2017 Investor Roundtable:General Discussion

[Yggdrasill]

I was hoping the positive numbers would come out today followed by the GF event tomorrow for a one/two punch to send the stock up over two days. There is only so much the stock can really jump in a single day and I think having both bits of news at the same time will water down the effect.

Tesla could wait until after market close tomorrow to release the numbers. Thus spreading out the good news.

 

[Kenriko]

I have a friend with 3 5.0 Mustangs plus a daily driver. After informing him of all the benefits of Tesla S ownership, he sighed and said "yeah but it's not my dream". You can't really argue with that. Sadly he is locked into a hardware dream. He should have dreamed functionality not hardware.

It's too bad, if they made a EV Mustang with Tesla like performance I would be buying Ford stock right now.

 

[hobbes]

Update on European situtation:

Current status with countries representing half of the Europe delivery totals having officially reported : Q4 is 87% of Q3. Last quarters deliveries were just below 25,000 worldwide, guided for just above 25,000 this Q, so we should have seen the same deliveries as last quarter to meet guidance.
Tesla Europe Registration Stats

Also did some VIN analysis a couple of days ago over here. That looks much better than deliveries in Europe.

So looks like VIN assignment beat and delivery miss from what we have, which seems contradictory. Don´t quite know what to make of that. Have to hope for North America and Asia...

 

[larmor]

In our neighboring area of Oak Brook/Hindsale I know no other demographic buying more Teslas than physicians. Please re-check your gut feelings.

I'm not denying physicians are buying teslas. There are many that are. From my experience, in my area in socal, of the physician friends i know only 3 out of 20-30 have teslas. In texas, i know personally multiple physicians that do not have teslas. All these people have high end cars.

 

[Yggdrasill]

I'm not denying physicians are buying teslas. There are many that are. From my experience, in my area in socal, of the physician friends i know only 3 out of 20-30 have teslas. In texas, i know personally multiple physicians that do not have teslas. All these people have high end cars.

Anecdotes like these are pretty worthless. It all depends on the specific people that you know. (Same goes for the opposing anecdotes, BTW.)

 

[Kenriko]

Update on European situtation:

Current status with countries representing half of the Europe delivery totals having officially reported : Q4 is 87% of Q3. Last quarters deliveries were just below 25,000 worldwide, guided for just above 25,000 this Q, so we should have seen the same deliveries as last quarter to meet guidance.
Tesla Europe Registration Stats

Also did some VIN analysis a couple of days ago over here. That looks much better than deliveries in Europe.

So looks like VIN assignment beat and delivery miss from what we have, which seems contradictory. Don´t quite know what to make of that. Have to hope for North America and Asia...

But what mix of countries? There was some expectation of lower demand from countries like Norway which are rather saturated with Teslas and due to changes in exchange rates etc.. macro economics stuff.

Tesla Model S deliveries down 52% in Norway during the second quarter [Chart]

 

[hobbes]

But what mix of countries? There was some expectation of lower demand from countries like Norway which are rather saturated with Teslas and due to changes in exchange rates etc.. macro economics stuff.

Tesla Model S deliveries down 52% in Norway during the second quarter [Chart]

If one click is too far away... Here you go. Used all countries with numbers reported in the Dec column, added up their Q4 totals and divided by sum of Q3 totals. I think it is enough data to average out those country specific situations you are talking about and make the result significant for the region.

 

[larmor]

Anecdotes like these are pretty worthless. It all depends on the specific people that you know. (Same goes for the opposing anecdotes, BTW.)

Agreed, i didn't want to name names, because that would be unprofessional. I am also a medical professional and so is my SO. SO remains unconvinced of teslas in general-safety issue in X would go along way in mitigating this, tho when we picked up our X, SO says, lets get another one, is there a deal on a used one?

 

[Ovulation]

Neither the labor theory of value nor the "market theory of value" are correct. I don't think that there is an objective measure of value (meaning, I disagree with you on what's valuable, and my friends disagree with me -- we all have different opinions).

(Perhaps the best we can do is a sort of voting-weighted value: if a million people believe that clean air is worth $1000 to them, and the rest of the people don't care, then dirtying the air for that million people should carry a cost to the polluter of at least $1 billion.)

There *are* good theories of pricing, and they start with supply and demand but are way more complicated than that.

Of course value is a metaphysical burdened term, but value in the context of capitalism is pretty easy, the value of something is how much people are willing to pay for it. So the labor theory of value tells you how much something may cost to produce and the market teaches you the value of the stuff.

BTW. In a libertarian utopia polluting the air would cost nothing only the annoying state comes up with some soft regulations ^^

 

[Yggdrasill]

But what mix of countries? There was some expectation of lower demand from countries like Norway which are rather saturated with Teslas and due to changes in exchange rates etc.. macro economics stuff.

Tesla Model S deliveries down 52% in Norway during the second quarter [Chart]

Seems to be the case right across the board in Europe.

