Tesla Stock Takes Hit From Nvidia’s Warning About Business With China

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Nvidia
’s
new chip problem can impact shares of some chip customers, such as

Tesla
.

Chip giant

Nvidia

(ticker: NVDA) on Wednesday told investors in a filing with the Securities and Exchange commission that the U.S. government had imposed new licensing requirements on some of its advanced chips. That will impact sales to Russia and China unless Nvidia gets a license to sell fast.

The government “indicated that the new license requirement will address the risk that the covered products may be used in, or diverted to, a ‘military end use’ or ‘military end user’ in China and Russia,” read part of the filing.

Nvidia added it doesn’t sell to customers in Russia, but $400 million in third quarter sales destined for China could be impacted. Wall Street currently projects $5.9 billion in third quarter sales for the company.

Nvidia added Thursday in another SEC filing the government had allowed development of some chips to move ahead as well as chip sales via Hong Kong through September 2023. Still, concerns will remain for investors regarding Chinese chip sales for the entire industry in coming months.

Nvidia stock had fallen more than 5% in premarket trading Thursday. Shares have trimmed some losses after the new SEC filing.

S&P 500
and

Nasdaq Composite
futures were off 0.7% and 1.1%, respectively.

Tesla

(TSLA) stock was down 1% in premarket trading as well. Some older Tesla used Nvidia hardware, but Tesla seems to have gone away from Nvidia as a supplier of chip hardware in recent years.

Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about any Nvidia products used.

The Nvidia-only impact isn’t really the point though. The U.S. limiting chip sales to China could spread to other companies. And restrictions could eventually disrupt operations in a number of industries, including cars.

Advanced Micro Devices

(AMD) shares fell 3.6% in premarket trading. The company is facing similar issues as Nvidia.

Softbank

(9984.Japan), which owns chip maker ARM, dropped 0.9% in overseas trading.

A Nvidia spokesperson told Barron’s in an email Wednesday: “We are working with our customers in China to satisfy their planned or future purchases with alternative products and may seek licenses where replacements aren’t sufficient. The only current products that the new licensing requirement applies to are A100, H100 and systems such as DGX that include them.”

Nvidia didn’t immediately respond to a request Thursday for comment about any potential impact on Tesla or other auto customers.

The chip hiccup is another supply-chain problem for an industry that’s had a host of supply-chain issues for what now feels like years. Car companies have dealt with shortages of semiconductors along with parts shortages and lost production due to Covid for many, many months.

And for Tesla’s Shanghai operation, production and parts supply have recently been threatened by a drought in Sichuan province which cut hydroelectric power supplies to industrial customers in the region.

Toyota Motor

(TM) and battery maker

Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd

(300750.China) were forced to take plant downtime because of the issue.

Aside from supply problems, demand issues might also be hitting Tesla stock Thursday. August delivery figures from Chinese EV makers

NIO

(

NIO

),

XPeng

(XPEV) and

Li Auto

(LI) were reported Thursday and they weren’t great. The three combined for 24,826 deliveries in the the month. That’s the second consecutive monthly decline and the lowest number since the three delivered 18,243 in April amid China’s recent Covid lockdowns.

NIO,

XPeng

and Li share each fell roughly 2% in premarket trading Thursday.

Tesla produced about 77,000 vehicles in China in August, according the the Chinese Passenger Car Association. That would be the second-highest monthly production for the Shanghai plant. But that number includes vehicles destined for export too. The NIO, XPeng and Li numbers are primarily Chinese domestic sales.

Write to Al Root at [email protected]