Elon Musk made a lot of noise about himself and Tesla

Investors welcomed Tesla’s third-quarter flash report published after the market closed yesterday with great joy. The share price of the American electric car company rose by 12 percent in after-hours trading, and by 20 percent after opening this morning in Frankfurt.

Not only the company’s numbers, but also CEO Elon Musk’s words were received positively by the market. Musk, who is considered a superstar in the eyes of Tesla believers, could not help emphasizing at the analyst conference:

He added that the number of cars sold by Tesla could increase by 20-30 percent next year, he wrote Reuters. The quick report reassured investors that the company is really focusing on its core business. To be able to produce marketable models at ever lower costs.

According to Reuters calculations, Tesla’s third-quarter profit margin from vehicle sales, calculated without the sale of emission allowances, rose to 17.05 percent from 14.6 percent in the previous three-month period. However, he warned that this margin would not be sustainable in the fourth quarter.

Labor and material costs to build the vehicles and total production costs dropped to an all-time low of about $35,100. This was greatly helped by the fact that the prices of raw materials used to manufacture electric vehicle batteries fell.

Of course, the company’s ability to sell pollution quotas to other industry players as an electric car manufacturer still played a big role in achieving good quarterly performance, and its revenues from this reached $739 million. This is nearly 40 percent higher than the revenue realized in the same period of the previous year and is the second highest amount in the company’s history. The company only collected more than this in the second quarter of this year, when 890 million dollars came in from this source.

However, even without this item, the company would have generated a profit of 2.2 billion dollars in the July-September period. Total profit was 72 cents per share, which was significantly higher than the 58 cents expected by analysts on average.

The real big challenge for Tesla, like all electric car manufacturers, is how to significantly increase sales volumes. Last year, for this purpose, they reduced the price of a number of models, and this spring, they began to offer customers very favorable financing schemes. Many analysts were afraid that the company’s margin could decrease significantly, but according to the signs, this did not happen.

By the end of September, the group delivered a total of 1.29 million vehicles to customers, however, if they want to beat last year’s numbers, they should deliver more than half a million cars throughout the year.

The company said in a statement that it will continue to focus on expanding its vehicle offering, reducing costs and making critical investments in AI projects and manufacturing capacity.

Despite the recent big jump, Tesla’s share price of around $220 is still well below its late-2021 peak of over $400. The descent from there ended at the end of December 2022, by which time the exchange rate fell close to $100, and then it managed to show a rather hectic rise.