Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2016

[ev-enthusiast]

I thought enough people got burned counting VINs during roadster times and learned their lesson. Well, some things never change. I want to add that everybody knows that any deduction from VIN counting nowadays is less valid compared to the roadster times.

What about reading Q2ER with quarterly net order increase YoY with 68%? That number is not that old and outdated?

 

[tlo]

For those interested in the shorts angle, I have been following this twitter account for insight into the shorts thinking - Jeff (@JeffCNYC) | Twitter

Narrative goes:
1. SCTY sold bonds to SpaceX because no one else wanted them
2. SCTY is going bankrupt
3. Tesla raises money from secondary offering
4. Tesla makes offer to acquire SCTY with plans to use secondary money to save SCTY from bankruptcy
5. Tesla is doing #4 even though SCTY is garbage in order to save Elon's image and also SpaceX bonds, so that SpaceX won't lose NASA contracts
6. All this is securities fraud and totally insane, but Tesla stock won't budge because it's a cult
7. We (the shorts) are so smart for figuring this all out and we will win in the end because Tesla is losing more money the more they sell

Fascinating thing is as Andrea James said, these TSLA shorts are very intelligent people. They are dissecting TSLA and SCTY 10Q's better than most people here.

 

[esk8mw]

For the Model S there is no uneven regional counting nor allocation. Order confirmed = VIN assigned with the exception of those who order for a postponed delivery but those orders are far en few between. Bursting happens and we are getting better at picking them out. Despite that, VIN tracking provides a useful upper bound. It is no coincidence that @bonaire has a pretty good track record in estimating deliveries.

The problem is that there aren't hard and fast rules. If you read the S thread, many are reporting waiting 40+ days to go into production after getting the VIN. Does that mean orders exceed production or are there production problems? Did batching change a lot? Depends on your TSLA sentiment.

Check out the X thread. Many reporting waiting weeks to get a VIN after confirming order. Again - orders exceeding production or production problems? No way to know for sure. One thing we do know - VINs do not always immediately follow order confirmation, making VIN counting a less certain indicator of demand.

Given all the talk about production increases, mfg efficiency and the like, I'm inclined to believe that orders are healthy rather than there being additional production problems. Of course, if you don't trust mgmt then nothing they can say will sway you.

 

[luca]

For those interested in the shorts angle, I have been following this twitter account for insight into the shorts thinking - Jeff (@JeffCNYC) | Twitter

Narrative goes:
1. SCTY sold bonds to SpaceX because no one else wanted them
2. SCTY is going bankrupt
3. Tesla raises money from secondary offering
4. Tesla makes offer to acquire SCTY with plans to use secondary money to save SCTY from bankruptcy
5. Tesla is doing #4 even though SCTY is garbage in order to save Elon's image and also SpaceX bonds, so that SpaceX won't lose NASA contracts
6. All this is securities fraud and totally insane, but Tesla stock won't budge because it's a cult
7. We (the shorts) are so smart for figuring this all out and we will win in the end because Tesla is losing more money the more they sell

Fascinating thing is as Andrea James said, these TSLA shorts are very intelligent people. They are dissecting TSLA and SCTY 10Q's better than most people here.

5. Tesla is doing #4 even though SCTY is garbage in order to save Elon's image and also SpaceX bonds, so that SpaceX won't lose NASA contracts???????


are you drunk?

 

[winfield100]

There is concern of water seepage into crevices. Wiring of modules is elevated and air-space oriented. GAF lifetime shingles alone are a $10,000-15,000 roofing solution and made well. However, add in wiring, technology and try to make them 30-40 year shingles in addition and it is very hard.

