Investor's Corner
Tesla (TSLA) Q4 and FY 2021 earnings results: Revenue and EPS beat on most impressive quarter to date
Tesla’s (NASDAQ:TSLA) fourth-quarter and full-year 2021 earnings saw the company post its most impressive quarter yet. The results, which were discussed in the Q4 and FY 2021 Update Letter, were released after the closing bell on Wednesday, January 26, 2022.
Tesla was impressive in the fourth quarter, with the company producing a total of 305,840 vehicles and delivering 308,600. The lion’s share of these numbers came from the Model 3 and Model Y, as the ramp of the refreshed Model S and Model X hit challenges over the year. Tesla’s numbers were even more impressive for 2021 overall, with the company producing a total of 930,422 and delivering 936,172 vehicles, setting new records.
Tesla summarized its blockbuster year in the following section of its Q4 FY 2021 Update Letter. With its stellar results, the company notes that it is no longer a question if electric vehicles could be profitable. And now that it has another breakthrough year under its belt, Tesla has noted that it is now looking into the future.
“2021 was a breakthrough year for Tesla. There should no longer be doubt about the viability and profitability of electric vehicles. With our deliveries up 87% in 2021, we achieved the highest quarterly operating margin among all volume OEMs, based on the latest available data, demonstrating that EVs can be more profitable than combustion engine vehicles.”
“After a successful 2021, our focus shifts to the future. We aim to increase our production as quickly as we can, not only through ramping production at new factories in Austin and Berlin, but also by maximizing output from our established factories in Fremont and Shanghai. We believe competitiveness in the EV market will be determined by the ability to add capacity across the supply chain and ramp production.”
The following are the key points in Tesla’s Q4 FY 2020 Update Letter.
Earnings Per Share and Revenue
For the fourth quarter of 2021, Tesla’s earnings per share stood at $2.54 and total revenue of $17.72 billion. In comparison, Wall Street expected the EV maker to post earnings per share of $2.35 and revenues of $16.65 billion.
“Total revenue grew 65% YoY in Q4 to $17.7B. YoY, revenue was impacted by the following items: (1) growth in vehicle deliveries; (2) growth in other parts of the business,” Tesla noted.
Cash
Tesla has maintained a formidable war chest over the past quarters, and this trend has continued in the fourth quarter. Despite the ongoing buildout of Gigafactory Texas and Giga Berlin, as well as the ongoing optimizations in Gigafactory Shanghai and the Fremont Factory, Tesla has reported that it still has $17.6 billion in cash in the fourth quarter.
“Quarter-end cash and cash equivalents increased sequentially by $1.5B to $17.6B in Q4, driven mainly by free cash flow of $2.8B, partially offset by net debt and finance lease repayments of $1.5B. Our total debt excluding vehicle and energy product financing has fallen to just $1.4B at the end of 2021,” the company wrote.
Profitability
For Q4 2021, Tesla posted a GAAP operating income of $2.6 billion and a 14.7% operating margin. The company also posted a $2.3 billion GAAP net income and 30.6% GAAP automotive gross margin in the fourth quarter.
“Our operating income improved to $2.6B in Q4 compared to the same period last year, resulting in a 14.7% operating margin. This profit level was reached while incurring SBC expense attributable to the 2018 CEO award of $245M in Q4, driven by the final two operational milestones becoming probable,” Tesla wrote.
Production Run-Rate by EOY
By the end of 2021, Tesla’s annualized vehicle production run-rate was over 1.22 million. It should be noted that this was achieved with only two factories, Gigafactory Shanghai and the Fremont Factory. This number would likely see a notable improvement in 2022 when Giga Texas and Gigafactory Berlin start their operations as well.
Tesla’s Q4 and FY 2021 Update Letter could be accessed below.
Tsla q4 and Fy 2021 Update by Simon Alvarez on Scribd
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Elon Musk
Tesla AI boss reveals how big Optimus is going to get
Tesla’s Optimus chief corrected himself on X, confirming a staggering 10 million robot production target.
Tesla’s Optimus program has a new number attached to it, after Ashok Elluswamy, the executive who has run the humanoid robot program since June 2025, posted a three word correction on X Thursday, “Correction, 10 million robots.”
The line clarifies the long term annual capacity Tesla is building toward its planned second Optimus production line at Gigafactory Texas, a figure Musk has cited repeatedly since last year’s shareholder meeting.
The scale is worth noting, because ten million robots a year would mean Tesla building more units annually than most countries sell in new cars. Tesla has framed this as a second line, not the first. The buildout is happening in two phases: a roughly one million unit per year line inside Tesla’s Fremont factory, installed on the floor space vacated when Model S and Model X production ended earlier this year, and a much larger dedicated facility under construction at Giga Texas that broke ground on its first steel structure in May. That Texas facility is the one Elluswamy’s correction refers to, and is expected to reach volume production sometime in 2027.
Correction, 10 million robots https://t.co/0z4nyQNTzp
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) July 30, 2026
Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress
Elluswamy took over Optimus from Milan Kovac last summer and has spent the months since talking up the program’s trajectory. Elon Musk has also floated the ten million figure at Tesla’s 2025 shareholder meeting.
Ending Model S and Model X production to make room for the first Optimus line was one of the more consequential manufacturing decisions in the company’s recent history, retiring two flagship vehicles in favor of a robot that has yet to enter mass production. Musk has previously estimated per unit production costs at $20,000 to $25,000 once Tesla reaches a million units a year, though he hasn’t said what that cost looks like at ten times the volume.
Elon Musk
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.
The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.
SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.
With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.
Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.
Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX gets an absolutely crazy price target after rough IPO
SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) got an absolutely crazy price target rating from Raymond James after the company experienced a tough first few weeks following its Initial Public Offering (IPO).
Despite the tumultuous start, SpaceX has plenty of believers, and the company’s massively successful Starship launch last Friday, its 13th test flight of the massive rocket, went so smoothly that Raymond James analysts pushed its price target on the company to roughly 7 times its current trading level.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
The firm officially put a “Strong Buy” rating and an $800 price target on the stock. It currently trades at around $113. Its all-time high is $225.64, reaching this trading level shortly after shares first went public.
Raymond James’ price target is tied to the firm’s confidence after Starship’s 13th test flight. Analysts at the firm said it was an incremental step that reduces engineering risks, citing the widely successful heat shield test that CEO Elon Musk recently detailed, the smooth deployment of Starlink V3 satellites, and a successful in-space engine relight.
SpaceX also managed to see Starship splash down safely in the Indian Ocean, while the Super Heavy Booster fell down to the Gulf of America with no incidents.
It is interesting to see these launches have such a tremendous impact on the stock and what investors think of it. After SpaceX initially delayed the Starship launch last week, shares fell tremendously. Most probably did not realize that the stand-down is a standard practice, especially if everything is not perfect.
The mission was initially aborted due to an issue with Raptor engines. This was resolved, and Starship launched last Friday after another delay on Thursday, which was caused by weather.
Now that analysts have seen what SpaceX launches are capable of and how impressive the feat is, firms are adjusting their price targets accordingly, making it known that they have high expectations for the space exploration company.

