The results of Tesla Inc. surpassed past Wall Street expectations on Wednesday, as higher prices helped insulate the electric vehicle maker from supply chain chaos and rising costs.
The results should also raise $ 23 billion in new payout to CEO Elon Musk, already the world’s richest man.
Tesla has been an outlier since the pandemic outbreak, posting record delivery and earnings for several quarters when rivals wrestling with global supply chain snarls rolled production stops.
Shares of Tesla rose 5% after the close of regular trading.
On an investor conference call, Musk said that Tesla has a straight shot to achieve 60% vehicle delivery growth this year and remains confident to see 50% annual delivery growth for several years.
Tesla has raised its prices in China, the United States and other countries after Musk said in March that the U.S. electric carmaker was facing significant inflationary pressures in raw materials and logistics amid the crisis in Ukraine.
“Our own factories have been running under the capacity for several quarters as the supply chain has become the main limiting factor, which is likely to continue through the remainder of 2022,” Tesla said in a statement.
The price increases are designed to cover higher costs for the next six to 12 months, which protects Tesla on orders for cars that it cannot supply for a year.
“Price increases are pretty much above the price inflation,” said Craig Irwin at Roth Capital.
“Chinese production issues seem well managed, and we expect that Austin and Berlin will pose the threat of Shanghai’s 19-day outage,” he said, referring to Tesla’s two new factories in Texas and Germany that have started delivery in the recent months.
The results allow Musk to meet a hat trick of performance goals worth a combined $ 23 billion in new compensation. He receives no salary and his payment package requires Tesla’s market capitalization and financial growth to achieve a series of escalating targets.
The world’s most valuable automaker said revenue was $ 18.8 billion in the first quarter ended March 31, against estimates of $ 17.8 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. This is up 81% from a year earlier.
Revenue from sales of its regulatory credits to other automakers jumped 31% to $ 679 million in the first quarter of a year earlier, helping boost revenue and profits.
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