Tesla Vehicle Deliveries Tumble After China Factory Shutdown
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Tesla Vehicle Deliveries Tumble After China Factory Shutdown

A string of record quarterly deliveries came to an end in the second quarter, when Tesla handed over 254,695 vehicles to customers.

By Rebecca Elliot
Mon, Jul 4, 2022 3:23pmGrey Clock 4 min

Tesla Inc. vehicle deliveries fell quarter-over-quarter for the first time in more than two years, reflecting an extended shutdown in China, supply-chain disruptions and challenges associated with opening two new factories.

Elon Musk’s electric-vehicle maker said Saturday that it had delivered 254,695 vehicles to customers in the three months ended in June, down from 310,048 in the prior quarter. Deliveries were up roughly 27% from last year’s second quarter, when Tesla handed over 201,304 vehicles.

Analysts surveyed by FactSet forecast that Tesla would deliver around 264,000 vehicles in the second quarter. Many analysts in recent weeks had lowered their expectations after the company had to temporarily shut down its largest factory, in Shanghai, because of local Covid-19 restrictions. Tesla also has had trouble getting its new factories in Germany and Texas up to speed, Mr. Musk has said, calling the plants “gigantic money furnaces.”

The company produced 258,580 vehicles in the second quarter, down from 305,407 in the first quarter and up from 206,421 in last year’s second quarter. “June 2022 was the highest vehicle-production month in Tesla’s history,” the company said.

As recently as April, Mr. Musk had been sanguine about Tesla’s outlook, saying the company likely would produce more than 1.5 million vehicles in 2022, up some 60% over last year. Wall Street now believes Tesla could struggle to hit 1.4 million.

The decline in deliveries, which include cars that Tesla has sold or leased out, is poised to weigh on the company’s second-quarter earnings, scheduled for July 20. Analysts expect Tesla in a few weeks to report roughly $2 billion in quarterly profit, up from around $1.1 billion during the year-earlier period but down from its US$3.3 billion record in the first quarter.

The auto maker’s bottom line is likely to be dented by a roughly $475 million bitcoin-related impairment, according to Credit Suisse. Tesla bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin in early 2021, when the cryptocurrency was trading above $28,000. The price of bitcoin fell below $17,700 in mid-June, according to CoinDesk. The company’s disclosed accounting methodology factors in the lowest market price of bitcoin since the asset was acquired.

Tesla shares lost more than a third of their value in the first six months of 2022. On April 26, the stock dropped more than 12%, its biggest one-day retreat in more than a year after Twitter Inc. accepted Mr. Musk’s $44 billion bid to take over the social-media company. Mr. Musk initially said he would rely on a bank loan backed by some of his Tesla shares to finance the deal. The following month, he adjusted his financing plan to include more equity instead.

Mr. Musk himself recently took a notedly multiday pause from posting on Twitter, where he often opines on Tesla and other matters. He returned to posting on the platform Friday.

Tesla delivered roughly 238,533 Model 3 sedans and Model Y compact sport-utility vehicles combined during the second quarter, up from 199,409 of those models a year earlier. It delivered 16,162 of its higher-end models—Model S sedans and Model X sport-utility vehicles—up from 1,895 during last year’s second quarter.

The company, like many rivals, has been increasing prices for its cars as it faces higher supply costs. U.S. customers who ordered the long-range version of Tesla’s Model Y compact sport-utility vehicle in late June could expect to pay roughly $68,000, or around $14,000 more than they would have if they ordered the model a year earlier, according to Bernstein Research.

Though consumer demand has held strong—buyers often face monthslong waits for new Teslas—Mr. Musk has expressed growing concern about the global economy. Tesla has let go hundreds of employees in recent weeks, part of cuts that Mr. Musk has indicated could touch 10% of the company’s salaried workforce.

The company, he said in an email to employees last month, had “become overstaffed in many areas.” He has since delivered mixed messages about how those cuts would affect Tesla’s overall staffing level. Tesla is also dealing with other labor issues, including a new lawsuit filed Thursday in California state court by current and former employees alleging racial harassment and discrimination. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment about the case.