A metal roof with metal-roof attachment solar pv and you have a 30+ roof off the bat. What they need to do is find ways to make metal roofs look less like metal roofs for residential communities. And perhaps use a knurled surface pattern on glass rather than flat glass as the solar surface so it looks rougher and harder to spot. Then it may catch-on as a roofing "first choice". In New Orleans, there are a lot of solar roofs out there and they look pretty bad, not even close to the typical color of roofs and were influenced by the solar rebate program so many have shading issues, poor placement, etc. Same thing happened in Australia.

depends on your understanding of what a roof does and is and what beauty is or isn't. I see it as a membrane that keeps the outside "out", along with insulating, perhaps allowing light or air, etc. beauty is as beauty is. It could be a monolithic membrane like Dr Richard Wool at UDel in delaware, usa has where he grows a monolithic structure, using a huge bag and bio based soy and air, or BIPV (built in PV) where the roof powers the house, I see the beauty as a freedom in both an existential and real sense. Around Washington DC area I see some houses with PV on 3-4 sides of roofs, almost monolithic structures is very high end neighborhoods. The are extremely gorgeous the next time we get a "Snowmageddon" or "Snowpocalypse" where power is out for a week or so. Beauty is lights and heat and refrig and radio and stuff. A complete system perhaps integrated into a VPP could do that and provide robustness.
i hope this is not too off topic, but its a reason i invest in RE, and tsla and scty and stuff

 

[3Victoria]

Those shorts are way more crazy than us 'cultish' longs Waste of time reading them -- they never say anything that appears to be well thought out. If Tesla is just a big hoax, how did they come up with an award winning car - just dumb luck? And SpaceX just faked the rocket launches to suck us in. Ya right.

 

[RobStark]

Fascinating thing is as Andrea James said, these TSLA shorts are very intelligent people. They are dissecting TSLA and SCTY 10Q's better than most people here.

10Q's are short porn.

No wonder they pour over them again and again.

 

[dakh]

Not if just the biggest five institutional holders, as a minimum, need to recall more than 8 times more shares sold short than what was covered in the last 2 weeks (22.2-2.362 / 2.362 = 8.4) AND the string of bad news comes to an end, OR replaced by good news for a change...

Actually, if anything, technical squeeze seems more and more likely, as pace of recalls, or short sellers bailing out on their own in anticipation of the recalls, intensifies as the merger vote date drawing closer.

The fact is there was substantial short covering with no share price increase. That's what we now know. Because data is more than a week stale, there's a chance covering continued and we don't have any price moves still. The spring is less loaded now. From what I can tell there's at least 2 more months to go. So it will all depend on how much short interest will remain un-recalled by record date and how the market sees Tesla during that time frame. The reason I said squeeze is less likely is I view the latest data as "shorts successfully unwinding the spring with no SP move". Again no comment on what will happen next, I sure hope you're right but I wouldn't bet on that.

 

[anticitizen13.7]

Fascinating thing is as Andrea James said, these TSLA shorts are very intelligent people. They are dissecting TSLA and SCTY 10Q's better than most people here.

This should come as no surprise at all:

http://www.alternet.org/story/15425...ted_conservatives_deny_science_--_and_reality

Yale researcher Dan Kahan and his colleagues set out to study the relationship between political views, scientific knowledge or reasoning abilities, and opinions on contested scientific issues like global warming. In their study, more than 1,500 randomly selected Americans were asked about their political worldviews and their opinions about how dangerous global warming and nuclear power are. But that’s not all: They were also asked standard questions to determine their degree of scientific literacy (e.g, “Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria—true or false?”) as well as their numeracy or capacity for mathematical reasoning (e.g., “If Person A’s chance of getting a disease is 1 in 100 in 10 years, and person B’s risk is double that of A, what is B’s risk?”).

The result was stunning and alarming. The standard view that knowing more science, or being better at mathematical reasoning, ought to make you more accepting of mainstream climate science simply crashed and burned.

Instead, here was the result. If you were already part of a cultural group predisposed to distrust climate science—e.g., a political conservative or “hierarchical-individualist”—then more science knowledge and more skill in mathematical reasoning tended to make you even more dismissive

The situation with regards to TSLA is similar. Camp A believes that Tesla will emerge victorious in the future. Camp B believes that Tesla will be a failure.

Many of the people in Camp B are intelligent, ambitious people with advanced degrees in business oriented subjects and years of experience on Wall Street. By the numbers, Tesla genuinely looks terrible to them. Everything they've learned in school and observed in the markets for the past few decades tells them that this company should be dead as a doornail yesterday. What these guys generally don't understand is the automobile industry and technological inflection points.

