General Discussion: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[schonelucht]

If the short sellers really do manage to force the stock down during the critical February 2019 period, I wonder if we can crowdfund $900 million in private-placement stock purchases to pay off the convertibles... I kind of suspect Larry Page would do it by himself

This is a non starter. Elon does not want to. That's final. Couldn't be more explicit about it. Tesla would have 0 issues to raise billions today. Zero. Wipe out that silly short thesis about running out of cash in a minute. They don't do it because Elon does not want to.

I don't exactly understand why he is against raising money but I trust his reasons on this one (and judgment about not needing one, although I tend to be more cautious than Elon myself so that is a bit of a leap of faith there).

 

[avoigt]

Today is a special day:

I did see in the television a first ad from BMW promoting their i8 and something that looked like the iVision dynamics concept.

.... for a moment I got even the impression they are trying to sell those ....

 

[schonelucht]

Uhh...some short on Twitter who tweets every hour about Tesla is NOT a source.

Read his bio. It's not 'some short'.

And to be clear, even if Elon DID send that email, good on him. He's right. Tripp is an ass.

All the more reasons not to engage with him. There is 0 upside and a lot of downside. Tripp is NEVER going to take whatever Elon Musk mails him in good faith. All he'll do is allow his defense team to twist it anyway they can imagine to hurt Tesla's case the most. As the mail stands they now don't have to prove that there is in fact significant waste in manufacturing. That's just one nugget handed to them free, right there.

 

[Foghat]

A little perspective:

A few weeks ago, the media was pumping out article after article that investors were going to vote Elon out (as well as some board members) and that investors were potentially losing faith in Elon.

I mean, this was a constant theme in the financial media, I say theme because they pretty much were all on the same talking points at the same time.

I did the stock holder app vote during this time of media bombardment into the lead up to the June shareholder meeting. What did the vote results show? The votes were overwhelmingly in support of Elon. It wasn’t even close. When I checked the running total it was hundreds of votes, representing over $30mil of ownership, yes compared to a handful of no votes, representing approximately 100k. However, you wouldn’t have known this by the media assault by volume and persistence suggesting otherwise. It was like night and day from reality.

The amazing thing is as soon as the vote was overwhelmingly proven positive, the same media just moved onto the next controversy, no reflection or assessment of own absolute bias/suggestive reporting.

Being invested in Tesla since 2012, one thing I’ve learned is that financial news has been the epicenter of pump/dump “fake news” for a long time. The techniques have actually been perfected here, so to actually put value into it as truth should be of low priority.

What it’s value is in figuring out what/who has motivatived such reports to come out in order to see positions (institutional or otherwise) taken.

To me, it’s the meta data behind the report that is important, not the print. As I’ve seen in these previous attacks, the stock gets assaulted, but since the truth is the product is good, it seems to always find its rightful trajectory.

Short term investors bank on ignorance and fear of the unknown in a growth stock, long term judge the product and its reception among actual consumers.

 

[Foghat]

Read his bio. It's not 'some short'.



All the more reasons not to engage with him. There is 0 upside and a lot of downside. Tripp is NEVER going to take whatever Elon Musk mails him in good faith. All he'll do is allow his defense team to twist it anyway they can imagine to hurt Tesla's case the most. As the mail stands they now don't have to prove that there is in fact significant waste in manufacturing. That's just one nugget handed to them free, right there.

The email shows Tripp threatened Elon. Goes to motive.

 

[Todd Burch]

Read his bio. It's not 'some short'.

Here's his bio:

I corrected my post to refer to him as a WaPo writer, but this is reinforcing the very point.

A journalist is not a source.

Let me say that again.

A journalist is not a source.

Journalists without an agenda don't post stuff like this:

That's an opinion writer at best, and a piece of crap sorry excuse for a wanna-be journalist at worst. His Twitter feed is filled with one-sided BS.

And...just because other manufacturers don't do it doesn't make it bad. Other auto manufacturers can't figure out how to get >500 miles out of a <1 MWh battery pack for a fully loaded semi truck, and do it at a prudent price. Other auto manufacturers can't figure out over-the-air updates to update all vehicle systems. Other auto manufacturers so far haven't been able to establish compelling charging infrastructure, or a compelling EV for that matter.

