2017 Investor Roundtable:General Discussion

[Bobfitz1]

Glad we agree on 2020 production numbers, on which even many bulls had called me crazy/stupid/etc. when I first made the prediction.

2. I don't think distance from Fremont is an important determinant factor in how long it will take to bring the additional Gigafactories online, as they will likely include both battery production and assembly. The issues (and experience handling those issues) you mentioned that Tesla ran into in previous years is a reason to be more optimistic, not less, going forward when thinking about the time it would take to build additional Gigafactories. Let me know when you're selling at $1,000 this year or next, and I'll be there to buy them from you.

I think @ValueAnalyst is on the money with these GF points. From many years of watching how EM and his team operate, and various things they've put out re they are focusing on the machine that builds the machine etc., I believe new GigaFactories once selected and started will come online faster than many expect. The advanced tooling and machines developed in only the past 2 - 3 years will only need to be replicated and improved from lessons learned, before installation at the new GFs. Having less constraints on how freely they can solve problems by applying more cash will also help faster build times. Finally, if as we think, a GF will be built in China, we know there will be less time spent with regulatory approvals and other red tape. China's technocrats will slice through those quickly to further the leaders already made decision to move ahead with batteries and EVs at warp speed.

 

[Gerardf]

Would be fun to have H1 guidance reiterate the 50k S/X "and ...... 500 Model-3"

 

[austinEV]

Weather for Shortsville NY, is showers on Thu, but storms on Friday.
Not an advice.

 

[kenliles]

and The story continues---
Déjà vu

Hedge fund manager David Einhorn says Tesla is ‘reminiscent of the March 2000 dotcom bubble’

• David Einhorn thinks the current market environment for cult stocks is similar to the dotcom bubble.
• The hedge fund manager confirmed General Motors is his largest investment position.

"Investors remain hypnotized by Tesla's CEO ... The enthusiasm for Tesla and other bubble basket stocks is reminiscent of the March 2000 dotcom bubble," Einhorn said on the Greenlight Capital Re first-quarter conference call Wednesday, according to a FactSet transcript.

"While we don't know exactly when the bubble pop, it eventually will," he added.

 

[Ovulation]

The most important thing for me is if Elon sticks to his claim that the model 3 will have a similar margin as the X and S that would be in the words of your president HUGE. I hope someone ask him that question, it's after all the most relevant near and mid term.

 

[MitchJi]

It gets a little under half the range of an MS60, and I'm guessing its about twice as heavy, and significantly worse aerodynamically speaking.

I'm not that surprised. What I like about it is that it did correctly what I think the Volt did wrong. Its range extending gas engine is a small one. Depending on which specs you trust, its around half the size of the Volt's engine, in a vehicle twice the size.

What's interesting to me is that nobody else can build a cost effective bev pickup, and Tesla is planning to reveal a bev semi.

Let me know when you're selling at $1,000 this year or next, and I'll be there to buy them from you.

I'll sell you as many shares at $950 as you want immediately (this year). I was going to make the offer for $1k, but I decided, being in a generous mood, to give you a discount.

 

[austinEV]

and The story continues---
Déjà vu

Hedge fund manager David Einhorn says Tesla is ‘reminiscent of the March 2000 dotcom bubble’

• David Einhorn thinks the current market environment for cult stocks is similar to the dotcom bubble.
• The hedge fund manager confirmed General Motors is his largest investment position.

"Investors remain hypnotized by Tesla's CEO ... The enthusiasm for Tesla and other bubble basket stocks is reminiscent of the March 2000 dotcom bubble," Einhorn said on the Greenlight Capital Re first-quarter conference call Wednesday, according to a FactSet transcript.

"While we don't know exactly when the bubble pop, it eventually will," he added.

In 5 years, TSLA will probably drop from 1000 to 850 and he will say he was right.

 

[Lessmog]

Yes, but it is selling so well. It has only 1110 days on hand, much less than Corvette at 170 and Camaro at 177. GM has trouble selling anything much at the moment, it seems, in the US anyway. They seemed to sell Germany and the UK without losing too many billions on the deal.

Don't know how much GM lost on Sweden, but they lost any business from me, forever. I know, small nuts. But mine! It seems GM has big trouble delivering its 4,000 Amperas in Norway and facing big-time cancellations. Not sure the French electric deal Citroen-Renault) is profitable either.

In short (oops) GM =/= Gross Margin in this instance.

 

[esk8mw]

In 5 years, TSLA will probably drop from 1000 to 850 and he will say he was right.

I assume you are using post-split numbers?

 

[ValueAnalyst]

I'll sell you as many shares at $950 as you want immediately (this year). I was going to make the offer for $1k, but I decided, being in a generous mood, to give you a discount.

Let's chat in six hours

 

[luvb2b]

the debt i believe is the project-level non-recourse debt. convertible notes are full recourse to solarcity so definitely not those.

i was wrong with thinking the result is already known - you and the other poster are correct that the details of any gains/losses from the transaction have not been disclosed.

i will now use the typical strategy used by tesla shorts. faced with an absence of direct evidence to support my view, i will continue to find other reasons to defend my position. note the evidence of at least one of the transactions would be known tonight or at tesla's 10q filing at worst.

i am fairly certain the transactions are going to breakeven or better from a book-accounting standpoint. the reason is the spe's are valued at liquidating value each quarter (this is how the nci's are generated). the whole point of a liquidation value is that you would be able to fire-sale at that price if needed.

for reference take a look at first solar's earnings and call from last night. they closed a deal selling one of their projects and generated a gain. i mentioned it yesterday, there are buyers of these assets at fair valuations.