If Tesla succeeds in changing mainstream perceptions of electric cars and renewable energy, it's game over for the shorts. A lot of this will be driven by the emotions of consumers -- making electric cars and solar something desirable. This isn't something that the numbers in a 10-Q or quarterly financial statement can really convey.

 

[madodel]

Here goes dude from CLSA on CNBC claiming Tesla is marketing an "autonomous" car.
No bother to mention driver wasn't paying attention and knew to hold the wheel but didn't. And really? A friggin fender bender in China makes international news?

and.... Break to,the "lousy" track record and M3 will be the same as MX....

gotta smush that afternoon momentum eh?

He is confused by the Mercedes Drive Pilot "Self Driving car" advertising I guess. ;-)

 

[bonaire]

Back on the demand thing... this is a quote from the Q2 Tesla letter:



New vehicle orders rose 67% from a year ago. The problem is, we don't have new vehicle orders from a year ago. We know they delivered 11,532 vehicles in Q2, 11,603 vehicles in Q3, and 17,478 in Q4. Smoothing out that data, we're looking at 13,500 or so order level last year. So 67% increase on that number is 22,500 or so. A more normal finished goods inventory level is about $500 million dollars at these production levels, so that's about $200 million in extra overhang. That's an extra 2,000 vehicles, or a total of 24,500 or so.

As for VIN counting, you might think it works and then it doesn't. One of the big problems is uneven regional counting and allocation, not to mention an occasionally arbitrary bursty rate of allocation. Using it for intra-quarter counting is fraught with problems.

New Vehicle orders are: reservations that have confirmed. It also includes inventory order "confirmations" that are for cars to be built for inventory. A new vehicle order is not (NOT) just from a named customer sitting at home clicking on the internet.

Get Telsa to make an official statement on what "Net new orders" are - we just don't know because they make everything quite hazy and also they do not offer good annual "comps" between one number one year and a different number the next year.

I have a thread going called "Net new orders". Let's get Tesla to offer an official explanation of what the heck it includes.

67% net new order increase is explained (by me, to the best of my math skills) in that thread. Talk it up and prove me wrong there.

45% "new new orders" for MS in Q1. Included hundreds of classic *and* facelift Model S confirmed store orders to be built during Q2 destined for inventory layout.

 

[tlo]

Those shorts are way more crazy than us 'cultish' longs Waste of time reading them -- they never say anything that appears to be well thought out.

Well, actually, some of the shorts say things that are pretty well thought out and gives the appearance of being very intelligent. I read them mostly for entertainment value.

And since TSLA is so heavily shorted, there is value in reading their playbook because the shorts do have influence over the stock price. Based on my understanding, some shorts covered recently because they see that TSLA has support at current prices and more importantly, their TSLA short trade is dependent on Tesla's access to capital markets -- they think Tesla will continually need to set ambitious future goals in order to raise capital and stay afloat, and never be able to make money -- so for the time being they are not making the trade, but their opinions on Tesla have not changed.

If Tesla is just a big hoax, how did they come up with an award winning car - just dumb luck? And SpaceX just faked the rocket launches to suck us in. Ya right.

From their point of view, they are not denying the engineering feats or the fact that the electric car is the future. They just think TSLA is way overvalued and will never make money as a company -- the hoax is Elon knows this but is lying about it to continue getting investor money, and in the meantime making himself a billionaire.

 

[davecolene0606]

10Q's are short porn.

No wonder they pour over them again and again.

Yeh, cuz have no concept of the plot, just in it for the money shot

 

[pGo]

For those who don't believe in VIN theory, what is your projection for Q3 deliveries.

If you assume Q3 at a flat 2000/week (Q2 exit at 2000/week based on the Q2 report), and 5000 cars in transit:
(2000 x 12) + 5000 = 29000 total cars available to be delivered. Assume 5000 cars in transit again, does anyone expect Tesla to deliver 24000 cars this quarter?

My numbers suggest Tesla delivers max 21000 cars (based on current VIN assignments). Even if they raise VIN assignments, they only have about 3-4 weeks to produce and deliver those cars for Q3.

