Tesla's stock price plummeted by 12.13% on Thursday, causing the company's market value to evaporate by approximately $80 billion. For Chinese investors on the other side of the ocean, Tesla's overnight capital flight caused by some unforeseen circumstances is a highly anticipated topic. Currently, Tesla's US stock price is $182.63.
According to Forbes calculations, Tesla CEO Elon Musk's personal wealth decreased by approximately $18 billion (approximately RMB 129 billion) on Thursday, but he remains the wealthiest person in the world with a net worth of around $204 billion.
Musk owns approximately 21% of Tesla's shares. On January 25th, Beijing time, Tesla released its 2023 full year financial report. Looking solely at the fourth quarter of 2023, Tesla's revenue was $25.17 billion, with earnings per share of $0.71, both lower than FactSet's analysts' expectations of $25.6 billion and $0.73. Affected by factors such as price reductions and promotions, Tesla's gross profit margin declined to 17.6% in the fourth quarter, the lowest level since 2019. Tesla attributes the decline in profits to a decrease in the average selling price of its vehicles, as well as an increase in operating expenses driven in part by artificial intelligence and other research and development projects.
For the entire year of 2023, Tesla's revenue was 96.77 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of only 19%, far lower than the high-speed growth of over 50% in the previous two years, and the revenue growth significantly slowed down. Therefore, the market is skeptical of Tesla's strong growth momentum, and funds choose to sell, leading to a sharp drop in the stock price.
But Tesla's achievements cannot be ignored. In 2023, Tesla produced a total of approximately 1.85 million electric vehicles worldwide and delivered approximately 1.81 million vehicles, with year-on-year growth of approximately 35% and 38% respectively, ranking first in the global pure electric vehicle delivery volume list. Among them, Model Y won the most valuable 2023 global passenger car sales championship in the global market, marking the first time that electric vehicle models have surpassed gasoline vehicle models.
According to Southern Metropolis Daily reporters, in China, taking the recent internet famous city of Harbin as an example, data on the number of electric vehicle insurance coverage shows that the Model Y and Model 3 have dominated the sales of electric vehicles in Harbin, ranking first and second.
It is worth mentioning that Tesla's R&D expenses have reached a historic high, with a total R&D expense of 3.969 billion US dollars (approximately 28.4 billion yuan) for the entire year of 2023. Musk stated during the earnings conference call that Tesla has made significant progress in next-generation platform development. "The new platform will be revolutionary and have a significant impact, not only on the design of new car models, but also on the design of production systems. It will be more advanced than other systems and significantly ahead."