James Rupertson Murdoch? OMG. Unless they're trying to bribe the Wall St Journal, I cannot imagine why him?
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IMHO, anyone who has a day job and is an independent director of more than 2 other companies is worthless. They can't spend enough time to pay attention.
Board members with no day job might be able to manage 5 companies, before they also become worthless.
That's precisely what's perplexing me. What is the value of adding two media executives?
larmor
Active Member
Biting the hand that feeds you-- now explains recent tweet about wsj...
If Twitter is any indication (it probably isn't) Mr. Murdock's appointment to the board is going to cause a lot of people to cancel Model 3 reservations and look to other car companies. The Murdock family is strongly disliked (to put it mildly) by a significant portion of Tesla's fans and potential customers, so these type of knee jerk reactions are probably to be expected, even though looking at the actions/history of the other car companies you would probably come to a view that they are worse than Mr. Murdock in basically all the ways these customers care about.
It might inhibit hit pieces from Murdoch outlets. It might promote more positive coverage from other media outlets hoping that the new directors will encourage advertising which is the lifeblood of the media.
As you appear to understand, the two new directors will not be replacing anyone on the board. They will be adding the marketing expertise of publishers/broadcasters that may go beyond what is understood by Silicon Valley executives. They may be more knowledgeable about what motivates consumers. It seems to be the type of board diversity that some funds invested in Tesla were seeking.
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Bet TSLA
Active Member
Thinking ahead. The moment that level 5 FSD works, a car becomes pretty much just a mobile livingroom. What matters most is comfort and entertainment. SpaceX's cloud of low-earth orbit satellites (to be launched in the next couple of years) will provide low-latency, high bandwidth connectivity to Tesla vehicles, so that's covered. What's needed after that is user interface and content. I would hope media people would have some insight into that.
howardoark
Member
I'm short Tesla. The Model S and the Roadster are amazing cars. Elon Musk is a genius. So, please don't hate me, educate me as to why I should cover.
My feeling is that Tesla needs a lot of things to go right for them. Some of those things are probable (not 100%) - the Model 3 will likely be an excellent vehicle; Elon Musk won't overdose on Ambien, a Model 3 won't spontaneously combust at a car show. Some of those things are unlikely (probability <50%) - Tesla will be able to ramp up to mass production without suffering embarrassing quality problems. Some of them are unlikely (<20% probability) - Americans will suddenly wake up to the vast superiority of electrical cars; Model 3 gross margins will be similar to Model S margins. And some of those things have a near zero chance of happening - the rest of the car industry will sit on their hands watching Tesla steal their business away from them; Tesla will able to raise $10 billion in capital without significantly diluting current shareholders.
Even if everything goes right for Tesla: Car & Driver declares the Model 3 the best car ever built, GM recalls all the Bolts and scraps them, Google and Intel (and every other car company) decide that self-driving cars is just to hard a nut to crack and abandon the effort, Warren Buffett invests $10 billion in Tesla at $400 a share, Tesla is still going to be a car company. The car business is incredibly cut-throat with low margins and high capital investment requirements. That's why Toyota sells for 66% of revenue and Ford sells for 30%. So if the Model 3 is a huge success and Tesla is selling a million of them a year (and 100,000 Model S/Xs) and has revenue on the order of $55 billion (throw in another $5 billion for the PV line, another low margin business) and it keeps its luxury car brand margins, that doesn't support the current market capitalization. In the best world ever, selling for 50% of revenue, Tesla might be worth $180 a share (that's just a coincidence that it's the same as the Goldman Sachs number). I see very little chance that everything goes right for Tesla. I see a much easier pathway to bankruptcy and a likely path toward significant dilution and sub $100 share prices.
So, before hitting that dislike button, please tell me why I'm wrong. Lay out the case for Tesla getting to Apple like valuation - which would make it 5x more valuable than Toyota and more valuable than the entire auto industry in total (not including parts manufacturers). Discuss the probabilities I laid out above, provide your own. Please, if I'm wrong, I want to cover before I lose any money.
My feeling is that Tesla needs a lot of things to go right for them. Some of those things are probable (not 100%) - the Model 3 will likely be an excellent vehicle; Elon Musk won't overdose on Ambien, a Model 3 won't spontaneously combust at a car show. Some of those things are unlikely (probability <50%) - Tesla will be able to ramp up to mass production without suffering embarrassing quality problems. Some of them are unlikely (<20% probability) - Americans will suddenly wake up to the vast superiority of electrical cars; Model 3 gross margins will be similar to Model S margins. And some of those things have a near zero chance of happening - the rest of the car industry will sit on their hands watching Tesla steal their business away from them; Tesla will able to raise $10 billion in capital without significantly diluting current shareholders.
