Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

[sunwarriors]

The bonds they issue are trading way below par, they would be buying them
At a bargain. It’s just a matter of how risk averse one may be, I
Despise debt, hence carry no debt.
Seems Elon too dislikes debt.

Of course it's trading way below par because the interest/coupon they are paying on the coupon is way lower than current interest rates. Nobody will pay par or full value on a bond when someone can buy a Gov. treasury for higher interest rates. It's cheaper than par, but the YTM is higher than the coupon so it needs to be even cheaper as interest rates have changed when these were issued for Apple to really want to buy them back.

You mention you despise debt, but I don't think you have a clear understanding of how bonds/debt works to blanket assume closing these out is a smart thing.

Debt isn't inherently a bad thing if it's managed/understood well. Like if I can borrow long term (mortgage) for 30 years at 2%, but can get 5% guaranteed tax free for 30 years, wouldn't one load up and earn free $$?

It appears Tesla has debt too if you assume Elon dislikes debt:

Is Tesla $10.6 Billion Debt A Cause For Concern? | Fundamental Data And Statistics For Stocks

Explore Tesla's total debt, cash, and net debt. Read also Tesla's debt due, total liquidity, debt ratio, and credit rating.

stockdividendscreener.com

 

[ToTheStars]

I have not heard of Motional before.
$1B seems quite something.
Hyundai is spending close to $1B to keep self-driving startup Motional alive

 

[2daMoon]

It seems to be kept barely above 180. Is WS going to hammer it below 180 right before the close?

I don't think it matters much which side of Max Pain the SP ends up on, only that they are at a place where the WS players profit by it being where the majority of Options traders don't want the SP to be in order to profit.

Edit: But I do like it when they through us a bone and it ends the day in that nice greenish color.

 

[Webeevdrivers]

Someone got any real insight as to what I just experienced/noticed?

This was the first time I did not have to go hunting for a way to vote my TSLA shares. I literally clicked on an email and was taken to an easily understood voting "ballot." ANd the votes were recorded without any worries as to whether it was counted.
Every other year I had to go hunt down a way to get my votes counted.

Just new software (improvements)?

Same with RBC securities. Click and you are there.

 

[Drax7]

Of course it's trading way below par because the interest/coupon they are paying on the coupon is way lower than current interest rates. Nobody will pay par or full value on a bond when someone can buy a Gov. treasury for higher interest rates. It's cheaper than par, but the YTM is higher than the coupon so it needs to be even cheaper as interest rates have changed when these were issued for Apple to really want to buy them back.

You mention you despise debt, but I don't think you have a clear understanding of how bonds/debt works to blanket assume closing these out is a smart thing.

Debt isn't inherently a bad thing if it's managed/understood well. Like if I can borrow long term (mortgage) for 30 years at 2%, but can get 5% guaranteed tax free for 30 years, wouldn't one load up and earn free $$?

It appears Tesla has debt too if you assume Elon dislikes debt:

https://stockdividendscreener.com/auto-manufacturers/how-much-debt-does-tesla-have[/URLsteve j

Steve Jobs was so conservative he sold all his apple stock,
He would have never Piled up 95 billion in debt just
To buy stock back.

 

[Usain]

The AI Rat Race.... Everyone is pouring money into AI. Could explain some Tesla's latest moves.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/03/ai-engineers-face-burnout-as-rat-race-to-stay-competitive-hits-tech.html

I disagree. It explains ALL of Tesla's latest moves.

 

[aubreymcfato]

CT in Italy.

 

[Usain]

I think most of us here understand the value of Tesla's AI efforts with regard to FSD. And by extension, we understand the value of AI to humanoid robots.

But besides those two applications, what are the other killer apps that are around the corner for AI? Besides bots, how do companies like Microsoft and Google hope to make big money from their AI efforts?

I've only seen vague answers. What is their upcoming killer app?

 

[SOULPEDL]

I have not heard of Motional before.
$1B seems quite something.
Hyundai is spending close to $1B to keep self-driving startup Motional alive

Short for e-Motional. Look at that contraption, looks like it's weaponized.

It sounds like money shifting around, not like an investment in capital, but an exchange of shares for preferred shares... Aptiv is getting out of Motional. Why Hyundai is interested is for another day... Looks like sharades to me.

To my surprise, the Ionic 5 is operating in Vegas as a Robotaxi. Most people will not know the difference when FSD goes unsupervised. Vegas would be a start.

