(New York) The deliveries of the American electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla fell from the previous quarter for the first time in more than two years in the second quarter, slowed in particular by the closure of its Chinese factory for several weeks.
Posted at 1:47 p.m.
Elon Musk’s group delivered a total of 254,695 vehicles between April and June, details a press release on Saturday. This is 27% more than over the same period in 2021, but 18% less than in the first quarter.
This represents a disappointment for a company that wants to be growing, with the opening of two additional factories since the beginning of the year, in Berlin and Austin, Texas.
The slowdown is greater than expected by analysts, who had expected the delivery of 264,000 vehicles, according to a consensus established by FactSet.
The group had warned in April that supply chain problems, which affect all companies in the sector, would continue to disrupt Tesla manufacturing until the end of the year.
This had not prevented it from delivering a record amount of cars in the first quarter.
But Tesla also had to deal in the second quarter with the closure for several weeks of its factory in Shanghai, where the authorities temporarily imposed strict confinement in the face of the rise in cases of COVID-19.
In a press release on Saturday, the group underlines that it nevertheless produced 258,000 vehicles (-15% compared to the first quarter) over the whole of the second quarter “despite the persistent problems of supply chains and the closings of factories, matters beyond our control. He also remarks that he has never produced so many cars as in June.
In April, Elon Musk had estimated that Tesla would increase the pace as the year progresses and could produce more than 1.5 million vehicles in 2022. The group produced 563,987 in the first half.
Instead, analysts now expect 1.4 million vehicles to be built for the year, Wedbush’s Dan Ives said in a note. And that decline has already been priced in on Wall Street, where Tesla stock fell 38% in the second quarter.
Since the start of the pandemic, Tesla had so far managed to push up its deliveries every quarter, where other manufacturers were slowed down first by the closure of factories at the very beginning of the spread of the virus and then by a lack of semiconductors.
General Motors and Toyota again saw second-quarter U.S. sales decline 15% and 23%, respectively, from the same period in 2021.