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On 7/9/13 closing price was $123.45 and it was essentially straight up until it closed at $193.30 on 9/30/13.
Tesla Rises on Bump Up to Nasdaq-100 Index: Mover
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anticitizen13.7
Not posting at TMC after 9/17/2018
Very true. The iPhone has arguably been the most successful shell game in phone pricing up until about 2014-2015.
It was unbelievable that prior to 2014/15, most people thought their iPhones cost $199, when the true $649 cost that Apple collected for the base model, was actually in part rolled into the cost of 24 month contracts. T-Mobile completely blew up this illusion by dividing its billing into service and hardware components, and the other carriers soon followed.
Now, iPhones are advertised as a $/month cost, since many people cannot stomach $649/unit upfront (which can add up to thousands of $ for families). Sometimes wireless carriers offer deals where they will absorb some of the device cost. Even as the iPhone remains very expensive, it's popularity has not fallen.
Waiting4M3
Active Member
How does Tesla's comment on M3 RC car quality fit into this scenario?
"quality of release candidate way better than for S and X
body panel gaps much better"
Is body panel gaps caused by bad stamping or bad assembly? If it's stamping then are they saying the production stamping tool of MS/X sucks? If it's assembly, then would this suggest that they've tried out the assembly robot?
I assume they meant that the M3 RC cars are coming out much better than the MS/MX RC cars did. (Not what the MS/MX are now.)
Didn't they say it was better than the S and X at this point in development. Not better than the S or X they made that day.
RobStark
Well-Known Member
Daimler raises earnings forecast on surging Mercedes profit
Daimler confirmed preliminary results released earlier this month , reporting first-quarter operating profit that surged 87 percent to 4 billion euros ($4.4 billion) as Mercedes widened its lead over rival BMW.
Profit at Mercedes-Benz Cars, which also makes Smart cars, rose 60 percent to 2.23 billion euros. The return on sales for the Mercedes cars unit rose to 9.8 percent from 7 percent, compared with a drop in BMW's automaking margin to 9 percent from 9.4 percent.
Research and development spending jumped 24 percent to 2.1 billion euros in the first quarter as the company seeks to be at the forefront of electric and self-driving cars, accelerating the introduction of at least 10 new electric models by three years to 2022.
Daimler confirmed preliminary results released earlier this month , reporting first-quarter operating profit that surged 87 percent to 4 billion euros ($4.4 billion) as Mercedes widened its lead over rival BMW.
Profit at Mercedes-Benz Cars, which also makes Smart cars, rose 60 percent to 2.23 billion euros. The return on sales for the Mercedes cars unit rose to 9.8 percent from 7 percent, compared with a drop in BMW's automaking margin to 9 percent from 9.4 percent.
Research and development spending jumped 24 percent to 2.1 billion euros in the first quarter as the company seeks to be at the forefront of electric and self-driving cars, accelerating the introduction of at least 10 new electric models by three years to 2022.
"While we do not assume any credit risk related to the customer, if a customer exercises the option to return the vehicle to us, we are exposed to liquidity risk that the resale value of vehicles under these programs may be lower than our guarantee, or the volume of vehicles returned to us may be higher than our estimates, or we may be unable to resell the used cars in a timely manner, all of which could adversely impact our cash flows. Alternatively, in cases where customers retain their vehicles past the expiration of the guarantee period, the remaining deferred revenues and costs will be recognized at no gross profit."
Kept RVG cars reduce GAAP profits by the amount of the warranty reserve booked for the remaining period of warranty.(mouse nutz)
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Ron Baron's Baron Partners Fund 1st Quarter Shareholder Letter - GuruFocus.com
"
During the first quarter of 2017, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA)’s stock price increased 30.24% to $278.30 per share. Tesla is Baron Partners Fund’s largest holding and represented 14.2% of this focused Fund’s gross portfolio investments (18.2% of net assets) at quarter end. Until 2017, Tesla’s share price had been range bound principally between $200 and $250 per share since 2014. During that period, Baron Partners Fund purchased 1.1 million Tesla shares for an average cost of $213.35 per share. At the date of this letter, Tesla’s share price was above $300 per share.
Since 2013, Tesla has more than tripled its annual revenues to more than $7 billion. Demand for Tesla’s new and used Model S sedans and Model X crossover cars continue to exceed its production capacity and “for sale” used cars. Tesla’s $100,000 luxury “S” sedans and “X” crossovers already outsell Mercedes Benz’ luxury cars…even in Europe! While Tesla’s Models S and X represent about 8% of worldwide luxury car sales, luxury cars comprise less than 2% of worldwide automobile sales. We believe Tesla’s revenues will increase at an even faster rate following the introduction this summer of its mass market, $35,000, Model 3 sedan.
