TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[Ulmo]

<OT>
I've heard so too, but nobody is speaking about it. I don't think it's having any real simpact, but maybe I'm mistaken. The real "fascist" parties did not go really well, to be honest: OTOH Lega Nord (which is definetely focused on identity, anti-euro, anti-globalism) did very well (like 18%). Not sure Salvini is following Bannon, but he's dangerous enough as it is. </OT>

Because you’d rather commit suicide with the rest of Europe. At least we already have peace in the Middle East as of yesterday.

 

[Reciprocity]

TSLA cracks me up. Languish all day and then boom, its space-x rocket launch mode. In the green btw.. its been a while. Forgot what it looked like.

Edit: I think it might have something to do with the shot Elon posted of Tesla Semi's at Gigafactory. I am not so good at connecting the dots, but this seems obvious. The timing fits.

 

[Richgoogol]

Suck it short! Made $700 on that last batch so far, without factoring any shares I bought before that though

 

[Todd Burch]

Suck it short!

Shh! This is a family-oriented forum.

 

[Starno]

 

[Esme Es Mejor]

All’s well that ends well. Hopefully, Q1 ends as well as today did.

 

[EinSV]

Two more 94xx (total of four) have been reported assigned by TMC users Railhawk52 and number12 (too lazy to link but you can plug 94xx into the TMC search function to confirm).

Also on Tesla.com forum VIN 97xx and 93xx have been reported assigned. Here is the link for 97xx.VIN 97XX Already on Train | Tesla

None of the VINs over 9000 appear to have been caught by the Bloomberg tracker yet and most are not on the spreadsheet so those resources have limitations.

Another customer reported VIN 966x today (it is on the spreadsheet), so at least 7 VINs between 93xx and 97xx have been reported in the past few days.

According to the spreadsheet as of a week ago (2/28) the highest VIN assigned was 82xx. 7 days later the highest VIN I have seen reported is 97xx, an increase of 1500.

I don't think that means Tesla is producing 1500 Model 3/week but it does seem like the ramp is progressing.

 

[Waiting4M3]

..... 7 days later the highest VIN I have seen reported is 97xx, an increase of 1500.

I don't think that means Tesla is producing 1500 Model 3/week.....

Why not? The spread between max VIN and overall VIN distribution have been about the same since beginning of Feb. I don't see any evidence that max VIN doesn't represent the overall production pace with a constant delta.

 

[EinSV]

Why not?

It is just one data point -- I personally would not want to draw too strong a conclusion from it. It is encouraging that there are a bunch of other VINs in the same range but in the past the difference in highest VIN numbers did not represent production volume in part because cars can be produced out of VIN order.

The other encouraging data point is the volume of configuration invites over the previous three weeks. The main negative is the low VIN registration rate with the NHTSA. Maybe we will see a nice fat batch of VINs registered in the next few days.

I think part of the reason for the lag in deliveries recently is that Tesla has been doing what it always does and producing cars for the East Coast before the West Coast as we approach the end of the quarter. I expect we'll see a big delivery push in the next few weeks for EOQ.

Edit: you added some detail to your post while I was responding. So let me add an example to clarify.

On Jan. 31 the highest VIN reported on the chart in your post was 6655. On Feb. 5, VIN 8235 was reported. That's a difference of 1580 in five days, or 2212 per week. Which is not what they were producing. There are other examples where change in highest VIN is not a reliable indicator by itself.

But it is one piece of information that I believe is useful to factor into the equation especially since there are several other VINs in the same range being reported.

 

[Waiting4M3]

It is just one data point -- I personally would not want to draw too strong a conclusion from it. It is encouraging that there are a bunch of other VINs in the same range but in the past the difference in highest VIN numbers did not represent production volume in part because cars can be produced out of VIN order.

The other encouraging data point is the volume of configuration invites over the previous three weeks. The main negative is the low VIN registration rate with the NHTSA. Maybe we will see a nice fat batch of VINs registered in the next few days.

I think part of the reason for the lag in deliveries recently is that Tesla has been doing what it always does and producing cars for the East Coast before the West Coast as we approach the end of the quarter. I expect we'll see a big delivery push in the next few weeks for EOQ.