Other launch providers haven't figured out how to reuse boosters, or land one (no less two) of those boosters after launching a second stage to orbit.

 

[schonelucht]

A journalist is not a source.

Let's agree to disagree. I am not willing to go down this rabbits hole with you.

 

[Brando]

Some cobalt related news: Canadian firm Glacier Lake Resources Inc. is planning to mine in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah. The firm is a Vancouver-based copper and silver mining firm. The firm says they've found cobalt in the area.

Firm Prepares To Mine Land Previously Protected As A National Monument

Hope Elon is correct about going cobalt free in a few years.

 

[Todd Burch]

Let's agree to disagree. I am not willing to go down this rabbits hole with you.

I have generally welcomed your fairly negative view of the company on these forums as it adds balance to the discussion, and usually your comments have a basis in reasoning. We can agree to disagree, but I find that your belief that a journalist is a source to be a bit disturbing.

Journalists (at least the good ones) gather facts and opinions FROM sources, and present them objectively to an audience. In the very best case, a journalist gathers information directly from a source and presents that information without bias. In the worst case, they are a second, third, or forth-hand ear relaying gossip full of bias, opinion, etc.

We should never conflate the former with the latter.

And I'll leave it at that.

 

[Brando]

None yet in Germany (except You You's M3 a while ago). But I keep seeing X and S much more commonly than a year ago. Looking forward to the 3 explosion here next year (or even better, if they could start some deliveries this year).

I'd suspect next 18 months [as Federal Tax Credit winds down to zero] mostly about US Model 3 backlog. European companies have time to offer Model 3 killer - will they??
I hope Model 3 production/sales maintains a million a year for years.

 

[mongo]

As the mail stands they now don't have to prove that there is in fact significant waste in manufacturing.

Have been in automotive, millions is not significant waste. You can hit that just causing a plant to pause for a day.
Tesla carries 2+ billion in inventory, 1% waste is 20 million. Any new product is going to have old revision parts that get scrapped.
Heck, every other OEM buys prototype tooling, that's scrap after production tooling is ordered.

 

[schonelucht]

Have been in automotive, millions is not significant waste. You can hit that just causing a plant to pause for a day.
Tesla carries 2+ billion in inventory, 1% waste is 20 million. Any new product is going to have old revision parts that get scrapped.
Heck, every other OEM buys prototype tooling, that's scrap after production tooling is ordered.

You are right, I shouldn't have said significant. Although we also shouldn't measure this based on full Tesla inventory. AFAIK the discussion is purely about the gigafactory.

 

[Boomer19]

A little perspective:

A few weeks ago, the media was pumping out article after article that investors were going to vote Elon out (as well as some board members) and that investors were potentially losing faith in Elon.

I mean, this was a constant theme in the financial media, I say theme because they pretty much were all on the same talking points at the same time.

I did the stock holder app vote during this time of media bombardment into the lead up to the June shareholder meeting. What did the vote results show? The votes were overwhelmingly in support of Elon. It wasn’t even close. When I checked the running total it was hundreds of votes, representing over $30mil of ownership, yes compared to a handful of no votes, representing approximately 100k. However, you wouldn’t have known this by the media assault by volume and persistence suggesting otherwise. It was like night and day from reality.

The amazing thing is as soon as the vote was overwhelmingly proven positive, the same media just moved onto the next controversy, no reflection or assessment of own absolute bias/suggestive reporting.

Being invested in Tesla since 2012, one thing I’ve learned is that financial news has been the epicenter of pump/dump “fake news” for a long time. The techniques have actually been perfected here, so to actually put value into it as truth should be of low priority.

What it’s value is in figuring out what/who has motivatived such reports to come out in order to see positions (institutional or otherwise) taken.

To me, it’s the meta data behind the report that is important, not the print. As I’ve seen in these previous attacks, the stock gets assaulted, but since the truth is the product is good, it seems to always find its rightful trajectory.

