General Discussion: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[Cosmacelf]

How do refunds made go directly into revenue?

I didn’t mean refunds, I meant for the people who use their maintenance plans. If I just bought a 4 year refundable maintenance plan, it would all go into customer deposits. In one year, 1/4 of it would get taken out of customer deposits and put into revenue.

For people who asked for a refund of their Maintenace plan, the balance would just leave customer deposits.

 

[brian45011]

I didn’t mean refunds, I meant for the people who use their maintenance plans. If I just bought a 4 year refundable maintenance plan, it would all go into customer deposits. In one year, 1/4 of it would get taken out of customer deposits and put into revenue.

For people who asked for a refund of their Maintenace plan, the balance would just leave customer deposits.

OK Under the prior accounting rules, for the people who use their maintenance plans, the move would be from deferred revenue to recognized revenue. The classification change makes it more difficult to interpret changes up or down in Customer Deposits as a measure of the number of reservations. (In the good ole days, Tesla used to report quarterly the number of S reservations; that was discontinued around the end of 2012.)

 

[Zaxxon]

Just got word that my Model 3 will be delivered this Thursday (in about 49 hours, but who's counting?). Extrapolating from this data point, I now expect Tesla's revenue to increase infinitely in Q2 vs prior quarters.

Not an advice.

 

[Cosmacelf]

OK Under the prior accounting rules, for the people who use their maintenance plans, the move would be from deferred revenue to recognized revenue. The classification change makes it more difficult to interpret changes up or down in Customer Deposits as a measure of the number of reservations. (In the good ole days, Tesla used to report quarterly the number of S reservations; that was discontinued around the end of 2012.)

Correct. Frankly, looking at the reservations number is a fools game IMHO. There hasn’t been a time in Tesla’s history where they haven’t been production constrained. Because of that, they haven’t been spending a lot of money on demand generation. If Tesla sees the reservation numbers getting low, they’ll just adapt and start, gasp, marketing. Or shift production to higher demand cars. Or drop prices, or any number of things. Elon was right to get pissed when the analyst starting digging into reservation numbers. It is useless information for an outside investor.

 

[brian45011]

My guess is that Musk bought shares instead of exercising options because if he had exercised options, he may have needed to sell shares to cover taxes. So the headlines would have been "Musk sells shares worth XXX million - Tesla going bankrupt soon?".

But I guess, if Tesla actually needed money, Musk could exercise his options - that would bring some fresh cash into the company. Not a lot, but more than nothing.

Are you presuming he is purchasing the shares in the open market using some form of loan/margin?

If all cash was used, why would he have to sell shares for taxes but not to buy the shares on the open market?

Only the bargain element of the exercise is taxable. His strike price for those 4.2 million vested options is $31.17 so the bargain element is about $270/share. Even if his marginal state and federal income tax rate is 50 percent (probably too high) plus another 7.65% for the employee portion of FICA/medicare, he would only need about 62 percent of the cash for an option exercise than an open market purchase.

An option exercise would have added about $1 million to Tesla treasury but would have increase SG&A by $765,000 for the employer part of FICA/medicare

 

[TSLAopt]

This may be the week that Tesla makes 2500 cars. Right now, simple proportion from VIN assignments calculates to 2350 (135:116=x:2020), but the day is not done, and there is always delay of information. Of course you can't relay on VIN assignments for precise information, but knowing that 2500 is the goal, and seeing good numbers, isn't this something Elon may mention tomorrow, if they actually managed it? Just a theory, but wouldn't that be nice...
Elon did say:
“If things go as planned today, we will comfortably exceed that number(2000... sic) over a seven day period!” as per that email on March 31st.
View attachment 292504
More importantly though, pace didn't slow down first week in the new quarter, so I feel the worst is behind us

Do you have the latest version of this? This is a nice easy way to view where we are in the ramp

 

[avoigt]

Do you have the latest version of this? This is a nice easy way to view where we are in the ramp

Whats about this ?

Tesla Gets a Vote of Confidence as Supplier Orders Accelerate

 

[ABC2D]

Could anyone venture a guess what this spike to $306.88 could've been?

 

[sahanim]

let's play follow the oil trail!

 

[sahanim]

let's play follow the oil trail!

I'll Start! Trinidad and Tobago sitting in hot at #2
Iran conducts gas talks with Qatar, Algeria, Trinidad

 

[ggr]

let's play follow the oil trail!

I'm afraid I have no clue what your diagrams are supposed to be telling me.

 

[UnknownSoldier]

Looking forward to seeing what happens as gas prices keep going up

 

[ggies07]

Looking forward to seeing what happens as gas prices keep going up

Damn you Tesla battery manufacturing f-up, I would already have my 3 by now and wouldn't have to deal with this crap!

 

[Lbkmxp100d]

Could anyone venture a guess what this spike to $306.88 could've been?
View attachment 299719

Yes, someone not very smart entered wrong buy/sell bid and it got picked up.

 

[Yggdrasill]

Are you presuming he is purchasing the shares in the open market using some form of loan/margin?

If all cash was used, why would he have to sell shares for taxes but not to buy the shares on the open market?

Only the bargain element of the exercise is taxable. His strike price for those 4.2 million vested options is $31.17 so the bargain element is about $270/share. Even if his marginal state and federal income tax rate is 50 percent (probably too high) plus another 7.65% for the employee portion of FICA/medicare, he would only need about 62 percent of the cash for an option exercise than an open market purchase.

An option exercise would have added about $1 million to Tesla treasury but would have increase SG&A by $765,000 for the employer part of FICA/medicare

I assume he used the loans backed by the Tesla shares to buy more shares. My assumption is if he were to exercise the options, it wouldn't be a mere 32,000 shares. But of course, maybe he could have just exercised a small amount and not had to sell shares to cover the taxes.

 

[neroden]

I wish there was a way to get a question about the USB bugs into the shareholder meeting.

 

[MattEnth]

Anyone want to take a stab at explaining these two oddities?

TeslaCharts on Twitter

X and S quarterly deliveries are almost perfectly correlated, and there's 300M of revenue coming from somewhere that's not a major market.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Damn you Tesla battery manufacturing f-up, I would already have my 3 by now and wouldn't have to deal with this crap!

Out of curiosity, does anyone know what consulting firm dropped the ball on the battery pack automation software? Elon pointed the finger at an outside contractor that screwed up. Who was it?

 

[Words of HABIT]

Looks like Hyundai will be the first of many others to experience their own EV product delays. Nobody said it was easy being green.

Battery shortage interrupts Hyundai Ioniq Electric sales

 

[MP3Mike]

I wish there was a way to get a question about the USB bugs into the shareholder meeting.

There isn't? Couldn't you go and ask/submit the question yourself? (Even if you had to buy one share of stock so you could attend.)