Supply-chain disruptions and their ripple effects have caused many auto makers to operate less efficiently, according to consulting firm AlixPartners LLP. As of the fourth quarter, auto makers in the U.S. employed 29 people for every thousand vehicles they produced in 2021, up around 31% from a year earlier, the firm said.

For all of its recent disruptions, Tesla is likely to be the only major auto maker to increase U.S. sales in the first half of the year, from a year earlier, according to research firm Cox Automotive. Overall, sales of new vehicles in the U.S. during the first six months of 2022 were expected to have fallen about 17% from a year earlier, the firm said.

General Motors Co. said Friday that it built about 95,000 vehicles without certain parts and had to set the cars aside instead of shipping them to dealers. Its U.S. sales for the first half of the year were down nearly 18%.

Tesla’s in-house software engineering expertise made it more adept than many rivals at adjusting to a global shortfall of semiconductors. That know-how, paired with battery expertise, is likely to benefit the company as a global shift toward electric vehicles strains supply chains, UBS analysts said in a recent note.

“Tesla’s supply chain is structurally superior vs. peers in the mission-critical areas of semiconductors, battery cells and battery raw materials,” the analysts wrote last month. “Tesla is likely to keep all competitors at a stable or even growing distance in terms of absolute growth and profitability.”



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Why Is Everyone So Unhappy at Work Right Now?

U.S. employees are more dissatisfied than they were in the thick of the pandemic

By VANESSA FUHRMANS
Wed, Nov 29, 2023 5 min

Americans, by many measures, are unhappier at work than they have been in years.

Despite wage increases, more paid time off and greater control over where they work, the number of U.S. workers who say they are angry, stressed and disengaged is climbing, according to Gallup’s 2023 workplace report. Meanwhile, a BambooHR analysis of data from more than 57,000 workers shows job-satisfaction scores have fallen to their lowest point since early 2020, after a 10% drop this year alone.

In interviews with workers around the country, it is clear the unhappiness is part of a rethinking of work life that began in 2020. The sources of workers’ discontent range from inflation, which is erasing much of recent pay gains, to the still-unsettled nature of the workday. People chafe against being micromanaged back to offices, yet they also find isolating aspects of hybrid and remote work. A cooling job market—especially in white-collar roles—is leaving many professionals feeling stuck.

Companies have largely moved on from pandemic operating mode, cutting costs and renewing a focus on productivity. The disconnect with workers has managers frustrated, and no quick fix seems to be at hand. Those in charge said they have given staff more money, flexibility and support, only to come up short.

The experiences of workers like Lindsey Leesmann suggest how expectations have shifted from just a few years ago. Leesmann, 38 years old, said she soured on a philanthropy job after having to return to the office two days a week earlier this year.

Prepandemic, she would have been happy working three days a week at home. “It would have been a dream come true.” Still, her team’s in-office requirements seemed like going backward, and made her feel that her professionalism and work quality were in doubt. Instead of collaborating more, she and others rarely left their desks, except for meetings or lunch, she said. Negative feelings followed her home on her hourlong commute, leaving her short-tempered with her kids.

“You try to keep work and home separate, but that sort of stuff is just impacting your mental health so much,” said Leesmann, who recently moved to a new job that requires five in-office days a month.

No more honeymoon

The discontent has business leaders struggling for answers, said Stephan Scholl, chief executive of Alight Solutions, a technology company focused on benefits and payroll administration. Many of the Fortune 100 companies on Alight’s client list boosted spending on employee benefits such as mental health, child care and well-being bonuses by 20% over the pandemic years.

“All that extra spend has not translated into happier employees,” Scholl said. In an Alight survey of 2,000 U.S. employees this year, 34% said they often dread starting their workday—an 11-percentage-point rise since 2020. Corporate clients have told him mental-health claims and costs from employee turnover are rising.