Even if everything goes right for Tesla: Car & Driver declares the Model 3 the best car ever built, GM recalls all the Bolts and scraps them, Google and Intel (and every other car company) decide that self-driving cars is just to hard a nut to crack and abandon the effort, Warren Buffett invests $10 billion in Tesla at $400 a share, Tesla is still going to be a car company. The car business is incredibly cut-throat with low margins and high capital investment requirements. That's why Toyota sells for 66% of revenue and Ford sells for 30%. So if the Model 3 is a huge success and Tesla is selling a million of them a year (and 100,000 Model S/Xs) and has revenue on the order of $55 billion (throw in another $5 billion for the PV line, another low margin business) and it keeps its luxury car brand margins, that doesn't support the current market capitalization. In the best world ever, selling for 50% of revenue, Tesla might be worth $180 a share (that's just a coincidence that it's the same as the Goldman Sachs number). I see very little chance that everything goes right for Tesla. I see a much easier pathway to bankruptcy and a likely path toward significant dilution and sub $100 share prices.
So, before hitting that dislike button, please tell me why I'm wrong. Lay out the case for Tesla getting to Apple like valuation - which would make it 5x more valuable than Toyota and more valuable than the entire auto industry in total (not including parts manufacturers). Discuss the probabilities I laid out above, provide your own. Please, if I'm wrong, I want to cover before I lose any money.
1.) For vehicles, Tesla will have a monopoly in my family and some of my extended family.
2.) I suspect less than 1% of the population has actually DRIVEN a Tesla. M3 awareness exponentially raises that.
Points 1 and 2 are going to be a self feeding short seller crushing feedback loop. Feel free to stay in deep and long!
You will do great following the trades of the GS analyst who assigned the PT to Tesla!
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re: James Murdoch
Interesting recent to shed some light:
Michael Wolff: It's James Murdoch's Fox News Now
"<
Fox News is a business he should not be in, he had told people before, despite its major contribution to 21st Century Fox's bottom line — 20 percent of its profits came from Fox News last year, the biggest-earning division in the company. Presumably, he meant the in-your-face world of conservative cable news with its mega personalities. Indeed, James regarded many of the people at Fox News as thuggish Neanderthals and said he was embarrassed to be in the same company with them.
But, likewise, it would be hard to imagine how James could have been regarded with more contempt by many of the people at Fox News. James was rather exhibit No. 1 of the liberal elite entitlement that Fox had so profitably programmed against. “Fox [News] is an important brand, but it needs to develop, and, to some extent, be reformed,” James said when I interviewed him 10 years ago in his office as the chief executive of the Murdoch-controlled Sky TV in Britain, whose significantly less-partisan news operation he extolled as a ratings and journalistic model.
He seized his first opportunity for reform in July when, over his father Rupert's protests and his brother and co-executive Lachlan’s ambivalence, he pushed for the ouster of Ailes, the network’s founder and almost all-powerful executive. When the O’Reilly story hit the Times, he overrode his father and brother again — and, by the same method he had used with Ailes, hiring a Democratic-associated law firm, Paul Weiss, to perform a rubber-stamp investigation. (In neither the Ailes nor O’Reilly investigations were the targets of the investigation interviewed.)
It was, he proudly told friends, a right decision rather than a business decision. The billionaire scion was aligning himself, profits be damned, with a new generation of corporate responsibility. That put him quite directly at odds with his father. It would be quite inconceivable to imagine Rupert sacrificing sure profits for greater good or a better image; indeed, his company had always been a pirate company.
But that really is the larger point — in which O’Reilly and Ailes were in the end just collateral damage — it isn't his father’s company anymore.
If the expulsion of Ailes, and, even more dramatically, O’Reilly, mean anything, it means most of all that James is in charge. And, most immediately, this means that Fox News, that constant irritant in James’ view of himself as a progressive and visionary television executive, will begin to change. Virtually overnight.
>"
Climate Change:
In House of Murdoch, Sons Set About an Elaborate Overhaul
"<
The sun was setting in New York as James Murdoch, looking confident in cream pants and a dark blazer, stepped before 350 guests in a glass-walled concert hall and waxed poetic about his pet TV channel and its dedication to “scientific literacy.”
The event on Wednesday night was an advertising showcase for National Geographic, which Mr. Murdoch, 44, has doted onsince becoming chief executive of its parent company, 21st Century Fox. As a person who cares deeply about “issues related to the environment, conservation, exploration and education,” he told the crowd, “I’m personally grateful for the important work National Geographic does.”
>"
Consider- this move may in fact trump Trump
I generally agree with @Curt Renz on these appointments (and Rice is a no brainer)
Remember Musk will (likely) remain Chairman of this Board 'forever'...
Interesting recent to shed some light:
Michael Wolff: It's James Murdoch's Fox News Now
"<
Fox News is a business he should not be in, he had told people before, despite its major contribution to 21st Century Fox's bottom line — 20 percent of its profits came from Fox News last year, the biggest-earning division in the company. Presumably, he meant the in-your-face world of conservative cable news with its mega personalities. Indeed, James regarded many of the people at Fox News as thuggish Neanderthals and said he was embarrassed to be in the same company with them.
