General Discussion: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[Curt Renz]

She’s smart enough not to tweet this specific article since she knows she will get destroyed with twitter responses. Better to just put on CNBC with inability to post comments. She knows what’s she doing. Professional hit man.

IMO, Dana is still upset with EM. She use to have a decent relationship with him for the first part of her tenure at The San Jose Mercury but it deteriorated after a 'snub'....I can not recall the incident. It became worse when she went to Bloomberg where there is an obvious agenda and she is financially rewarded more for negative articles vs positive ones.

San Francisco Bay Area based Kolodny and Hull do indeed appear to behave as though they are conducting personal vendettas against Elon and Tesla. Normally producers/editors would restrain them, but keep in mind that Tesla does not advertise and advertising is the lifeblood of the media. So second thoughts would not be given to Tesla articles with negative biases or slants. In fact they would benefit Tesla competitors that are clients of the media. Meanwhile, the oil industrialist Koch brothers are giving millions to publications that deride electric cars and alternative energy in general. Finally, the names Tesla and Musk reliably garner internet clicks.

This bashing by certain members of the media will likely continue until Tesla is producing cars at a rapid pace with high margins and profits begin to soar. Then when production capability finally starts to exceed demand, Tesla advertisements may shut up the negative reporting.

 

[AZRI11]

The FUD part is that he’s referred to as a “key”, and that it’s a story at all. It foments fear that Tesla is imploding.

He’s so key that I’ve been following Tesla news just about daily since 2009 and I’ve never heard of him.

The title should read “Breaking News...Some guy we’ve never heard of in a position that isn’t that important is leaving a company of over 30,000 people. But that company is Tesla. Hence Breaking News.”

it's nearly impossible to believe that Dana is not being intellectually dishonest with that comment. she's just too intelligent to not have understood Elon's tweet.

Dana thinks there is some kind of Enron environment at tesla. Sniffing for a book deal if it all collapses. In other words prejudiced.

 

[Garlan Garner]

Why should they have any need to park 4k cars? Their supply chain would be very poorly managed if the have to.

True. Maybe I should have stated it in another way.

They are making 133 cars today. Do they drive those cars from the garage door of the Fremont factory directly to train cars....or what?

What's your idea about what they are doing?

 

[TradingInvest]

My parents taught me to always assume good intention, but what I leaned is that the business world is filled with bad intentions.

When Model 3 production ramp goes smooth and Q3 turns positive, Dana probably will either have no reaction, or negative reaction. Her recent articles are not for clicks, not for future books. There is a financial reason behind it. That's my view.

"Clickbait" is a word invented to protect shady journalism. These days most ads money goes to Google and Facebook. Clicks are not as valuable as they used to be for other media, they don't get much ads money regardless of the amount of clicks. Naturally many media switched to "Pay to publish" model. Basically, they are paid to write/publish negative reports about Tesla. Who have the interest to pay them to write negatively? I guess I don't need to explain this.

80% of US population support clean energy. If media publish positive articles about Tesla, they would get even more clicks. But most media only go negative. Go figure.

 

[AZRI11]

My parents taught me to always assume good intention, but what I leaned is that the business world is filled with bad intentions.

When Model 3 production ramp goes smooth and Q3 turns positive, Dana probably will either have no reaction, or negative reaction. Her recent articles are not for clicks, not for future books. There is a financial reason behind it. That's my view.

"Clickbait" is a word invented to protect shady journalism. These days most ads money goes to Google and Facebook. Clicks are not as valuable as they used to be for other media, they don't get much ads money regardless of the amount of clicks. Naturally many media switched to "Pay to publish" model. Basically, they are paid to write/publish negative reports about Tesla. Who have the interest to pay them to write negatively? I guess I don't need to explain this.

80% of US population support clean energy. If media publish positive articles about Tesla, they would get even more clicks. But most media only go negative. Go figure.

We should all chip in to have a positive article written on model 3. It would go like this..... model 3 outsells our advertiser alpha romero by 6 to 1.

 

[The Blue Owl]

Dana thinks there is some kind of Enron environment at tesla.

Anybody who believes Musk is pulling an Enron is, to put it mildly, really not that bright.

