Tesla Posts Record Annual Profit

Tesla delivered more than 936,000 vehicles globally last year, up 87% from 2020, despite global computer-chip shortages that constrained vehicle production across the auto industry.

Tesla shares closed up around 2% Wednesday in regular trading. The stock fell in post-market trading after Tesla released its results.

Despite the chip shortage, auto makers are expected to report banner earnings for 2021. Tesla, like many of its rivals, benefited from being able to charge more for its vehicles as demand outran supply. Its in-house software engineering expertise also helped to make the company more agile as it navigated the global semiconductor shortfall, though it wasn’t immune to supply-chain problems.

Auto makers are expected to launch more than two dozen new battery-powered vehicles in the U.S. this year, according to Bank of America, and investors will be listening Wednesday for updates on Tesla’s plans to broaden its vehicle offerings. Mr. Musk, who didn’t participate in the company’s third-quarter analyst briefing, has said he planned to provide a fresh product road map on the call.

It has been nearly two years since the company last delivered a new model—the Model Y compact sport-utility vehicle—to customers. Tesla’s Cybertruck pickup, unveiled in 2019, is expected to be the next out, but has faced delays. So, too, has the semitrailer truck, which Tesla revealed in 2017 and, as of October, was due for production in 2023. Mr. Musk suggested last fall that parts shortages had contributed to those product delays.

“Oh man, this year has been such a supply chain nightmare & it’s not over!” the chief executive tweeted in November.

Mr. Musk has also teased a $25,000 car aimed at making electric vehicles accessible to a wider array of customers and a refreshed version of the company’s first production car, the Roadster sports car.

Analysts expect Tesla to build on last year’s momentum by delivering nearly 1.5 million vehicles to customers in 2022, according to FactSet. That is consistent with the company’s target of increasing deliveries by 50% annually, on average, in the coming years.

Key to those growth plans are new factories in Germany and in Texas. The company has faced delays at both facilities, which it had hoped to have operational last year. Analysts now expect Tesla to begin delivering Model Ys made at the plants in the next few months.

In Germany, the Brandenburg state government says the approval process for Tesla’s factory near Berlin is in the final stages after the company, in December, provided the last batch of requested documents.

Tesla has received temporary approval at each step of the construction process and has been producing vehicles in small numbers to test machines at the plant, but it isn’t allowed to sell any vehicles made there or shift into mass production, state officials said.

Tesla, which has long relied on battery cells from suppliers such as Panasonic Corp. , has also been working to produce new, larger cells that it designed in-house. Drew Baglino, the company’s senior vice president of powertrain and energy engineering, told investors in October to expect Tesla to begin delivering vehicles powered by those larger cells early this year.

Meanwhile, the company has been broadening access to an advanced driver-assistance feature designed to help vehicles navigate cities. The city-driving tool is part of a package that Tesla has dubbed “Full Self-Driving,” though it doesn’t make vehicles autonomous. Tesla recently increased the price of that package 20%, to $12,000.

—William Boston contributed to this article.

Write to Rebecca Elliott at [email protected]