One factor is the share of workers who are relatively new to their roles after record levels of job-switching, said Benjamin Granger, chief workplace psychologist at software company Qualtrics. Many employers have focused more on hiring than situating new employees well, leaving many newbies feeling adrift. In other cases, workers discovered shiny-seeming new jobs weren’t a great fit.

The upshot is that the newest workers are among the least satisfied, Qualtrics data show—a reversal of the higher levels of enthusiasm that fresh hires typically voice. In its study of nearly 37,000 workers published last month, people less than six months into a job reported lower levels of engagement, feelings of inclusion and intent to stay than longer-tenured workers. They also scored lower on those metrics than new workers in 2022, suggesting the pay raises that lured many people to new jobs might not be as satisfying as they were a year or two ago.

“What happened to that honeymoon phase?” Granger said.

John Shurr, a 66-year-old former manufacturing engineer, took a job as an inventory manager at a heavy-equipment retailer in the spring in Missoula, Mont., after being laid off during the pandemic.

“It was a nice job title on a pretty rotten job,” said Shurr, who learned soon after starting that his duties would also include sales to walk-in customers.

When Shurr broached the subject, his boss asked him to give it a chance and said he was really needed on the showroom floor. Shurr, who describes himself as more of a computer guy, quit about a month later.

“I feel kind of trapped at the moment,” said Shurr, who has since taken a part-time job as a parts manager as he tries to find full-time work.

Bridging the distance

Long-distance relationships between bosses and staff might also be an issue. Nearly a third of workers at large firms don’t work in the same metro area as their managers, up from about 23% in February 2020, according to data from payroll provider ADP.

Distance has weakened ties among co-workers and heightened conflict, said Moshe Cohen, a mediator and negotiation coach who teaches conflict resolution at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. He has noticed more employees calling co-workers or bosses toxic or impossible, signs that trust is thin.

Cohen’s corporate clients said their employees are increasingly transactional with one another. Some are coaching workers in the finer points of dialogue, such as saying hello first before jumping into the substance of a conversation.

“The idea of slowing down, taking the time, being genuine, trying to actually establish some sort of connection with the other person—that’s really missing,” Cohen said.

One Los Angeles-based consultant in his 20s, who asked to remain anonymous because he is seeking another job, said that when he started his job at a large company last year, his largely remote colleagues were focused on their own work, unwilling to show a new hire the ropes or invite him for coffee. Many leave cameras off for video calls and few people show up at the office, making it hard to build relationships.

“There’s zero humanity,” he said, noting that he is seeking another job with a strong office culture.

The share of U.S. companies mandating office attendance five days a week has fallen this year—to 38% in October from 49% at the start of the year—according to Scoop Technologies, a software firm that developed an index to monitor workplace policies of nearly 4,500 companies.

Some companies have reversed flexible remote-work policies—in large part, they said, to boost employee engagement and productivity—only to face worker backlash.

Not all the data point downward. A Conference Board survey in November 2022 of U.S. adults showed workers were more satisfied with their jobs than they had been in years. Key contingents among the happiest employees: people who voluntarily switched roles during the pandemic and those working a mix of in-person and remote days. But that poll was taken before a spate of layoffs at high-profile companies and big declines in the number of knowledge-worker and professional jobs advertised.

At Farmers Group, workers posted thousands of mostly negative comments on the insurer’s internal social-media platform after its new CEO nixed the company’s previous policy allowing most workers to be remote.

Employees like Kandy Mimande said they felt betrayed. “We couldn’t get the ‘why,’” said the 43-year-old, who had sold her car and spent thousands of dollars to redo her home office under the remote-work policy. She shelled out $10,000 for a used car for the commute. A company spokesperson said that not all employees will support every business decision and that Farmers hasn’t seen a significant impact on staff retention.

During a brief leave, Mimande realised she no longer felt a sense of purpose from her product-management job. She resigned last month after she and her wife decided they could live on one salary.

She now helps promote a band and pet-sits. “It’s so much easier for me to report to myself,” she said.

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