Teslas have continued to be registered in 2017 in Norway, 51 thus far yesterday and today. That means we are about halfway to exceeding a typical first month in a quarter!

Bull interpretation:

Tesla hasn't focused too much on getting every car delivered in Q4 because they have met guidance comfortably.

Bear interpretation:

Tesla has had issues producing and/or transporting cars to Europe, and guidance won't be met.

 

[Wenche]

View attachment 208878 View attachment 208877 No rush to deliver all cars in 2016, for Norway? 7 Model S and 23 Model X registered today, total 30, on the first day in 2017. Looks like they reached target of deliveries in 2016.

The volume seems unusually high. Could these sales have happened on December 31st, but are registered 2 days later?
.

As of today 15 Model S and 36 Model X registered, total 51 cars in the two first days of 2017, for Norway. No car can be delivered before it is registered, so all 2017 deliveries.

 

[bonaire]

Update on European situtation:

Current status with countries representing half of the Europe delivery totals having officially reported : Q4 is 87% of Q3. Last quarters deliveries were just below 25,000 worldwide, guided for just above 25,000 this Q, so we should have seen the same deliveries as last quarter to meet guidance.
Tesla Europe Registration Stats

Also did some VIN analysis a couple of days ago over here. That looks much better than deliveries in Europe.

So looks like VIN assignment beat and delivery miss from what we have, which seems contradictory. Don´t quite know what to make of that. Have to hope for North America and Asia...

Vin assignments include a lot of inventory that member cryptyk here found that were never put on the web. Bunch of P100D for example (a few hundred).

In terms of Inventory over the year, I have this and it doesn't include older hidden inventory nor China/Japan/Oz.
This is "# of visible inventory Vin #s per 1000 vin # range". Big peak around 10/10 indicative of the AP2.0 inventory layout and why I harp on Tesla for building lots of inventory ahead of paying customers' orders. Inventory visibility in the latter 1000's is based on how soon they become visible to aggregators like ev-cpo and others. The flatness of the latter section should bloom at some point.

Yes, at least 540 of the 168xxx were inventory/marketing/not-custom order numbers. All data in this chart is based on actual visible inventory positioned on the web through the year, normally aggregated by ev-cpo and others. It also shows the inventory build-up going into September's sales event which seemed to have been well planned.

 

[racer26]

Vin assignments include a lot of inventory that member cryptyk here found that were never put on the web. Bunch of P100D for example (a few hundred).

In terms of Inventory over the year, I have this and it doesn't include older hidden inventory nor China/Japan/Oz.
This is "# of visible inventory Vin #s per 1000 vin # range". Big peak around 10/10 indicative of the AP2.0 inventory layout and why I harp on Tesla for building lots of inventory ahead of paying customers' orders. Inventory visibility in the latter 1000's is based on how soon they become visible to aggregators like ev-cpo and others. The flatness of the latter section should bloom at some point.

View attachment 208956

Yes, at least 540 of the 168xxx were inventory/marketing/no-custom order numbers. All data in this chart is based on actual visible inventory positioned on the web through the years, normally aggregated by ev-cpo and others.

How do we know what happened to those inventory cars?

Sure, they built lots of them, especially in the late 16xxxx VINs, and many of them never landed on the public listings.

Surely the bears can't be taking the stance that Tesla is just sitting on thousands of cars though. To sit on thousands of cars, Tesla first needs a place to put them (which it doesn't really have, certainly not in a place we wouldn't notice they're holding thousands of cars), and would presuppose the notion that they were unable to sell them - being a production-constrained product doesn't align with that.

More likely, I suspect a great many of these inventory cars were sold at inventory sales events without ever hitting the public listings. If I can buy a car from inventory and get it now (or functionally now, compared to waiting 2-3 months), and it has the configuration I want, why wouldn't I? I suspect Tesla changed methodologies, and went to building a greater mix of inventory cars, knowing they will be able to sell most of them, and so better to keep the factory running full tilt than to wait for orders to arrive.

My point, in short, is that it doesn't matter if Tesla built a whole bunch of inventory cars, as long as they still sell them. A car built-to-inventory and then sold is a sale just the same as a car built-to-order, as long as it sells in a reasonable length of time and does not sit on a lot collecting dust until you have to use discounting tactics to get rid of it.

 

[drinkerofkoolaid]

Someone somewhere recently quoted Elon as saying "In places where supply exceeds demand, the surplus vehicles will become part of the Tesla Fleet".

Anyone know where this quote came from? Once Fleet Mode is part of most Tesla vehicles, there will be no reason for Tesla to have any idle inventory.

Maybe Tesla is building a Fleet that can be deployed when Tesla is given the Green light?

Also, regarding the Superchargers. I can think of any reason States wouldn't love to fine people who park non-EVs in EV charging spaces.

Another reason the amount Tesla is charging people who leave their vehicle at Supercharger stalls after the vehicle is charged is extremely reasonable!

