TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[mmd]

The tone of this thread has changed the past month toward hyper-optimism. The obvious reason - Where's the FUD? Very few arguments against Tesla now. Are they quietly waiting with ammo loaded if Q4 profit hiccups? Did they lose their sponsors? True that Shorts are fewer, but there's still significant pressure out there, maybe focused on a plan to escape without complete loss. So I would expect one more last call before the door closes tight and this "squeeze" actually materializes. Early Q1 will be their last chance, plan on the dip IMO or just ignore it and ride it out long.

You make some fine pts. Take a look at the TSLA short interest. You got only the 10+ million covered short shares to thank for your bliss. Don't take it for granted though. With more customers, even small mistakes can be costly. Next quarter can be nasty, with fewer shorts acting as buffer when TSLA slides.

And the FUD in this thread? It's missing because of some newly minted honorable mods, who would rather choke any dissenter through reckless bans than have a discussion.

To the newcomers, if you go back in time just a couple months, you'd be seriously concerned about the future of Tesla. Now it's all bliss. For the record, we all knew it was fine. But also just a couple months ago, my neighbors thought I was crazy and the most common story was that Tesla had factory issues and was going to die soon. Although Elon did come close to having to borrow a bit more to get over the hump, a BK was never mentioned from his mouth. His stress IMO was all about NOT proving the Shorts right. We knew he was serious in Q3 when Home Depot contracts ended, Suppliers where pushed on for discounts, and production volume kept growing in hell. Clearly not the behavior of a spoiled kid from California. He grew some ___ there.

But in true Elonian manner, BK did come out of Elon's mouth; just a few months later. So your nbr was right. In fact, he could see through Elon's smoke and mirrors when BK was single digit weeks away.

 

[EVNow]

Well it's 8AM here right now, still at home and just done a Twitter pass, as you're keeping notes...

11:15 PM here on the west coast. Envy you for the ability to do a Twitter pass. If I open Twitter I’m stuck for hours.

 

[Fact Checking]

In practice the Fastned network is just as convenient as the supercharger network within its range. The company is actually more committed than Tesla to expand when overflow happens on a regular basis : it took Tesla years (and a court judgment against the company) to fix the commercial driver situation around Schiphol Airport but it took just weeks for Fastned to add stalls. Which is normal : for them it’s extra revenue, for Tesla it was extra CapEx that didn’t even benefit their regular customers.

I think it's unfair to hold this incident against Tesla: their intent was not to subsidize taxi drivers literally forever, but a sloppily drafted contract forced them to - and they tried to fight the loophole through a loophole. (And lost in court.)

Those taxi drivers are arguably taking away funds and SC capacity from other customers. It's in fact Tesla's responsibility towards other customers to fight abuse.

Tesla is taking the Supercharger network absolutely seriously, but they were capex constrained until the recent past.

Now that they are cash flow positive I'd start measuring SC expansion rate: if in the next 2 years they don't grow it sufficiently you will have a point.

 

[Tslynk67]

Audi’s pure electric E-Tron GT is beautiful and fast

Not sure they are as good at architecting product for customers.

The car is not as useful as a 3.

It's a nice looking car, for sure, but the range is a bit low. As any others have stated, you won't get one until 2021 - likely to be delayed further is history is any guide - by which time Tesla will have double that range in some of their cars.

But no doubt some hard-core Audi fans will buy one and maybe there's better, and more simplified, public charging infrastructure out there by then.

Personally I would never buy an Audi. It's not that I don't like the cars, I think they're excellent, but I don't at all like the brand image. Here in Europe, Audi drivers seem to think they're something special and are often very inconsiderate and arrogant on the road - not all, of course, but a good %age.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Disagree with the emboldened part. Elon deleted all his titles, announcing it on Tesla's official twitter channel. Now he is just a Nigerian prince asking people to send in deposits and order a Model 3.
Unless.. you want to say that Elon spoke an "untruth" about that.


Here are also the top European EV models YTD.
View attachment 356303

Now, if you could kindly plot the super exponential Model S and X sales growth. I'm really weak in super exponential stuff. I will even give you the numbers. Super appreciate it!

View attachment 356304

Why would you expect Model S/X sales to grow? They hit a combined annual 100k S/X production rate and have intentionally just stayed there to focus on the 3.

Funny how you’re asking about growth of every vehicle Tesla makes except the elephant in the room.

 

[Tslynk67]

11:15 PM here on the west coast. Envy you for the ability to do a Twitter pass. If I open Twitter I’m stuck for hours.

It's not so bad now, the FUD has all but disappeared since the Q3 earrings, so less "work" to be done. It's more responding and sharing positive stuff these days.