But, likewise, it would be hard to imagine how James could have been regarded with more contempt by many of the people at Fox News. James was rather exhibit No. 1 of the liberal elite entitlement that Fox had so profitably programmed against. “Fox [News] is an important brand, but it needs to develop, and, to some extent, be reformed,” James said when I interviewed him 10 years ago in his office as the chief executive of the Murdoch-controlled Sky TV in Britain, whose significantly less-partisan news operation he extolled as a ratings and journalistic model.
He seized his first opportunity for reform in July when, over his father Rupert's protests and his brother and co-executive Lachlan’s ambivalence, he pushed for the ouster of Ailes, the network’s founder and almost all-powerful executive. When the O’Reilly story hit the Times, he overrode his father and brother again — and, by the same method he had used with Ailes, hiring a Democratic-associated law firm, Paul Weiss, to perform a rubber-stamp investigation. (In neither the Ailes nor O’Reilly investigations were the targets of the investigation interviewed.)
It was, he proudly told friends, a right decision rather than a business decision. The billionaire scion was aligning himself, profits be damned, with a new generation of corporate responsibility. That put him quite directly at odds with his father. It would be quite inconceivable to imagine Rupert sacrificing sure profits for greater good or a better image; indeed, his company had always been a pirate company.
But that really is the larger point — in which O’Reilly and Ailes were in the end just collateral damage — it isn't his father’s company anymore.
If the expulsion of Ailes, and, even more dramatically, O’Reilly, mean anything, it means most of all that James is in charge. And, most immediately, this means that Fox News, that constant irritant in James’ view of himself as a progressive and visionary television executive, will begin to change. Virtually overnight.
>"
Climate Change:
In House of Murdoch, Sons Set About an Elaborate Overhaul
"<
The sun was setting in New York as James Murdoch, looking confident in cream pants and a dark blazer, stepped before 350 guests in a glass-walled concert hall and waxed poetic about his pet TV channel and its dedication to “scientific literacy.”
The event on Wednesday night was an advertising showcase for National Geographic, which Mr. Murdoch, 44, has doted onsince becoming chief executive of its parent company, 21st Century Fox. As a person who cares deeply about “issues related to the environment, conservation, exploration and education,” he told the crowd, “I’m personally grateful for the important work National Geographic does.”
>"
Consider- this move may in fact trump Trump
I generally agree with @Curt Renz on these appointments (and Rice is a no brainer)
Remember Musk will (likely) remain Chairman of this Board 'forever'...
Tesla = Apple
Traditional auto = Nokia and blackberry and palm etc.
Take it or leave it.
Yuri_G
Member
If that's the extent of your knowledge about Tesla, please stay short. There is plenty information on this board about the company. Anyone that reads enough about Tesla and what it aims to accomplish "gets it".
Yeah, You think people are smoking Hopium. A few pieces to level set:
[Note there is some youtube guy that says Tesla is attacking 60% of Hathaway's portfolio, but here are the ones that I think matter.]
[Note there is some youtube guy that says Tesla is attacking 60% of Hathaway's portfolio, but here are the ones that I think matter.]
- What other cars do you want to buy? The structure of existing car companies drives their products to mediocrity.
- Think UBER autonomous but without the capital expense UBER, Google, Hertz, Avis will have. Repurpose 30% of the customer fleet for ride share using a time share model - might be able to use the rear seat only to make this less objectionable.
- Insurance companies have dull pencils on self driving. The costs should be lower, and since Tesla has sharper pencils they should be able to undercut the insurance companies.
- The Semi is a straight cost saver. Tesla is better at batteries with good cycle life and automotive characteristics. They bought the robotics company that makes packs go together. First mover.
- Content for the commute. First to recognize the implications of self driving with a central "all passenger" screen, Musk can do the deals for content.
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JRP3
Hyperactive Member
No. The more money you lose the better off the longs are. Hang on to that short for dear life.
PS. Welcome to the board.
Waiting4M3
Active Member
James Murdoch is actually Labor, he's a Brit, not American. But he did donate to Hillary.
article about Model 3 from the Murdoch press
Aussie customers in the dark about Tesla Model 3 delivery
Aussie customers in the dark about Tesla Model 3 delivery
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Reciprocity
Active Member
Add to your short position, please!
Since that has already occurred, how would you re-evaluate shorting a 'near zero chance of happening'
$10B in GF production adds more value than it dilutes. The only way for 'the rest of the car industry' to catch up is to make the same capital investment (against the cut throat thin margins you reference as a problem). That makes it even more a problem for them, as it actually dilutes their current business and investor base (stock holders). They have a tougher path forward than TSLA in that regard.
Welcome to the board--
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