Ferrari Couldn't Be Stopped Last Year

For the full year, Ferrari earned 939 million euros, or 5.09 euros per share, on revenue of 5.095 billion euros. Both were above expectations: Wall Street analysts polled by Refinitiv had expected full-year earnings per share of 4.94 euros on revenue of 4.977 billion euros.

The results also beat Ferrari’s own guidance. Ferrari had raised its 2022 guidance in August and again in November, most recently telling investors to expect revenue of about 5 billion euros and adjusted earnings per share of about 5 euros for the full year.

Despite the strong results, Ferrari’s fourth-quarter operating margin slipped to 21.8% from 22.6% in the year-ago period. That year-ago profit margin was boosted by the first of Ferrari’s seven-figure Icona models, the Monza SP1 and SP2; shipments of the Monza’s successor, the Daytona SP3, didn’t begin until the very end of 2022.

While Tesla and other automakers enjoyed higher vehicle prices and strong margins during the pandemic, suppliers were not able to fully pass along higher costs and their margins fell, according to a study by consultancy Bain. Automakers’ profit margins were nearly 3 percentage points higher than suppliers in the third quarter of last year.

More price cuts could be painful in a sector where some suppliers are already struggling, industry officials said.

For example, Gissing North America, which had counted Tesla as its biggest customer, filed for bankruptcy last year, partly due to high labor costs and commodity pricing, said Steven Wybo, chief restructuring officer of the Michigan-based maker of acoustic systems and headliners for car ceilings.

“There’s certain things that I think will ease, but there’s this labor component that’s built in to the price of everything, and I don’t see that easing any time soon and potentially never,” he said.

[Dan] Sharkey, [an attorney who represents suppliers to Tesla and other automakers] warned: “All of these suppliers are not charities. They need to make money and if they lose money, then they’re in financial distress.”

The fuel cell CR-V will be built in Ohio and will launch in in the U.S. and Japan by the end of next year. Europe sales are still under consideration, Honda said in a statement.

Honda executives said engineers have cut the cost of the next-generation system to one-third that of the system used in Honda’s previous fuel cell car, the Clarity sedan that debuted in 2016.

Among other improvements, the durability of the system will be doubled and the low-temperature performance will be boosted, executives said at a briefing here.

The new system starts up significantly faster at temperatures as low as minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 30 degrees Centigrade).

The new technology is an outgrowth of a joint development between Honda and GM dating back to 2013.

Honda and GM have been pooling resources on hydrogen fuel cell development to defray the high costs of the technology, which is seen as a critical stepping stone toward carbon neutrality goals.

Electric truck builders are sounding the alarm on the lack of charging infrastructure and the time it takes to build as the freight and logistics industry transitions to zero-emission transport.

Daimler Truck North America CEO John O’Leary told Automotive News his company has both the manufacturing capacity and customer interest to sell 2,000 Freightliner eCascadia electric trucks this year, but there is a lack of chargers to support them.

“Our customers need to be able to charge any of their trucks anywhere they are,” O’Leary said as Daimler prepared to unveil the SuperTruck II, an extra-efficient concept model of its diesel Freightliner, on Wednesday at the Manifest freight and logistics conference here.

There is almost no public infrastructure to power large electric trucks. The charging systems going into distribution centers and other facilities are only trickling forward, hindered by long delays from utilities and the local government permitting process.

Charging is the single largest barrier to electric truck deployment, said Mike Roeth, executive director of the North American Council for Freight Efficiency.

That has created a vast mismatch between customer interest and charger access.

“There is not going to be enough, fast enough” to satisfy demand, O’Leary said.

Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company owned by Warren Buffett, has sold 1.55 million Hong Kong-listed shares of electric vehicle maker BYD (002594.SZ) for HK$351.81 million ($44.85 million), a stock exchange filing showed.

The sale lowered Berkshire’s holdings in BYD’s issued H-shares to 12.9% on Jan. 27, down from 13.04%, the filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange showed on Thursday.

Berkshire, which started selling the BYD shares in late August, has accumulatively reduced its holding by more than a third.

Buffett’s company acquired 225 million BYD shares in 2008, giving it a 7.73% stake, equal to the 20.49% stake in H shares, according to BYD’s annual report.

The transportation hub as we know it today began construction in 1903, but before that 89 E 42nd was home to an older steam train station built in 1879. Even though the station had been updated to deal with an increased volume of commuters coming from suburbs outside the city, a collision between outdated steam trains in 1902 killed 15 people, and made it clear that a more substantial renovation was needed.

That same year, engineer William Wilgus and railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt began planning the landmark that Grand Central is today. They proposed a station with new electric trains that would not emit exhaust fumes and could, for the first time, operate underground. Planning officials also changed the station’s name. Technically a station, because trains no longer went south of Grand Central Station, the hub was renamed Grand Central Terminal. While these renovations and improvements had practical value, the more significant impact that both Wilgus and Vanderbilt hoped to create was cultural.