Ride With Us in Las Vegas

Motional harnesses deep industry experience in our mission to develop and deploy autonomous vehicles and to make driverless technology safe and reliable.

motional.com

 

[Doggydogworld]

So my question of the day is, "What makes Elon so confident that Tesla in 2024 will beat 2023 deliveries?"

Confident? He said "I think we will have higher sales this year than last year." When he's confident he uses much stronger language (and is still way off):
"I feel very confident predicting 1 million autonomous robo-taxis for Tesla next year (i.e. 2020)"
"Meaning the car will be able to find you in a parking lot, pick you up and take you all the way to your destination without an intervention, this year (i.e. 2019). I would say I am of certain of that. That is not a question mark."

Thats only one strategy. The other could be:
Cybertruck ramp + model Y juniper refresh + entry into some new markets.

CT won't move the needle this year and Juniper seems delayed to 2025 (possibly for a rework to enable low cost and other variants).
Tesla already sells in the markets that count.

Tesla abruptly stopped discounting new US inventory cars in mid-April. Does this signal an overnight surge in demand? Or is something else going on?

Ford, Toyota and VW ...... have dealership networks that let them channel-stuff to avoid showing the immediate drop in sales.

Tesla do NOT have the option to channel stuff like other manufacturers.

Legacy OEM sales reports like this one from Ford only count sales to end customers. They do not reflect channel stuffing.
Wholesale shipments to dealers are reported separately, if at all. Usually buried in the financial reports since OEMs recognize revenue based on wholesale.

 

[Southpasfan]

For FSD, the "AI app" (side note, "AI" is now being used so broadly its losing actual meaning), is not the ability to control the car, its the ability to take video images from cameras and convert those images, as a human or animal does, into understandable actions based on the perception of the physical world.

It could well be called "video --- perception"

Once solved, and it is very close at this point the actual decisions and controls of the car are nothing, already solved.

People mention Optimus on here but again, robot technology is already here. If Tesla can use FSD Video-Perception tech to be able to say to an Optimus, "go over and hand me the letter sitting on the hall table." Its not that its "AI" (its not as if Optimus itself decides what to do) but it would be the greatest tool ever invented by humans. I know that the computer is a tool in a sense, so computers may be the greatest, but a humanoid robot which can do any physical action a human can do, in a non geofenced space, would be the greatest tool.

FSD is being developed virtually in the open. We do not get to see how the FSD video-perception tech is being worked on with Optimus, but to consider it --- its almost beyond valuation.

 

[uscbucsfan]

Tesla abruptly stopped discounting new US inventory cars in mid-April. Does this signal an overnight surge in demand? Or is something else going on?

The rumor was that Tesla would put additional resources to match existing inventory to new orders and ship cars rather than discount as it's overall cheaper.

From the delivery threads (MX, MS specifically) this anecdotally appears to be happening. Many new orders are getting matched with inventory cars and the wait time is shipping.

 

[SOULPEDL]

I think most of us here understand the value of Tesla's AI efforts with regard to FSD. And by extension, we understand the value of AI to humanoid robots.

But besides those two applications, what are the other killer apps that are around the corner for AI? Besides bots, how do companies like Microsoft and Google hope to make big money from their AI efforts?

I've only seen vague answers. What is their upcoming killer app?

Agree, mostly repackaging existing tools. Google's trying to stay relevant with LLMs, Adobe integrated existing tools in Photoshop etc, and Meta is now using Llama3 (more repackaging). Figure01 makes coffee, but we'll have to keep an eye on Amazon.

It's the Mr. Clippy era!

 

[UkNorthampton]

Confident? He said "I think we will have higher sales this year than last year." When he's confident he uses much stronger language (and is still way off):
"I feel very confident predicting 1 million autonomous robo-taxis for Tesla next year (i.e. 2020)"
"Meaning the car will be able to find you in a parking lot, pick you up and take you all the way to your destination without an intervention, this year (i.e. 2019). I would say I am of certain of that. That is not a question mark."


CT won't move the needle this year and Juniper seems delayed to 2025 (possibly for a rework to enable low cost and other variants).
Tesla already sells in the markets that count.

Tesla abruptly stopped discounting new US inventory cars in mid-April. Does this signal an overnight surge in demand? Or is something else going on?




Legacy OEM sales reports like this one from Ford only count sales to end customers. They do not reflect channel stuffing.
Wholesale shipments to dealers are reported separately, if at all. Usually buried in the financial reports since OEMs recognize revenue based on wholesale.