Tesla opened its first car assembly line in its Fremont, California plant in 2012. Tesla’s production capacity was then 1,000 cars per week. That year Tesla sold only 2,000 cars. In 2015, Tesla opened a second line in its Fremont factory, this one with the capacity to produce 3,000 Model “S” sedans and Model “X” crossover cars per week. In 2017 it sold 76,000 cars. In July 2017, Tesla plans to open its third production line in the Fremont facility. This line has planned capacity initially of 5,000 Model 3 cars per week which will eventually scale to 10,000 Model 3 cars per week.
Many investors worry about competition for Tesla from large, hundred year old automobile original equipment manufacturer (OEM) car makers. Those car companies have billions invested in plants that provide them with expertise and competitive advantage to make ICE cars (cars that use internal combustion engines instead of Tesla’s batteries). Those plants would become “stranded assets” if abandoned or converted to make electric cars. OEMs also have large, legacy, independent dealer networks reliant upon servicing cars with internal combustion engines. Electric cars need little servicing. Electric cars also don’t need gasoline and gasoline stations. Traditional ICE OEMs are also constrained by their entrenched legacy distribution channel that limits their abilities to offer services provided by Tesla’s efficient, direct to consumer sales organization.
General Motors (NYSE:GM) recently introduced Bolt, a compact, mass market, electric car. The Bolt is a necessity for GM to meet emission and mileage standards that will permit it to continue to sell its very profitable but low miles per gallon SUVs. GM has announced that it plans to sell 30,000 Bolt cars this year. It sold 3,000 in the first three months of 2017. Industry sources indicate Bolt sales have been disappointing and dealer inventories are high.
Tesla announced early last year that it would begin to manufacture and ship its Model 3 electric car in 2017. In the first six weeks following that announcement on May 18, 2015, Tesla received an astounding 373,000 orders for its Model 3! Customers placed those purchase orders with $1,000 deposits for a car buyers had never seen, had never sat in, had never driven and that would not be available for more than another year! We believe the reason for the enormous demand…with no advertising… is not just because the luxury Tesla S and X cars are beautiful, environmentally friendly, low maintenance and fun to drive. According to Department of Transportation statistics, Tesla cars are the safest cars ever made…and Tesla expects the Model 3 to be as praiseworthy.
Tesla has spent the past five years making substantial investments in infrastructure including hundreds of showrooms and maintenance facilities, thousands of charging stations, enormous battery and solar roof plants and a paint shop capable of painting 500,000 cars annually with capacity that can be doubled with modest additional investments.
I almost forgot. Panasonic is investing more than $1.5 billion in Tesla’s $5 billion Reno Giga battery factory, the same amount in an expansion of the Reno factory and has committed to make an additional $250-300 million investment in Tesla’s second Giga factory in Buffalo, New York. The Buffalo facility will produce solar roofs, a product about which we are also quite excited. We are also optimistic about Tesla batteries, its cars with autonomous driving capabilities, Tesla “mobility” services like Uber’s (Tesla could make your car available to others when you are not using it which will offset your car payments) and utility network services.
Oh, one more thing. In late March, Tencent (HKSE:00700), the largest publicly owned company in China, announced that it had acquired 5% of Tesla’s shares for $1.8 billion. Tencent is capitalized at $272 billion and is one of the fastest growing businesses in China. Tencent had purchased Tesla shares over the past two years in open market transactions and through Tesla secondary public equity offerings. Tencent’s average purchase price was $217 per share. Although Tencent’s investment in Tesla is “passive” at present, Tesla currently does about 15% of its business in China and it could be a lot easier to penetrate that very large market if Tesla had help from such a partner. We will see.
Finally, I have recently been asked by CNBC among other media to take a victory lap about our investment in Tesla. I have uniformly told everyone who asked that it is too early for us to claim victory for that investment. In fact, we think it will still be too early in 2020 or 2021 when we think Tesla could sell one million cars per year, produce $70 billion in revenue and more than $7 billion in operating profits before reinvesting in its business to grow several times larger. A lot has to go right for that to take place. But, few public businesses have such an opportunity or “story” as skeptics believe. We think the odds of success for Elon Musk’s Tesla are favorable."
"
During the first quarter of 2017, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA)’s stock price increased 30.24% to $278.30 per share. Tesla is Baron Partners Fund’s largest holding and represented 14.2% of this focused Fund’s gross portfolio investments (18.2% of net assets) at quarter end. Until 2017, Tesla’s share price had been range bound principally between $200 and $250 per share since 2014. During that period, Baron Partners Fund purchased 1.1 million Tesla shares for an average cost of $213.35 per share. At the date of this letter, Tesla’s share price was above $300 per share.
