Tesla has announced earnings for Q3 2022 on Wednesday afternoon, reporting $21.4 billion in revenue, up 56% year-over-year, to go with net income of $3.3 billion (GAAP), with the latter up 103% year-over-year.
The company says its free cash flow has exceeded $8.9 billion in the last 12 months and operating margin hit 17.2% in the third quarter. GAAP automotive gross margin was at 27.9%.
“We achieved an industry-leading operating margin while encountering material headwinds YoY. Raw material cost inflation impacted our profitability along with ramp inefficiencies from Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg, Gigafactory Texas and 4680 cell production,” said Tesla. “Also, the U.S. Dollar continued to strengthen compared to all other major currencies in our markets.”
Tesla says its delivery volumes in the final weeks of each quarter were impacted by transportation capacity and “as a result, we began transitioning to a smoother delivery pace, leading to more vehicles in transit at the end of the quarter. We expect that smoothing our outbound logistics throughout the quarter will improve cost per vehicle.”
The automaker’s operations deployed record energy storage of 2.1 GWh in Q3.
Tesla says “we remain focused on increasing vehicle production as quickly as possible, by increasing our weekly build rate in Fremont and Shanghai and progressing steadily throughout the production ramps in Berlin and Texas. Logistics volatility and supply chain bottlenecks remain immediate challenges, although improving.”
The biggest challenge remains battery supply. “We continue to believe that battery supply chain constraints will be the main limiting factor to EV market growth in the medium and long terms. Despite these challenges, we expect to continue to deliver every vehicle produced while maintaining strong operating margins,” said Tesla.
Tesla now has $21.1 billion in cash in Q3, up $2.2 billion, which includes debt repayments of $0.9 billion.
The automaker produced 19,935 Model S/X vehicles (up 123% YoY) and 345,988 Model 3/Y cars, up 54% YoY. There were 343,830 deliveries, seeing an increase of 42% YoY, with Model S/X deliveries increasing 101% YoY and Model 3/Y up 40% YoY.
…developing, refresh for updates