Tesla Inc. on Monday posted its largest-ever quarterly profit — $1.14 billion — as it delivered a record number of vehicles in the second quarter despite a global semiconductor shortage that has hampered much of the auto industry.
Revenue during the quarter nearly doubled to $11.9 billion, with automotive gross margins hitting 28 percent, the electric vehicle maker said. The company also was aided by $354 million in sales of regulatory credits to competitors, 17 percent less than a year earlier.
Tesla delivered 201,304 vehicles in the quarter, up 121 percent from the same period a year earlier. All but 1,895 were Model 3 sedans or Model Y crossovers.
The company’s second-quarter net income was roughly equal to its total profit in the previous 12 months and more than 10 times the $104 million it earned in the second quarter of 2020.
Tesla suffered a $23 million hit from its investment in Bitcoin during the second quarter. It had made $101 million off the investment in the first quarter, helping contribute to its profit then.
Tesla said the chip shortage effects “continued to be present” in the quarter. It praised employees for working “extremely hard to keep production running as close to full capacity as possible. With global vehicle demand at record levels, component supply will have a strong influence on the rate of our delivery growth for the rest of this year.”
On an earnings call with investors, CEO Elon Musk called the chip crisis “quite serious,” noting that parts shortages had caused Tesla to shutter its assembly plants for an undisclosed amount of time. He said the company was able to substitute alternative chips and “rewrite the software” to help weather the crisis.
Musk noted modules that control airbags and seatbelts were in short supply during the second quarter and said Tesla’s performance in the back half of the year will be dependent on its chip supply.
“It does seem like it’s getting better, but it’s hard to predict,” he said.
The company said it was again postponing the launch of its Semi truck, this time to 2022, citing limited availability of battery cells and “global supply chain challenges,” and so it can better focus on its assembly plants under construction in Austin, Texas, and Berlin, Germany.
Musk declined Monday to confirm whether the Cybertruck was on schedule to begin production by late this year, instead reiterating comments he often makes about the challenges of ramping production of any vehicle.
Last week Musk tweeted that, by the end of the year, he planned to open Tesla’s supercharger network to EVs from rival brands. He confirmed the move on the earnings call, saying Tesla planned to sell an adapter that would connect non-Teslas to the supercharger. Owners would need to download the Tesla app to pay for charging.
Musk also said the company was continuing to work on its “Full Self Driving” driver-assist technology, which it recently began offering as a $199-per-month subscription service to customers.
“Right now does it make sense for somebody to do an FSD subscription? I think it’s debatable,” he said. “We need to make Full Self Driving work in order for it to be a compelling value proposition.”