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General Discussion: 2018 Investor Roundtable

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To be fair, the German price of 28 k$ based on the tear down of the 49 (54) k$ variant assumes weekly M3 deliveries at 10k.

Thats correct but allow me to add that the material costs of $18 remain the same and the $10k production costs are partly fixed costs and variable costs. The variable part is mainly labour which is as we all know a smaller part of the overall costs at Tesla GF as well as Fremont. Lets still assume $5k are driven by production units (variable) than the remaining $23k will stay the same unrelated to the produced units.

So, if we do a wild guess and say variable production costs are 100% higher at 5k/w we only would add $5k to the $28k so we are at $33k per unit. Comparing that to the ASP they still look pretty good.

A lot of assumptions here but I want to illustrate that the "beta" is not as big as people may believe and profitability per car unit is achieved at a lower level than some may anticipate.
 
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Is that a solid data point, or only an assumed one based on 5k in Q3 and profit in Q3?

If the German tear down price of 28k is correct, and Tesla is selling at 49k, even with double the target 2k/car depreciation and 4k of labor per vehicle, that is 13k gross profit. With the typical 600M quarterly loss, they need 46k cars or 4k/wk to break even.

With the reduction in contractors and employee count along with R&D expense cut backs, the numbers should be even better.

The $28k teardown included was $18k for material and $10k for production costs.

The $10k production costs seems like it should already include labor?

By guidance, are you referring to the single project that is 1GWh? That would be on top of all the other PW PP SR installs...
Tesla teases a potential giant new record-breaking 1 GWh energy storage project to be announced soon
Or guidance of 1GWh in booked projects before this additional project?

At the shareholder’s meeting Elon stated that they have shipped one gigawatt hour of energy products. He said they should ship that amount again within the next 12 months. And then every year thereafter, they should ship as many in that year as they have in their entire history (which basically means doubling every year).

I do seem to recall JB saying something like 3x per year was possible (and it would still take decades to transition the world).
 
The $28k teardown included was $18k for material and $10k for production costs.

The $10k production costs seems like it should already include labor?

Makes sense to me! (In my (lame) defense, it's Monday and I just had my coffee))....

At the shareholder’s meeting Elon stated that they have shipped one gigawatt hour of energy products. He said they should ship that amount again within the next 12 months. And then every year thereafter, they should ship as many in that year as they have in their entire history (which basically means doubling every year).

I do seem to recall JB saying something like 3x per year was possible (and it would still take decades to transition the world).

Thanks for the background. So with the 1GWh mystery project, they could be at 2GWh for the year?
 
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Your Powerwall installation is on Friday, July 27, 2018.
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Your installation is officially on the books. Our technicians will install your Powerwall on Friday, July 27, 2018./QUOTE]

WOW, that is GOOD news! I didn't think they were doing Florida installations yet. I am just south of you, and I have 2 Powerwalls on order. Florida is a HUGE opportunity for Tesla Energy. Many of my neighbors have whole-house generators for the hurricane related outages, and I have an Outback solar backup that I cobbled together about 10 years ago, which the Powerwalls will replace.
 
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Is that a solid data point, or only an assumed one based on 5k in Q3 and profit in Q3?

If the German tear down price of 28k is correct, and Tesla is selling at 49k, even with double the target 2k/car depreciation and 4k of labor per vehicle, that is 13k gross profit. With the typical 600M quarterly loss, they need 46k cars or 4k/wk to break even.

With the reduction in contractors and employee count along with R&D expense cut backs, the numbers should be even better.

The thread below, especially post 216 on page 11 (also posts 205 and 284 on pages 11 and 15), suggests Tesla could generate a significant GAAP profit and large amounts of cash with 50,000 Model 3 delivered in Q3. This averages out to 3846 deliveries/week (production rate would need to be somewhat higher due to downtime, vehicles in transit, showroom vehicles, etc.).

Especially with the recent cost cutting and potential to sell significant numbers of P models in Q3 and Q4, I don't think there is any magic to 5K/week in terms of profitability.

q2-q4 2018 financial projections
 
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I think this was the misconception that drove the stock up to $370s. I was under the same impression until I started digging around, the display screen Elon pointed to clearly stated “demonstrated 500 on all systems.” If anyone can find an actual 3,500/week number please help as I cannot find it myself. The next 5-7 days will be a nail bitter for both sides. I hope they pull it off as we still have time, but hope has gotten burnt too often, this time I’m playing it with caution.
Optimistically I'm looking at the 500/day rate not as a way for Elon to fudge a 3500/wk to outside investors, but as a daily metric to employees. Remember this is a leaked internal email. I suspect things at Tesla are improving and being measured on a daily basis, not weekly, so they're used to talk in terms of daily rate instead of weekly internally at Tesla.

Similarly at the end of Q1, their internal emails referred to crossing the 300/day threshold, and we later learned that they did indeed hit 300*7=2000/wk at the end of March and sustained into April.

But I can certainly understand why one would want to also prepare a pessimistic reading of Elon's message, and agree that it's good to be cautious here.
 
Optimistically I'm looking at the 500/day rate not as a way for Elon to fudge a 3500/wk to outside investors, but as a daily metric to employees.

I totally agree. MGT is supposed to keep employees in the loop with a direct line of sight to the end consumer regardless of department. They're lining up the subsystems to all be capable of 5k/wk by July 1. They won't fully ramp the whole line to avoid overstocking inventory while they delay US deliveries to stay under 200k in Q2. If they did it would mean expensing the COGS and transport + storage costs without the revenues = Bigger losses.
 
Another one who calls Elon not telling the truth:

Lamborghini Chief Technical Officer Maurizio Reggiani made the comment during the Automotive News Europe Congress earlier this month when asked about the automaker coming up with an all-electric vehicle:

He said:

Our target is to deliver a super sports car, and these specifications don’t exist with a battery package in terms of energy and power,

Maurizio and Daimler trucks share both a huge thread of their business model once that what they call "can't be true" turns out to be reality...

Lamborghini thinks Tesla is bluffing with the Roadster, doesn’t see battery tech enabling all-electric supercars
 
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