It's clear as day that Musk is not motivated by money. If he were, he could have easily called it a day after PayPal. I mean, this is a guy who, in the middle of a financial disaster threatening the world economic system, sank his last dollar in an electric car company on the brink of extinction to the point that he had to borrow money from friends to make rent. People who never saw 9 figures under their name on a bank statement cannot comprehend the enormity of the risk he took. It's one thing to risk your meagre possessions for a chance to get rich in a booming market, and something else entirely to already be loaded and risk it all during generalized financial collapse, only to save a company because you think it's doing something important.

Nor is he not motivated by glory. Even if you think he's got a saviour complex, he can only fulfill that yearning by putting people on Mars. To think he would put that at risk, as well as every other venture he's started, not to mention his reputation and even freedom, in order to scam investors is, for lack of a more fitting term... stupid.

The one possibility left is that he's misinformed, or deluded, about Tesla's current situation. If anyone thinks a CEO with Musk's intelligence and drive, who sleeps on the factory floor, doesn't know or understand what's going on, they are welcome to take suitable positions in the market. Bloomberg and the WSJ would have you believe this is another GTAT, or Enron, or Theranos, or Valeant. In the immortal words of David Mamet, investors who follow their lead are going to be shining my shoes.

 

[kelly]

Me too! VIN 186XX
4 weeks to the day since ordering/configuring.

Congratulations! You beat my VIN assignment by 2 weeks (6 weeks to the day for me). Of course that was back in the day of VIN 14928.

 

[AZRI11]

Anybody who believes Musk is pulling an Enron is, to put it mildly, really not that bright.

It's clear as day that Musk is not motivated by money. If he were, he could have easily called it a day after PayPal. I mean, this is a guy who, in the middle of a financial disaster threatening the world economic system, sank his last dollar in an electric car company on the brink of collapse to the point that he had to borrow money from friends to make rent. People who never saw 9 figures under their name on a bank statement cannot comprehend the enormity of the risk he took. It's one think to risk your meagre possessions for a chance to get rich in a booming market, and something else entirely to already be loaded and risk it all during generalized financial collapse, only to save a company because you think it's doing something important.

Nor is he not motivated by glory. Even if you think he's got a saviour complex, he can only fulfill that yearning by putting people on Mars. To think he would put that at risk, as well as every other venture he's started, not to mention his reputation and even freedom, in order to scam investors is, for lack of a more fitting term... stupid.

The one possibility left is that he's misinformed, or deluded, about Tesla's current situation. If anyone thinks a CEO with Musk's intelligence and drive, who sleeps on the factory floor, doesn't know or understand what's going on, they are welcome to take suitable positions in the market. The WSJ would have you believe this is another GTAT, or Enron, or Theranos, or Valeant. In the immortal words of Alec Baldwin, investors who follow their lead will be shining my shoes.

Can't wait for the spin after 5k run rate & China factory I know cash burn will still be a headline but big financial institutions can't fall for that. The drumbeat will be the competition is coming. Apple has plenty of competition and more loyalty than anyone. Tesla will beat them all in the loyalty category.

 

[dc_h]

I can already hear the bears screaming about more cash-burn!

They have a lot of their cash overseas, so capex in China could be paid partially out of that withou repatriation.

 

[bdy0627]

Anybody who believes Musk is pulling an Enron is, to put it mildly, really not that bright.

It's clear as day that Musk is not motivated by money. If he were, he could have easily called it a day after PayPal. I mean, this is a guy who, in the middle of a financial disaster threatening the world economic system, sank his last dollar in an electric car company on the brink of extinction to the point that he had to borrow money from friends to make rent. People who never saw 9 figures under their name on a bank statement cannot comprehend the enormity of the risk he took. It's one thing to risk your meagre possessions for a chance to get rich in a booming market, and something else entirely to already be loaded and risk it all during generalized financial collapse, only to save a company because you think it's doing something important.

Nor is he not motivated by glory. Even if you think he's got a saviour complex, he can only fulfill that yearning by putting people on Mars. To think he would put that at risk, as well as every other venture he's started, not to mention his reputation and even freedom, in order to scam investors is, for lack of a more fitting term... stupid.