I remember in the middle of #FundingSecured I spend much of my day combatting the trolls, fortunately I was on vacation in Italy so had the free time to do it...

I've mostly kept out of the Brexit discussion, the Brexiteers are even worse than $TSLAQ shorty-shorts, many have a very low IQ too, so a waste of time engaging.

 

[Tslynk67]

That's really misleading, as a lot of that is mandatory spending.

Discretionary federal spending looks very different:

In 2015 54% was military, plus 6% veterans' benefits.

Makes me so angry when I see this charts. FFS, take all the money spent on military and use it instead for education, health, social security, etc., then you wouldn't need the military any more. Same applies to most developed nations, of course. There's enough money fo fee, house and educate everyone. It's crazy!

 

[Fact Checking]

Next quarter can be nasty, with fewer shorts acting as buffer when TSLA slides.

What buffer? Shorts generally amplify volatility, as it has been documented by the 6 trading days this year when a ban on pressure-selling orders from short sellers was banned. (The 'short selling circuit breaker' mechanism of the NASDAQ.)

The recent optimism on this board has several sources:

• Reduction in mindless, dishonest FUD whose primary purpose was to rattle retail investors or to disrupt discussion - not to provide discussion.
• FUD is still discussed through the discussion of SA articles for example - but the quality of FUD has dropped.
• There's been high profile capitulations of shorts, such as the spectacular defection of Andrew Left.
• Q3 financial results were amazing: very high cash margins for both the S/X and the 3 product lines, and exemplary opex and capex discipline.
• At this point S&P 500 inclusion of $TSLS next May (in 6 months) is very probable, a Moody's upgrade around April likely.
• As a result $TSLA rose from $250 levels to $350 levels, and I think this is only a partial move.
• Short interest of 22% is still ridiculously high: the typical shorting level of S&P 500 companies is rarely more than a couple of percent ...

So these are countless rational reasons to be optimistic about Tesla.

The $TSLA stock price might or might not follow these expectations, as there could be negative surprised as well - but the overall financial future of Tesla is looking markedly better than in 2017 when it last made all time highs.

 

[SpudLime]

Okay. It seems there is money to be made here. Anyone got connections to raise capital and know some super nerds to start another battery making company?

All these other EV attempts are at the mercy of the few companies that make them now.

We can sit and admire Tesla for making their own, can’t we find a way to capitalize on supplying the Tesla chasers?

*partially serious.

 

[schonelucht]

Now that they are cash flow positive I'd start measuring SC expansion rate: if in the next 2 years they don't grow it sufficiently you will have a point.

My point was not to make a case against Tesla. I think their supercharging is on the of the best programs within the company handled in the most consistent way, with the best outreach and communication towards customers. Just keeping the same quality throughout the continued roll out would already be an incredible performance. I was merely making the point that Fastned is just as good.

 

[Esme Es Mejor]

That unfortunately won't stop the Antarctic glaciers which are already irreversibly compromised from below:

NASA Study Reveals West Antarctic Glaciers in Irreversible State of Decline​

Barring terraforming-level of future technologies that can operate on glaciers.

Carbon pollution and global warming still has to be stopped - but sea level rise is probably irreversible, and the price tag and body count of that crime against humanity will be enormous.

We could stop sea level rise with mass desalination. It would have to occur on a scale unimaginable to the human mind, but it would work.

 

[avoigt]

VW reported to be in search for a location to build an EV factory in the US.

Production supposed to begin in 2020 for EVs in the price range of 30 - $40k

Angriff auf Tesla: Volkswagen will neues Werk für Elektroautos in den USA bauen - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Wirtschaft

 

[BioSehnsucht]

Rivian did say they will be stamping parts for other OEMs out of Normal IL in 2019.

That's actually a clever way to both gain experience with stamping at someone else's expense (sort of - it eats into their margins), and make a buck to stretch your initial funding too.

 

[CorneliusXX]

From what I’ve seen, Rivian’s problem will be ramping production. They’re basically Faraday Future, albeit with a more compelling product.

EDIT: this was meant as a light caveat, not to doom them to failure. I’m hoping they’re more Tesla in 2002 and less Faraday Future in 2016. Time will tell.

I believe Rivian have more committed funding too. And their CEO sounds like a great operator from the few interviews I've read. I'm very optimistic about their future.

 

[BioSehnsucht]

Fact checking the fact checker : there is not a single (0) Tesla that shipped with turn key FSD ready hardware so far. By admission of the company itself no less.

Elon swore up and down in 2016 that what they put in that car at the time was FSD capable and would complete a coast to coast trip by 2017. It wasn’t and the car didn’t. I’ll believe what they are going to put in there ‘6 months from now’ is FSD capable when I see it. Elon has lost the privilege of being taken on good faith when making FSD predictions a long time ago.