Short term investors bank on ignorance and fear of the unknown in a growth stock, long term judge the product and its reception among actual consumers.

good points.
and the current chaos is exactly the playbook of those against tesla, and it’s playing out nicely for them right now, the media can’t get enough through print and social media. they eat it up because it creates relevance for them, albeit mostly false and short lived, just like the short thesis. also, fyi 8k vote results attached

 

[mongo]

You are right, I shouldn't have said significant. Although we also shouldn't measure this based on full Tesla inventory. AFAIK the discussion is purely about the gigafactory.

Good point.
A million here, a million there, pretty soon you're talking real money...

 

[Unpilot]

Let's agree to disagree. I am not willing to go down this rabbits hole with you.

Even if he is a "reporter " his Twitter feed clearly shows a negative bios towards EM and Tesla.

 

[ruralectric]

Uhh...some guy from the WaPo on Twitter who tweets every hour about Tesla and clearly has an agenda is NOT a source. Those are NOT the posts of an objective journalist.

And to be clear, even if Elon DID send that email, good on him. He's right. Tripp is an ass. And likely a criminal.

Maybe I'm missing what this debate was about. The e-mail from Elon is replicated in the Post piece.

Saboteur or whistleblower? Battle between Elon Musk and former Tesla employee turns ugly, exposing internal rancor

 

[avoigt]

VW invest 100M€ in QuantumScape a Californian solid state Battery company

VW investiert 100 Millionen Euro in Start-up für E-Auto-Batterie

 

[Todd Burch]

Have been in automotive, millions is not significant waste. You can hit that just causing a plant to pause for a day.
Tesla carries 2+ billion in inventory, 1% waste is 20 million. Any new product is going to have old revision parts that get scrapped.
Heck, every other OEM buys prototype tooling, that's scrap after production tooling is ordered.

Short story: I work in the engineering inspection industry (metrology/dimensional control). I once went to a major aerospace factory in the Midwest US to teach an inspection class. This manufacturer was building composite wing pieces to get assembled onto business jets.

They were inspecting parts with precision measurement equipment. They would evaluate the part by measuring it to obtain digital coordinates, align these 3D points to a CAD model, then evaluate if they were in or out of tolerance. When the part didn't fit their inspection criteria, they threw the entire part away. (This part was a leading edge wing panel. Very expensive).

I showed them how to adjust how they align their data to bring everything into tolerance without violating their inspection criteria, and immediately they saw a dramatic drop in scrap.

Moral of the story: Manufacturing wastes tons of scrap every day. And in this case, it was scrap that otherwise could have been used. As Elon allegedly mentioned in the email, this is not unique to Tesla, and not news.

 

[neroden]

Tesla confirmed the emails. It's mind boggling that Tesla's general counsel did not stop Elon from sending them. In fact it's clear he sent them without consulting anyone at all otherwise he wouldn't have to correct a typo directly contradicting his message.

All the points of Tesla doing this to discover who else is besides the leaks are well taken. But consider that the other side will just as well have the opportunity to run discovery. And as Elon himself wrote in an email 'of course a billion dollar company has millions of waste'. Maybe true but we know the message is going to be 'Tesla wastes millions'. At least, Tesla picked a firm that's apparently specialized in minimizing investigations and discovery disclosures.

It's clear Tesla has proof that Tripp framed his colleagues by using their login credentials and planting spyware on their computers. The saboteur has no defense whatsoever. I'm pretty sure he did threaten to shoot up Tesla, too; good thing his friend called the threat in, because now he won't threaten again. This is adding up to a very clear picture.

We know Tesla's in-house general counsel isn't worth much (and I'm on the record saying he should have been fired years ago) so I'm not surprised he didn't typo-check the emails.

 

[Reality]

And if Tesla was going to lie about production numbers, why only inflate it by 100 cars/5%? If they are truly shady, say you hit 5k, cash in all your stock on the bump then spend a good percentage of your life trying to avoid being cuffed and stuffed. Seems plausible.

the visual aspect of 2k means a lot, optics matter in the financial world