Modified channel stuffing techniques include...

End customers include vehicles used by dealerships as loaners etc. Car Edge on youtube talk about this a lot.

Once a dealer loaner has aged enough it can be sold as secondhand often with few miles on it at a discounted price, crucially advertised at this lower price.

Often dealers can't advertise discounted prices on new cars (for complex reasons CarEdge explained and I forget). Face to face or on their lot dealers can offer a lower price. Using ex-loaners gets around this advertising restriction.

Also sell to rental firms at a massive discount. Rental firm sells car in a year for higher than purchase price. Profit of car maker suffers, metal is shifted

 

[alexxs88]

But besides those two applications, what are the other killer apps that are around the corner for AI? Besides bots, how do companies like Microsoft and Google hope to make big money from their AI efforts?

I've only seen vague answers. What is their upcoming killer app?

You hit the nail on the head. The core of their business with these AI chips is selling the compute time to other companies. The problem is (and I've heard it from a lot of sources) is that most non-tech companies are still struggling to find use cases for this "naive" AI that Chat GPT and the likes are making easily accessible.

The tech companies are doing great, but they have proper AI teams in place since before GPT made AI cool for the world. So Meta, Google, are using AI a lot in their ad business. Word on the street is that Meta went around Apple's privacy limits re tracking using AI. Microsoft is probably more user centric with their AI offerings.

 

[hobbes]

Elon didn’t just get lucky with the Covid boom? Is the current stock price still high enough to warrant the full compensation package?

Haha, did COVID build cars?

Just having the demand is not enough, you also need to have the production capacity - back then they still had to build and ramp factories which they did in an impressive way.

 

[heltok]

I think most of us here understand the value of Tesla's AI efforts with regard to FSD. And by extension, we understand the value of AI to humanoid robots.

But besides those two applications, what are the other killer apps that are around the corner for AI? Besides bots, how do companies like Microsoft and Google hope to make big money from their AI efforts?

I've only seen vague answers. What is their upcoming killer app?

Microsoft today is largely a b2b company. They have the entire software suite for companies including Windows, Outlook, Excel, VS Code, Github, Teams, Dynamics, Azure etc. Imo they will insert AI into every step and integrate it all, making companies using their software much more efficient. This they can monetise and also lock companies into their ecosystem.

Sam Altman wants to create ASI. He calls it AGI, but the rest of the world calls it ASI. That's the only thing he cares about. Once we have ASI the ASI will make rockets, build dyson spheres, cure cancer, win wars and maybe kill us puny humans. That's literally the killer app.

 

[2daMoon]

People left California because of high real estate costs, heavy traffic, taxes, didn't like the politics, natural disasters etc. etc..... Not because of some sort of enlightenment in Texas. Anyone who believes the state government there is rational and sane has not been paying attention.
There is a pretty effective working theory in professional comedy, that if you attach the word "Texas" to any proper noun you have a viable punchline. For example "Texas leadership."

How does that response in any specific way apply to what you quoted?

Just because you have a personal bias about something does not alter fact. No matter how many times you repeat it.

Emotion is a poor tool for assessing fact.

Application of any claim based in broad generalization will always be a distortion of a wide spectrum of variation.


Using the doll, can you show me where Texas hurt you?

After that, please make a list of all the states that do have rational and sane government.

 

[inconel]

Sam Altman wants to create ASI. He calls it AGI, but the rest of the world calls it ASI. That's the only thing he cares about. Once we have ASI the ASI will make rockets, build dyson spheres, cure cancer, win wars and maybe kill us puny humans. That's literally the killer app.

That's exactly what I have been wondering. Is it possible that we are erring in thinking in continuous terms, be it linear or even exponential. Once ASI happens, will there be a discontinuous jump and will many of our puny achievements seem paltry? For example we think that FSD requires billions of miles of driving data to train the NN but will ASI make that unnecessary?

 

[jerry33]

How does that response in any specific way apply to what you quoted?

Just because you have a personal bias about something does not alter fact. No matter how many times you repeat it.

Emotion is a poor tool for assessing fact.

Application of any claim based in broad generalization will always be a distortion of a wide spectrum of variation.


Using the doll, can you show me where Texas hurt you?

After that, please make a list of all the states that do have rational and sane government.

Some cities did not want natural gas wells in their towns, so the Texas legislature passed a law to prevent cities from doing this. So there are natural gas wells that release raw methane a few blocks from schools.