2017 Investor Roundtable:General Discussion

[racer26]

Good to see everything's on track.

Why are both production & deliveries down from the prior quarter?

These numbers were known back in the start of January. A production hiccup with launching AP2 hardware held up the line about a week too long, resulting in a bunch of deliveries stuck in the overhang and getting delivered in the first 2 weeks of January.

 

[Irishjugg]

Mark Spiegel getting absolutely demolished on CNBC right now - It's amazing!

I came to this thread hoping for video of this

 

[HeldDesTages]

I wonder why they didn't annnounce the third Model 3 reveal. Maybe they will combine it with the first deliveries?

 

[racer26]

Maybe firing the guy who supposedly stole autopilot data?

No way Sterling Anderson accounts for 1.9M shares. I could certainly see his departure toasting some fraction of shares, but not that many.

 

[racer26]

I wonder why they didn't annnounce the third Model 3 reveal. Maybe they will combine it with the first deliveries?

Or they're saving some thunder for later? Or they're going to on the CC?

 

[DriverOne]

Ah right, thanks @racer26. Had forgotten the production numbers already came out, and that got my quarters mixed up!

 

[JBRR]

I came to this thread hoping for video of this

coming up in 10 minutes time.

 

[austinEV]

Interesting that they appear to have only counted the first 1000 AP2 cars as revenue, which means that a future quarter will have a LOT of extra revenue from virtually every car since last October popping $3k-$8k onto the pile. This is what happens when you only look at accounting results and not actual money, similar to what happened with lease accounting that will still be catching up for some time in GAAP figures.

that's a ton of deferred revenue. 22k cars* 5k= 110M. 22k* 8k= 176M. That is how much free money is in play for Q1. Plus what they earn in Q1 itself... holy crap. so call it 150M as a figure of merit. roughly double that as extra revenue for Q1.

Edit: Extra revenue with no cost. Extra bottom line profit.

 

[dandurston]

You're being way conservative.

There will be no 3 weeks of fiddling with the line to make 50 cars.

I expect 5k/wk mid 4Q17, and probably an average of 2k/wk for the weeks from July to there.

With previous ramps from Tesla and probably every other automaker, they builds some cars and then pause the line to inspect these cars and improve the line to avoid them. It takes a while to tear a car apart, see if it was put together perfectly, and re-program the line to improve things. Some of this is the pre-production work, but they still do this in early regular production, like they did blatantly for many months with the X.

So I can't see Tesla turning on the line and cranking out thousands of cars that are potentially riddled with quality problems. If they turned the line on at 2k/wk and kept it on, they'd have a backlog of 4000 cars every time they discover an issue. No one cranks the line up to high speed until they're confident the quality is there.

 

[Irishjugg]

No way Sterling Anderson accounts for 1.9M shares. I could certainly see his departure toasting some fraction of shares, but not that many.

That was actually my thinking too, that would be one hell of a grant, but I wanted to be helpful if possible

 

[dandurston]

Keep in mind the extra 3k for FSD won't be realized until FSD is released. It's not going to be recognized in Q1 and probably not in 2017 at all.

 

[racer26]

With previous ramps from Tesla and probably every other automaker, they builds some cars and then pause the line to inspect these cars and improve the line to avoid them. It takes a while to tear a car apart to see if it was put together perfectly, and then it can also take a while to re-program machines and modify the line to improve the quality. Some of this is the pre-production work, but they still do this in early regular production, like they did blatantly for many months with the X.

So I can't see Tesla turning on the line and cranking out thousands of cars that are potentially riddled with quality problems. If they turned the line on at 2k/wk and kept it on, they'd have a backlog of 4000 cars with an issue every time they discover one. No one cranks the line up to high speed until they're confident the quality is there.

I agree. But most of that proving the line stuff happens in pre-production, not after the start of initial deliveries. I expect that will happen between now and July, and come July, most of the gremlins will have already been worked out. Then the last few get hammered out between July and September.

 

[ggies07]

I agree. But most of that proving the line stuff happens in pre-production, not after the start of initial deliveries. I expect that will happen between now and July, and come July, most of the gremlins will have already been worked out. Then the last few get hammered out between July and September.

and then BAM! It's 'Merry Christmas' for lots of people for four months.

 

[The Blue Owl]

CNBC video with Spiegel

 

[JBRR]

Albertine: Model S is 'the Apple iPhone' to every else's electric vehicle
Spiegel takedown - enjoy.

 

[Hogfighter]

One number I keep monitoring in each ER is the Customer Deposits. For the first time this has decreased Q on Q, from $690m to $663M. Still, considering, that they must have finished delivering the MX signature backlog by EOY, this is impressive as those puppies carve out 40k a pice from this number once they get converted to orders.

Only problem is, without knowing where the M3 preorder tally is at, it's impossible to calculate the S/X backlog.

Good point. I'm thinking that they have over 500,000 deposits for the 3. No way do they still have $100mil in deposits and payments for S and X vehicles that haven't been delivered yet.

 

[dirtyofries]

CNBC video with Spiegel

He's looking downright haggard. The guy tweets more tripe than Trump.

 

[KLC13]

Spiegel has been incredibly quiet in the last one hour. All he's done is retweet his friends like Paulos and Skeptik... He's been an integral part of the $TSLA story, I would hate to see anything happening to him. I sometimes worry about him..no seriously.

 

[dennis]

Model 3 program is on track to start limited vehicle production in July and to steadily ramp production to exceed 5,000 vehicles per week at some point in the fourth quarter and 10,000 vehicles per week at some point in 2018.

5000 per week for AD 0.5 is impressive. However @MitchJi I smell some chocolate:

5000/week = 1000/day = 50/hour

I see no way that Tesla will be doing anything less than 5 day weeks and 20 hour days (2 10-hour shifts).

 

[FluxCap]

that's a ton of deferred revenue. 22k cars* 5k= 110M. 22k* 8k= 176M. That is how much free money is in play for Q1. Plus what they earn in Q1 itself... holy crap. so call it 150M as a figure of merit. roughly double that as extra revenue for Q1.

Edit: Extra revenue with no cost. Extra bottom line profit.

This is interesting to consider - and that's a ton of revenue that could hit the bottom line next ER / serve as a buffer.