The one possibility left is that he's misinformed, or deluded, about Tesla's current situation. If anyone thinks a CEO with Musk's intelligence and drive, who sleeps on the factory floor, doesn't know or understand what's going on, they are welcome to take suitable positions in the market. Bloomberg and the WSJ would have you believe this is another GTAT, or Enron, or Theranos, or Valeant. In the immortal words of David Mamet, investors who follow their lead are going to be shining my shoes.

This was a great post! Very well said.

 

[bambam4171]

San Francisco Bay Area based Kolodny and Hull do indeed appear to behave as though they are conducting personal vendettas against Elon and Tesla. Normally producers/editors would restrain them, but keep in mind that Tesla does not advertise and advertising is the lifeblood of the media. So second thoughts would not be given to Tesla articles with negative biases or slants. In fact they would benefit Tesla competitors that are clients of the media. Meanwhile, the oil industrialist Koch brothers are giving millions to publications that deride electric cars and alternative energy in general. Finally, the names Tesla and Musk reliably garner internet clicks.

I just wonder: is there no ethics code journalists need to adhere to? So if someone found some of them getting money for putting a spin on things, could they face consequences?

 

[Off Shore]

I just wonder: is there no ethics code journalists need to adhere to? So if someone found some of them getting money for putting a spin on things, could they face consequences?

Nope. Caveat lector.

 

[bambam4171]

Kind of sad, isn't it? A bit like politicians getting paid big buck to "help with legislation issues".

 

[avoigt]

Good read. We are not alone...

Andrea James (@AndreaSJames) on Twitter

 

[WarpedOne]

This bashing by certain members of the media will likely continue until Tesla is producing cars at a rapid pace with high margins and profits begin to soar. Then when production capability finally starts to exceed demand, Tesla advertisements may shut up the negative reporting.

This bashing by certain members of the media will likely continue. Full stop, no until.
When profits begin to soar the bashing will only get more nasty. Yes, that is still possible.
Production capability will not ever exceed demand, Tesla will stop building it sooner - overcapacity is capital badly spent.
If demand drops, so will production capacity, workers and robots will go elsewhere, producing things that are still in higher demand than production.

Advertising is there because that's how old business is run. Not because some overcapacity.
Elon will not do traditional advertising, he'd rather shoot a car into space...

 

[TradingInvest]

If Tesla cares about the stock price, it can take some shares off the US market and list them in Shanghai market. That would instantly cause the stock to double.

 

[WarpedOne]

@TradingInvest
Can you shed more light on this 'stock transfer'? What it really means and why would it result in doubling of SP?
I have no clue.

 

[schonelucht]

South Australian battery was $72.5M for 100 MW/129MWh. Mitshibushi and Eneco finished up a 48MW/66MWh battery in Germany for 30M Euro’s. Very comparable costs to the buyers despite differing cell manufacturers (Samsung vs LG)

Link (in Dutch) Reuzenbatterij brengt balans op een hoogspanningsnet in transitie - Cobouw.nl

Belgian media report that the 18MW battery in Ter Hills represents an investment of 11M EUR. The battery plant is owned by an investment vehicle of the Flemish government. Small interesting note : Tesla did not allow any of the other partners to communicate about the site untill it had been operational for a full month. I wish we'd have more of that attitude regarding autonomous drive (do first, prove it out, then communicate). In this case it went even further : newspares note that none of the Tesla staff was allowed to communicate on the record on the press event. Evan Rice (Tesla Energy director) said "It's bizarre but that is our policy".

 

[gora321]

Belgian media report that the 18MW battery in Ter Hills represents an investment of 11M EUR. The battery plant is owned by an investment vehicle of the Flemish government. Small interesting note : Tesla did not allow any of the other partners to communicate about the site untill it had been operational for a full month. I wish we'd have more of that attitude regarding autonomous drive (do first, prove it out, then communicate). In this case it went even further : newspares note that none of the Tesla staff was allowed to communicate on the record on the press event. Evan Rice (Tesla Energy director) said "It's bizarre but that is our policy".

If someone could die, should be communicated asap. If you are testing, proving...you need to be sure and can be used in right moment.

 

[justvisiting]

It seems as even Adam Jonas is turning into a FUDster and Hater..