 

[tlo]

This Jeff wrote on Aug 3:

If I back out the M3 number, Customer deposits declined by over 20%. But deliveries are going to increase by 65% in the second half.​

If we agree customer deposit is like the queue length in a grocery store (deposit=customers entered the queue waiting to be served), then his logic is: "The queue length is shorter, that must mean there are less customers buying groceries". Now imagine in Q1 the queue was super long because there's only one cashier serving 1 customer per minute and two customers join the queue per minute so the queue length grows by 1 per minute, now in Q2 and Q3 TSLA has two cashiers and they are serving 4 customers per minute, in this case we could have 3 customers enter the queue per minute (3x order volume) and the queue length would still go down, by 1 per minute. Customer deposit alone is not a good predictor of sales velocity.

See here why I don't think this Jeff is very intelligent.

Actually, he is pointing out that from Tesla's ER, his math shows that if he subtracted M3 deposits from Q2 (since M3 was unveiled March 31), then customer deposits declined. However, the CTO said new customer orders increased by 65%. So he thinks it doesn't add up and so Tesla is hiding some BS somewhere.

But... I didn't mean for us to dig into what those shorts are saying.. I just shared that as a "for those interested" thing.

 

[drinkerofkoolaid]

Thanks for your quick response.
Where can I find the information that Tesla is publishing?
Personally I think that Tesla could very well coexist with other car companies, be it traditional car companies or new ones currently working on EVs.
It just looks like the traditional car industry is still ignoring this disruption.

Here are a few.
This could be the world's first "Tesla town" suburb: Powerwall, Tesla charging, and solar

Tesla Energy Powerwall Perfect Solution for Solar Sustainable Home Builder, Mesocore

Smart technology | Vector Limited

Tesla

 

[3Victoria]

@tlo --- Yes, all good arguments ... but the usual tweeting-suspects do not seem to be in that camp. I am always amazed how the same set of facts can be viewed in completely opposite ways. We will only ultimately know years from now when we can look back eruditely and muse at our wisdom (having conveniently forgotten any flaws in our present theories ;-) ).

 

[bonaire]

Actually, he is pointing out that from Tesla's ER, his math shows that if he subtracted M3 deposits from Q2 (since M3 was unveiled March 31), then customer deposits declined. However, the CTO said new customer orders increased by 65%. So he thinks it doesn't add up and so Tesla is hiding some BS somewhere.

But... I didn't mean for us to dig into what those shorts are saying.. I just shared that as a "for those interested" thing.

It is because an "order" is a confirmed reservation. MX reservations have been confirming and getting Vin #s throughout Q2. They count as net-new-orders (not "new customers"). More inventory orders too (was 209 inventory MX up for sale yesterday) - and lots of facelift MS coming online with confirm/vin dates during Q2.

Be careful of what words you hear and what it could mean. When they say "new customers" they are supposed to say "net new orders". And there is no way for us to verify anything from the outside.

Wouldn't it be nice for all if all the Tesla "orders" were $1k each, non-refundable and simple? And if an inventory car were not counted in "net new orders"? But simply put - an inventory car is a net new order, for the factory to produce a car, and for it to probably be sold within 3-6 months at a store location. So, they have reason to continue to produce cars at a set rate even if the reservation levels by named customers starts to slow down. What is extremely interesting is that Model S vin # issuances have been almost identically 140-142 per week for three months now. Flat-line. Yet there is not faster or slower throughput on the named customers talking about their orders here on TMC. I just saw someone in Georgia get a car in 32 days from confirmation. Isn't that by train?

 

[dakh]

Actually, he is pointing out that from Tesla's ER, his math shows that if he subtracted M3 deposits from Q2 (since M3 was unveiled March 31), then customer deposits declined. However, the CTO said new customer orders increased by 65%. So he thinks it doesn't add up and so Tesla is hiding some BS somewhere.

But... I didn't mean for us to dig into what those shorts are saying.. I just shared that as a "for those interested" thing.

Just means he's got a short attention span. There are model X deposits that are much larger, that convert to purchases. AFAIR it was discussed in ER.

 

[Drax7]

If analyzing the numbers where the path to success in investing, accountants would be billionaires .
Most shorts are not so intelligent, and certainly most Are incapable of changing
The oil in their cars.