Relative to our expectations to Q1, EPS was higher due to better-than-expected profit from the Moapa project sale ... Our net cash position improved by $402 million to nearly $2.2 billion as we received the final payments for our Moapa and East Pecos project.​

What is the corresponding debt? Are those the convertible notes?
Given they announced just now, I suppose the transaction only closed in Q2 and we are yet to see the adjustments (if any)

 

[kenliles]

Tesla Model 3: new 4k video gives us best look at Model 3 release candidate testing

 

[RobStark]

the interior looks as if designed by Fisher Price, but at least it's something.

Economies of scale are 10k units per year.
BMW 3 cyl engine.
Carbon fibre reinforced plastic
60 kWh battery pack
Dual motor torque vectoring AWD
$52.5k

Somethings gotta give and it is the King Ranch interior

 

[luvb2b]

quick review of open interest going into the earnings - still heavily tilted on the call side but now a few more puts involved too. 315 at the money strike highlighted in yellow. i posted the 5/5 weekly and the 5/19 monthly expirations. not enough open interest at the 5/12 expiration to bother.


now going to turn my attention to the image below, posted by @Wenche on the market action forum (linked below). i have been following the ib short updates for some time. although they don't give you exact number of shares shorted by customers, they do update weekly with this type of bar chart. the big long left bar you see is the value of tesla shares short, the second bar is the value of vxx short. keep in mind vxx is a volatility tracking etf that basically erodes towards zero constantly. voting with their dollars, a meaningful percentage of traders is saying tesla is a much safer short than something that has historically done nothing but go down, reverse split, and then go down some more.

although no scale is given, you can compare the short value to other stocks before and get some idea if shorts have increased or decreased. as of 4/14, the value of tesla shares short was 15% lower than the value of vxx short. at 4/28 the value of tesla short is nearly 50% greater than value of vxx short. similarly vs. a different stock on the list like vmw i find that on 4/14 the value of tesla shares short were about 8.5x vmw, and today that difference is 10.5x. use some assumptions and estimations, i come to the tesla short shares having increased by 10-15% over the last 2 weeks.

in summary i have to agree that the shorts are not only not backing off, they are adding to their positions. perhaps the biased sample of stinking alfa authors that troll these forums is not the best indicator of the average short.

View attachment 225400

The shorts are not backing off. IB had more than 900k shares available to short at Fridays close. All my shares are lent out. IB posted the statement "image" today, documenting the short holding by Friday, when the stock was at all time high. Yesterday we saw a new all time high. Today a brief pulldown, but only the shorts that sold yesterday are in the green. Today at close IB has only 153k shares available to short.

 

[RobStark]

Yup. Squeaky Fisher Price plastic. I don't care for it, especially in a vehicle nearly twice the price of a garden variety F-150. To my mind, though, if brought to market as is, it will be one of the strongest plug-in offerings going. So there's that.

This is what the Mercedes,BMW,Audi guys said about the 2012 Model S.

Some still say that.....

 

[doctoxics]

Good point. I was thinking they would break out S/X and M3 guidance seperately, but they might combine them. That would give them a lot of wiggle room on the S/X demand. I was thinking the S/X is very happy running at 100k/year. So a reasonable and in no way bad guidance would be 50k for 2H. That would say the growth will come from M3 and we are not investing in the line, and demand is not a problem. So it will be interesting if they give combined guidance which is probably smart in case they need to do 45k or something in S/X which could be perceived as very bad in conventional times. But if they do combined guidance it wouldn't be noticeable or even important. So maybe they guide to 100k total. That would make for fun headlines. 100% growth in the second half.

Thanks. I am thinking that with a third shift and all the new markets opening up, S and X could trend up to 30K/quarter from Q1 to Q4 this year.

 

[TradingInvest]

Read the original "letter" and think it's BS. As many mentioned, this contradicts with Elon's plan. Also in the letter they called Tesla Inc "Tesla Motors Inc" and uses "TESLA" and "Tesla" in consistently. Also, shouldn't a real letter also spell out Space X's full name "Space Exploration Technologies Corp." at least one?

The entire "SpaceX IPO" email seems to be a low quality manipulation. Either trying to push up TSLA, or trying to get more money from customers.

First of all, there is no reason to IPO SpaceX at this time. Second, IPO only to a subset of investors will undermine the current SpaceX shareholders' rights (less buyer so lower potential price). The chance for this to happen is extremely low.

I identified the three fund mangers and added their names to my "avoid" list.

 

[vgrinshpun]

Tesla Q1: China and Hong Kong made Tesla’s record quarter with ~8,000 deliveries

Yep, I've been posting about this since beginning of March, and again earlier today. Another stealth catalyst, I think. I do not see this *not* being mentioned in the letter/on the ER call.

 

[racer26]

This is what the Mercedes,BMW,Audi guys said about the 2012 Model S.

Some still say that.....

As an owner of a 2014 S? No.

The interior of the Model S, while spartan, is not "Fisher Price cheap plastic" in appearance at all like the workhorse truck is. That being said, I agree that Model S/X interior is not up to the mega-luxe standards of high-end German brand models.

 

[RobStark]

As an owner of a 2014 S? No.

The interior of the Model S, while spartan, is not "Fisher Price cheap plastic" in appearance at all like the workhorse truck is. That being said, I agree that Model S/X interior is not up to the mega-luxe standards of high-end German brand models.

The Workhorse isn't in the $70k-$170k price range either.