Tesla sold off three-quarters of its bitcoin holdings, the Elon Musk-helmed automaker said Wednesday.
The sales took place during April through June of 2022, according to the company’s earnings report on Wednesday.
“As of the end of Q2, we have converted approximately 75% of our Bitcoin purchases into fiat currency,” Tesla wrote.
The conversions added $936 million in cash to Tesla’s balance sheet.
Tesla also noted that it had taken a hit to its profitability due to its bitcoin holdings when the cryptocurrency market crashed in the second quarter, though it’s unclear exactly how much money the company lost.
In a CNBC interview on Monday, Barclays analyst Brian Johnson predicted Tesla would take a bitcoin impairment of up to $460 million.
Bitcoin plunged about 3% from about $23,750 to $23,025 in the minutes following the release of Tesla’s earnings report.
Tesla shares, meanwhile, were up 1.5% at $742.50 in after hours trading.
Tesla bought $1.5 billion of bitcoin in January 2021 and started accepting the cryptocurrency as payment for vehicles in March of that year. The company stopped accepting bitcoin that May due to concerns about fossil fuel use in crypto mining and has not resumed.
Elsewhere in Tesla’s earnings release on Wednesday, the company reported a rise in quarterly profit as a string of price increases on its best-selling vehicles helped offset production challenges.
Total revenue fell to $16.93 billion in the second quarter from $18.76 billion a year earlier, ending the company’s streak of posting record revenue in recent quarters, as it struggled to meet demand for its electric cars due to a shutdown of its Shanghai factory and production challenges at new plants.
Analysts were expecting revenue of $17.10 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
With Post wires
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