Even though the NHTSA VIN registration last week was only for ~1000 VINs, the range is still higher than the assigned VIN. Maybe Tesla simply got ahead of themselves in Jan when they registered 3000 VINs. I think assigned VINs is a much more accurate representation of what's in production than NHTSA registration. And of course I don't expect the max assigned VIN to represent the # of actual produced cars, but I think there is a constant delta between the max VIN and the actual production # at any time, maybe ~500-700.

Edit: the delta is basically the total number of cars in the production line + some in transit. It seemed in the past that Tesla was incrementally starting builds in batch of 1000 VINs, so I assume at any time there is a somewhat contiguous range of 1000 VINs in the production line. It seems that Tesla assign VINs after the cars came out of production and are on their way to Tesla stores. If the max VIN is truly randomly sampled from that group of 1000 VINs then it should be ~500 higher than the median, which is probably the more accurate gauge of overall produced #. I'm adding some margin to the 500 because sometimes Tesla assign cars after they've been in transit already, so the range of VINs that the max VIN is sampled from is larger than ~1000.

 

[Reciprocity]

Suck it short! Made $700 on that last batch so far, without factoring any shares I bought before that though

Same, made a $1k in 2 hours after waiting all day for signs of life.

 

[bdy0627]

Wow! I just checked SharpCharts to see where the stock ended up for the day, wondering if shorts brought it near the low for the day. I didn't recognize the candle at all and assumed I had type in the wrong stock. This is why you don't want to get hung up on trying to predict the daily stock action. It's just not possible and is often completely irrational. But I like the close for today!

 

[Todd Burch]

Wow! I just checked SharpCharts to see where the stock ended up for the day, wondering if shorts brought it near the low for the day. I didn't recognize the candle at all and assumed I had type in the wrong stock. This is why you don't want to get hung up on trying to predict the daily stock action. It's just not possible and is often completely irrational. But I like the close for today!

Semi tweet from Elon was clearly the catalyst. Stock didn’t respond until 20 mins or so after the tweet, which is why smart short term investors follow him on the Tweetergram. (I am a longie, mostly).

 

[elasalle]

Semi tweet from Elon was clearly the catalyst. Stock didn’t respond until 20 mins or so after the tweet, which is why smart short term investors follow him on the Tweetergram. (I am a longie, mostly).

I just realized that I need to follow DT too

 

[Todd Burch]

I just realized that I need to follow DT too

C'mon, let's not go overboard.

 

[HG Wells]

According to Model 3 Invites google doc, in the 8 days prior to today, after the 1 week gap in Feb, we had 32 VIN assignments, and today alone we had 22 VIN assignments. What do you all think happened that opened the flood gate?

Above is from VIN Assignment thread.

The trickle is becoming a stream and soon a flood!

 

[ph_7]

From Citi this AM:

Tesla price target lowered to $347 from $367 at Citi Citi analyst Itay Michael lowered his price target for Tesla to $347 following the company's annual filing and Q4 results. To reflect the previously announced slower Model 3 ramp and other updated inputs, the analyst lowered his 2018-2020 earnings per share estimates to ($8.32), $4.89 and $12.30 from ($1.22), $5.07 and $14.21. Michael models a $1B free cash flow burn this year "aided to some extent by working capital as the Model 3 ramps." He believes Tesla shares "could stay fairly range bound" until the April production update. The analyst keeps a Neutral rating on the stock.

 

[elasalle]

Above is from VIN Assignment thread.

The trickle is becoming a stream and soon a flood!

Hope is more than just the end of quarter Cresendo.

 

[Ulmo]

So much energy being used to push Tesla deeper into guarding themselves and keeping secrets. A little Zen right now would go a long way; to get the treat you must leave the treat. Animals can be taught that in under a minute. Humans; not so much.

I see the same, except the last part I don’t understand: why can’t they tell us some true stories of how things proceed? How much do they have to lose? So what if we interpret it? Obviously, if we’re not privy to the downsides, I could see why they’d have reasons that we don’t know. That’s not saying either side is right.

 

[Ulmo]

TSLA cracks me up. Languish all day and then boom, its space-x rocket launch mode. In the green btw.. its been a while. Forgot what it looked like.

Edit: I think it might have something to do with the shot Elon posted of Tesla Semi's at Gigafactory. I am not so good at connecting the dots, but this seems obvious. The timing fits.

In others words, “Elon tweeted.” I can’t wait to see his Twitter story arc after he gets his new share package. More bad art + occasional announcements & chitter chatter, or will he do something different/more/less?