Since 2013, Tesla has more than tripled its annual revenues to more than $7 billion. Demand for Tesla’s new and used Model S sedans and Model X crossover cars continue to exceed its production capacity and “for sale” used cars. Tesla’s $100,000 luxury “S” sedans and “X” crossovers already outsell Mercedes Benz’ luxury cars…even in Europe! While Tesla’s Models S and X represent about 8% of worldwide luxury car sales, luxury cars comprise less than 2% of worldwide automobile sales. We believe Tesla’s revenues will increase at an even faster rate following the introduction this summer of its mass market, $35,000, Model 3 sedan.
Tesla opened its first car assembly line in its Fremont, California plant in 2012. Tesla’s production capacity was then 1,000 cars per week. That year Tesla sold only 2,000 cars. In 2015, Tesla opened a second line in its Fremont factory, this one with the capacity to produce 3,000 Model “S” sedans and Model “X” crossover cars per week. In 2017 it sold 76,000 cars. In July 2017, Tesla plans to open its third production line in the Fremont facility. This line has planned capacity initially of 5,000 Model 3 cars per week which will eventually scale to 10,000 Model 3 cars per week.
Many investors worry about competition for Tesla from large, hundred year old automobile original equipment manufacturer (OEM) car makers. Those car companies have billions invested in plants that provide them with expertise and competitive advantage to make ICE cars (cars that use internal combustion engines instead of Tesla’s batteries). Those plants would become “stranded assets” if abandoned or converted to make electric cars. OEMs also have large, legacy, independent dealer networks reliant upon servicing cars with internal combustion engines. Electric cars need little servicing. Electric cars also don’t need gasoline and gasoline stations. Traditional ICE OEMs are also constrained by their entrenched legacy distribution channel that limits their abilities to offer services provided by Tesla’s efficient, direct to consumer sales organization.
General Motors (NYSE:GM) recently introduced Bolt, a compact, mass market, electric car. The Bolt is a necessity for GM to meet emission and mileage standards that will permit it to continue to sell its very profitable but low miles per gallon SUVs. GM has announced that it plans to sell 30,000 Bolt cars this year. It sold 3,000 in the first three months of 2017. Industry sources indicate Bolt sales have been disappointing and dealer inventories are high.
Tesla announced early last year that it would begin to manufacture and ship its Model 3 electric car in 2017. In the first six weeks following that announcement on May 18, 2015, Tesla received an astounding 373,000 orders for its Model 3! Customers placed those purchase orders with $1,000 deposits for a car buyers had never seen, had never sat in, had never driven and that would not be available for more than another year! We believe the reason for the enormous demand…with no advertising… is not just because the luxury Tesla S and X cars are beautiful, environmentally friendly, low maintenance and fun to drive. According to Department of Transportation statistics, Tesla cars are the safest cars ever made…and Tesla expects the Model 3 to be as praiseworthy.
Tesla has spent the past five years making substantial investments in infrastructure including hundreds of showrooms and maintenance facilities, thousands of charging stations, enormous battery and solar roof plants and a paint shop capable of painting 500,000 cars annually with capacity that can be doubled with modest additional investments.
I almost forgot. Panasonic is investing more than $1.5 billion in Tesla’s $5 billion Reno Giga battery factory, the same amount in an expansion of the Reno factory and has committed to make an additional $250-300 million investment in Tesla’s second Giga factory in Buffalo, New York. The Buffalo facility will produce solar roofs, a product about which we are also quite excited. We are also optimistic about Tesla batteries, its cars with autonomous driving capabilities, Tesla “mobility” services like Uber’s (Tesla could make your car available to others when you are not using it which will offset your car payments) and utility network services.
Oh, one more thing. In late March, Tencent (HKSE:00700), the largest publicly owned company in China, announced that it had acquired 5% of Tesla’s shares for $1.8 billion. Tencent is capitalized at $272 billion and is one of the fastest growing businesses in China. Tencent had purchased Tesla shares over the past two years in open market transactions and through Tesla secondary public equity offerings. Tencent’s average purchase price was $217 per share. Although Tencent’s investment in Tesla is “passive” at present, Tesla currently does about 15% of its business in China and it could be a lot easier to penetrate that very large market if Tesla had help from such a partner. We will see.
Finally, I have recently been asked by CNBC among other media to take a victory lap about our investment in Tesla. I have uniformly told everyone who asked that it is too early for us to claim victory for that investment. In fact, we think it will still be too early in 2020 or 2021 when we think Tesla could sell one million cars per year, produce $70 billion in revenue and more than $7 billion in operating profits before reinvesting in its business to grow several times larger. A lot has to go right for that to take place. But, few public businesses have such an opportunity or “story” as skeptics believe. We think the odds of success for Elon Musk’s Tesla are favorable."
