

With the publication of the financial report, musk, who is likely to get another large sum of money, should probably pay more attention to the other side of the ocean. As an outsider, in a country where modesty is the courtesy, arrogance regardless of consumers' wishes is not the best way for an enterprise to survive.