AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)04/15 Report--

Tesla rushed to the hot search list of Weibo again.

On the afternoon of April 15, Tesla CEO Elon Musk issued a full letter announcing that Tesla would lay off 10% of its staff worldwide, according to several media reports. Prior to this, foreign media reported that some employees said that the number of layoffs could be as high as 20%, while Musk confirmed that the proportion of layoffs was 10% after issuing a full letter.

It is understood that Tesla currently has more than 140000 employees worldwide, which means that Tesla will lay off 14000 people this time. As of press time, it is not clear how many domestic employees will be affected by the layoffs.

As for the reasons for Tesla's global layoffs, industry insiders say it may be related to a decline in delivery in the first quarter of 2024.

On April 2, US Eastern time, Tesla released production and sales figures for the first quarter of 2024. Data show that during the reporting period, Tesla delivered a total of 386810 vehicles, down 8.5 percent from the same period last year and 20.2 percent from the fourth quarter of last year, the lowest in the past five quarters. It is also the first time that Tesla has dropped below 400000 vehicles since the third quarter of 2022. Among them, Tesla Model 3 and Model Y produced a total of 412000 vehicles and delivered a total of 369000 vehicles. Industry insiders said Tesla's delivery volume in the first quarter was much lower than even the most pessimistic analysts expected. Or affected by the delivery data, Tesla's share price fell 4.9% on the same day, wiping out $27.36 billion (about 198 billion yuan) in market value.

As for the reasons for the decline in sales in the first quarter of this year, Tesla officially said that it was mainly due to the production capacity climbing stage of the Fremont plant in California and the shortage of spare parts transportation caused by the situation in the Red Sea, which affected the production of some vehicles at the Berlin factory and the arson attack on Tesla's German factory, which forced Tesla to cut power and shut down production again.

At present, Tesla's global sales models include Model 3, Model Y, Model S and Model X. among them, Model Y is Tesla's first domestic SUV model and an important source of Tesla's sales in China. Retail data show that from January to March this year, Tesla sold 132420 vehicles in China, of which 100366 were Model Y, accounting for 75.79% of total sales, while Model 3 was 32054.

In fact, in the past year, Tesla's global performance is also very mediocre. In 2023, Tesla's annual delivery volume increased by 38% to 1.8086 million vehicles compared with the same period last year, achieving Tesla's annual sales target of 1.8 million vehicles. It should be noted that although Tesla successfully achieved the 2023 sales target, it is also inseparable from the sacrifice of profits for price for volume. According to Tesla's financial report, Tesla's annual operating income in 2023 was 96.77 billion US dollars, up 19 per cent from the same period last year. Net profit for the whole year was 14.997 billion US dollars, up 19 per cent from the same period last year. Tesla's gross profit margin in 2023 was 18.2 per cent, down 7.35 per cent from 2022. The reason for the decline in gross profit margin is related to Tesla's price reduction in the United States, Europe, China and other markets. Tesla's gross profit margin fell to 17.6% in the fourth quarter of 2023, the lowest level since 2019.

Tesla China announced on April 1 that the price of domestic Model Y will be raised by 5000 yuan. After the price adjustment, the price of Model Y is 263900 yuan, the long-lasting version of Model Y is 304900 yuan, and the high-performance version of Model Y is 368900 yuan. At the same time, the previous existing car insurance subsidy policy of 8000 yuan and the car paint deduction policy of up to 10000 yuan will also expire on March 31. According to this calculation, including insurance subsidies, the actual price increase of Model Y is as high as 23000 yuan.

Industry insiders pointed out that after entering 2024, Tesla high-frequency price adjustment may mean that it is facing greater growth pressure. For this year's sales expectations, Tesla also released a danger signal. Tesla had previously warned that car growth in 2024 would "probably be significantly lower" than in 2023.

As of April 12, US Eastern time, Tesla closed at US $171.05, down 2.03%, with a total market capitalization of US $544.8 billion.

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