RobStark
Well-Known Member
Was that announcement just to get the robots supplied? Or also programmed? The latter is not a trivial task either. My impression when Elon was talking about the July 1st supplier deadline it was rather for parts suppliers, not for tooling and factory equipment?
Etna
Member
As I mentioned earlier, the letter from Elon to the Grohmann employees with a new offer, guarantees and salary increases was well received. German press today is reporting that the union is not asking for a strike anymore but is looking to build a compromise with management around the offer.
FredTMC
Model S VIN #4925
View attachment 224439 TESLA
Check this out (before it gets taken down maybe).
He says he is there for 7.5 weeks to install/test the kuka robots for the M3 line. 467 of them....
So M3 line ready to manufacture on June 16?
FYI. Looks the the kuka field engineer took down his tesla pics
dennis
Model S Plaid
My guess would be that their CAD system that they touted and die manufacturing are allowing them to design to tighter tolerances than they did with S/X. I also believe that humans that are not under time pressure using the same fixtures can weld just as accurately as robots.
Let me ask you - where is the BIW line with robots that could have produced the few RC cars we have seen so far? Isn't the simpler explanation that they were hand assembled like prototypes normally are?
mmd
Active Member
Finally got a chance to look at GM's balance sheet. The underfunding of pension is GM's liability. Size of pension fund is not relevant. The underfunding is shown as 'Miscellaneous current liabilities" in the balance sheet. But GM also has assets worth $221B. All in all, after considering all its liabilities (including pension funding shortfall) and assets, it's book value of shareholder equity is $44B, quite close to its current market cap.
Same can't be said of Tesla's shareholder equity.
You can't just cherry pick one astronomical figure from GM's balance sheet and compare to that number from Tesla's balance sheet.
You have to look at the percentages, or compare all relevant numbers.
General Motors Co.
End of 2016:
Total assets: $221.69B
Total liabilities: $177.62B (include 26.13B of miscellaneous liabilities, whch you point out is pension under funding)
Shareholder equity: $44.08B
Also, looking at
FredTMC
Model S VIN #4925
Yes. Dennis. I agree. The RCs were likely hand assembled.
I highly doubt the human-based "final assembly line" is up and running.
Also, given 476 robots to be installed, I highly doubt the Robotic Body-in-white weld line is up either.
My guess is the major body panels are stamped and then hand welded together to get to a BIW. Then BIW goes to paint. After paint, the car is hand assembled (much like the final assembly line process) but without the conveyor.
Waiting4M3
Active Member
I don't know if a BIW line has to be fully populated to run a few robots for a RC build. If it is, sure, you could be right. But Tesla has done a lot of things differently from how things used to be done. So unless you have some 1st principle explanation on why that just can not possibly happen, I remain skeptical of your certainty.
dennis
Model S Plaid
From the Sept. 1, 2016 Electrek article:
Tesla Model 3: Tesla’s robot supplier vows to do everything it can to bring up production line on time
It's interesting that this quote is from Fanuc, not Kuka, who is installing the 400+ robots for Model 3. Both are current suppliers to Tesla. Does anyone know if one supplier does the current BIW lines and the other does the S/X final assembly? It might give us a clue as to the purpose of the robots that we saw pictured this week.
boost share price - yes, probably around 7-10%.
cause a short squeeze - to the extent it boosted share price, yes. cause a crazy 2013-style short squeeze, not without other indicators changing (high cost to borrow for example, or new large entrants).
tesla won't be added to the s&p next month.
you've got spunk but i think you're overly optimistic in general. this stock will test your resolve before it's all said and done. all other great stocks i have seen have done that. isrg cmg aapl etc. all had > 50% declines from peaks and then continued on to new highs. i don't know if that will happen from a high of 400 500 600 700 etc. and if it will happen in 2018, 2019, or later, but it will happen. it always happens.
cause a short squeeze - to the extent it boosted share price, yes. cause a crazy 2013-style short squeeze, not without other indicators changing (high cost to borrow for example, or new large entrants).
tesla won't be added to the s&p next month.
you've got spunk but i think you're overly optimistic in general. this stock will test your resolve before it's all said and done. all other great stocks i have seen have done that. isrg cmg aapl etc. all had > 50% declines from peaks and then continued on to new highs. i don't know if that will happen from a high of 400 500 600 700 etc. and if it will happen in 2018, 2019, or later, but it will happen. it always happens.
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