Fair point that my FSD statement was misleading, it did not include the following qualifiers:

Estimates of the new Tesla Chip based FSD module's marginal cost are below ~$500 with a 30 minutes plug-in installation, to be installed in all cars that already purchased or are going to purchase the FSD option.

So unless your argument is that a ~10x performance increase over the Nvidia based hardware is not enough for FSD, every Tesla is IMO effectively FSD capable, from the POV of customers.

To add to Fact Checking's point, the only thing that needs upgrading was designed from the start for an easy upgrade, and the stuff that is hard/impossible to upgrade doesn't need upgrading. The part that NEEDED to be future proofed was.

 

[CorneliusXX]

That's actually a clever way to both gain experience with stamping at someone else's expense (sort of - it eats into their margins), and make a buck to stretch your initial funding too.

The company sounds like it has good hustle. A promising sign.

 

[schonelucht]

So unless your argument is that a ~10x performance increase over the Nvidia based hardware is not enough for FSD, every Tesla is IMO effectively FSD capable, from the POV of customers.

Both the 10x increase and that it would be enough is a claim by Musk/Tesla only. He's been exceptionally wrong about the requirements for FSD before so it is simply not reasonable to accept it at face value and conclude that 'every Tesla is effectively FSD capable'.

When we don't take legacy automakers claims about their next supposedly wonderful upcoming EV cars as unequivocal truth after having disappointing us by scrapping earlier concepts, then we should apply the same standard to Tesla.

 

[EVMeister]

50 stalls serving 250 cars is better than 300 stalls serving 5000 cars. Tesla superchargers are free for nearly almost all Tesla cars currently in the Netherlands, which makes usage a lot higher.

But Superchargers are exclusive to Tesla and Teslas can also use the other charging networks. When you've got all of these "Tesla Killers" half-decent EVs from other manufacturers on the roads, surely there's going to be a lot of pressure on the Fastned network. At least the Tesla owners will be able to make use of both an expanding and perhaps Tesla-exclusive Supercharging network as well as the expanding network of other fast chargers.

Here in the UK the situation is that you'll get to a motorway service station and struggle to find a working fast charger from the couple of available plugs you can use... Then there'll be that 12-stall Supercharger installation sitting there with a couple of jammy Tesla owners and loads of free Superchargers just sitting there. All smug.

Sorry, I know this is a bit off-topic for Market Action.

 

[avoigt]

There is a whole set of services where Tesla beat every other car and EV manufacturer who do not even consider it as an important service they intend to build or offer.

It may sound to some like a small thing but its indeed a huge feature.

Every time I have to squeeze myself out of the door (feels like a mop cleaning cars) that you cannot properly open due to the very narrow parking lots in Europe I pray that my 3 will arrive sooner than expected. The same with rain, mud or snow beside many other situations. Sometimes I simply cannot take the parking lot because you would be trapped in the car so you keep searching and waste time. You easily can search 30 minutes for a parking lot in a German city at any time of the day.

The same is true for getting wet shows and other situations we all have been in before.

Its been considered from many as a gimmick .... a show effect feature.... for me this is a strong differentiator and its only one of many knowbody really talks about while comparing Tesla vehicles to others. That shows me they still do not understand....

Unless the so called Tesla killers start building a centralized car computer that you can update over the air and provide services like summon beside many more to come I just can't take them seriously.


Thanks @Tesla, for keeping my blue suede shoes dry!

#summon #model3 #tesla

0:24
Rodney Hansen on Twitter

4.93M views
3:42 PM - 26 Nov 2018

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

Incorrect. The number to compare is peak usage time. 50 stalls serving 250 cars is better than 300 stalls serving 5000 cars. Tesla superchargers are free for nearly almost all Tesla cars currently in the Netherlands, which makes usage a lot higher.

In practice the Fastned network is just as convenient as the supercharger network within its range. The company is actually more committed than Tesla to expand when overflow happens on a regular basis : it took Tesla years (and a court judgment against the company) to fix the commercial driver situation around Schiphol Airport but it took just weeks for Fastned to add stalls. Which is normal : for them it’s extra revenue, for Tesla it was extra CapEx that didn’t even benefit their regular customers.

The way Tesla is doing it - sell cars and build the supporting charging network to promote the sale of cars - is financially probably more sound than just building a charging network like Fastned does. In 2017 they had a turnover of 0.5 million euro and a loss of 5 million euro! They are hoping EV growth in the future will help them, but their stations are currently mainly used by the EVs with a short range. Future EVs will have much more range and not need Fastned-stations as much.