EV Cash Cow: One Charging Spot Generates $27,000 In Fines

 

[SteveG3]

So by the fact we don't have the numbers yet we can predict nothing. I see these three possible scenarios.
1) Elon says "take a break guys come back Tuesday and compile the numbers and get them out Tuesday night/Wednesday morning." In this case I would expect the numbers to be between 25 and 26k probably having little effect on stock price.
2) Tesla is waiting to release just before the investor event so they can make an announcement at the event of how many cars the delivered similar to the announcement at the Detroit Auto Show in 2014. In this case I would expect above 26k but probably 27k+.
3) The numbers are below guidance of 25,000 and they want to release after they reveal Gigafactory progress at tomorrow's event. If they have the event tomorrow with lots of great news about cell production and TE and don't give us numbers we can safely assume they will be a miss and released after market. Maybe some protective puts would be in order but the Gigafactory news might overshadow low deliveries - especially if they can say Q1 is basically sold out and that a Q4 miss was due to production with the new hardware and not demand issues.

Of course there are countless more possibilities and we'll never know what goes on behind the scenes.

as to 1), Tesla likely needs data from various governmental entities, and today is likely the first day some of these are open for business post the last day vehicles were registered.

 

[Bgarret]

Vin assignments include a lot of inventory that member cryptyk here found that were never put on the web. Bunch of P100D for example (a few hundred).

In terms of Inventory over the year, I have this and it doesn't include older hidden inventory nor China/Japan/Oz.
This is "# of visible inventory Vin #s per 1000 vin # range". Big peak around 10/10 indicative of the AP2.0 inventory layout and why I harp on Tesla for building lots of inventory ahead of paying customers' orders. Inventory visibility in the latter 1000's is based on how soon they become visible to aggregators like ev-cpo and others. The flatness of the latter section should bloom at some point.

View attachment 208956

Yes, at least 540 of the 168xxx were inventory/marketing/not-custom order numbers. All data in this chart is based on actual visible inventory positioned on the web through the year, normally aggregated by ev-cpo and others. It also shows the inventory build-up going into September's sales event which seemed to have been well planned.

So, for the last 17,093 VINs produced - (164,906 to 181,999) Tesla allocated about 1,750, or roughly 10% of production to "inventory", including demo/loaners, pre-AP 2.0 for discount and high margin P100DL's for last minute, impulse buyers. Most of which were likely sold in Q4 based on reports from other posters.....and this is material/bad.....why?

Is it your contention, in your long, intimate discussions with Mark S., that these are hidden somewhere in the unfinished dungeons beneath the gigafactory so Tesla can borrow Maddoff-like sums on their ABL?

Enlighten us.....please.

 

[Green Pete]

Not gonna lie. Feeling let down right now with the lack of delivery numbers.

 

[dirtyofries]

For something a little different today - I thought this report on PV production citing Tesla's upcoming builds was interesting.

Copper plated solar cells meet industry module reliability standards – imec

"Ni/Cu/Ag plated cells are expected to become mainstream when SolarCity/Tesla start migrating process technology from its Silevo subsidiary to support the production ramp at its Buffalo fab in New York State, sometime in 2017. "

 

[Green Pete]

Tesla valuation with TN:

Someone somewhere recently quoted Elon as saying "In places where supply exceeds demand, the surplus vehicles will become part of the Tesla Fleet".

Anyone know where this quote came from? Once Fleet Mode is part of most Tesla vehicles, there will be no reason for Tesla to have any idle inventory.

Maybe Tesla is building a Fleet that can be deployed when Tesla is given the Green light?

Also, regarding the Superchargers. I can think of any reason States wouldn't love to fine people who park non-EVs in EV charging spaces.

Another reason the amount Tesla is charging people who leave their vehicle at Supercharger stalls after the vehicle is charged is extremely reasonable!

EV Cash Cow: One Charging Spot Generates $27,000 In Fines

Quote is in the secret master plan mark 2

Also, I've posted a few times as how I believe the TN would rival Tesla as a manufacturer as far as income and typically posts get the 'funny' comment. It's not just my numbers.

Studies suggest a driverless Tesla Model 3 fleet could be highly profitable, obtain significant market share

Two independent studies said as much. Works out to something like 60k revenue per year per car. And the study also supposes slower charging than Elon has recently hinted at as well as estimating the model three and autonomy would cost a lot more than they look to cost.

 

[Kenriko]

So, for the last 17,093 VINs produced - (164,906 to 181,999) Tesla allocated about 1,750, or roughly 10% of production to "inventory", including demo/loaners, pre-AP 2.0 for discount and high margin P100DL's for last minute, impulse buyers. Most of which were likely sold in Q4 based on reports from other posters.....and this is material/bad.....why?

Is it your contention, in your long, intimate discussions with Mark S., that these are hidden somewhere in the unfinished dungeons beneath the gigafactory so Tesla can borrow Maddoff-like sums on their ABL?

Enlighten us.....please.

I only see 8.. New AP1.0 cars listed on EV-CPO. Must be a big ass pit they are dropping all of these "hidden" cars down.