Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2016

[ev-enthusiast]

Baird reiterated their Buy rating and $338 PT:
Tesla Motors - NASDAQ TSLA - Headlines, Ratings, Earnings, Dividends and Insider Trades | MarketBeat.com

 

[Jayjs20]

Complete waste of a day, dropping 3.5 dollars over news that took place a week ago.

Hopefully, the above news will push us back up to the 230 range tomorrow.

 

[Dwdnjck]

Note: Andrea James, after analyzing Tesla for years, purchased the stock when she changed careers, and she started on the "sell side".

 

[Drivin]

[QUOTE="Zhelko Dimic, post: 1672701, member: 42500]

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.

.[/QUOTE]

Not really. People know that as long as they can raise money and get Wall Street and "analysts" excited, they can keep going.
People saw the same for Webvan, pets.com, Enron, Madoff and other big social or tech inflection points or companies that relied on financial engineering.

There aren't a lot of people listing to their Zune while riding their Segway nowadays.
"When the product was launched, the head of Segway said it "will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy". Famous venture capitalist John Doerr said that Segway sales might hit $1 billion as fast as any company in history"

 

[Papafox]

[QUOTE="Zhelko Dimic, post: 1672701, member: 42500]

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.


Not really. People know that as long as they can raise money and get Wall Street and "analysts" excited, they can keep going.
People saw the same for Webvan, pets.com, Enron, Madoff and other big social or tech inflection points or companies that relied on financial engineering.

There aren't a lot of people listing to their Zune while riding their Segway nowadays.
"When the product was launched, the head of Segway said it "will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy". Famous venture capitalist John Doerr said that Segway sales might hit $1 billion as fast as any company in history"
.

Nice try, Drivin. Every one of your examples is a company that had a serious problem, either in demand for the product or in ability to profitably execute. In terms of dollar value, the Tesla Model 3 introduction was the largest immediate backorder in history in terms of dollar value for the ordered products. So, demand isn't the problem. How about ability to execute profitably? Despite the tired "Tesla loses money on every car it sells" mantra of the shorts, Tesla is actually delivery its current products with a 20% to 30% GM and Model 3 should have a 25% GM. Battery costs are likely below $190 kwh now and heading for the game-changing $100/kwh a few short years from now. Your attempt to portray Tesla as a flash in the pan comes up amazingly short, and "short" is an amazingly appropriate word here.

Edit: Your willingness to include a known Ponzi schemer like Madorf in your comparisons with Tesla speaks volumes regarding the value of your comments.

 

[LargeHamCollider]

The shorts in this thread often rely heavily on Alberto Brandolini's bull**** asymmetry principle.

 

[vgrinshpun]

Pathetic is an understatement of biblical proportions...

 

[schonelucht]

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.

Things do change. You are free to believe Tesla is still operating a factory outputting 100k cars/ year the same way as it was when it was hand building a few hundred cars per year but that's like being member of the flat earth society.

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

Sure, and what was the quarterly net order rate last year? Look, I tried that method in Q1 when it was supposedly 45% and shockingly my prediction turned out to be completely wrong.

 

[schonelucht]

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.

Production batching is something else. I agree that still happens. But again, a VIN is assigned when the order confirms. So it is a perfect indicator of current demand. Deliveries on the other hand lag demand and does not follow perfectly indeed due to vagaries of production, and even more importantly, shipping. But in the end, every car does get built and every car does get shipped and every car does get delivered and accounted for. The lag doesn't change that much for the global picture. Tesla may be able to engineer a blowout quarter like 2015Q4 but it's a one off at best.

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.

If you read my posts on the subject you will see that I always made an exception for the X. It is still true that there are plenty of orders for the X that don't have a VIN either due to the nature of their order (5 seater) or the country they are ordering from (UK). At the same time, VIN allocation for the X is slowly stabilising. Order a US 6 or 7 seater and your VIN will be allocated the day after the order confirms.

'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.

This is a false dichotomy. Orders could be healthy while production has issues or vice versa. Anyway, regarding trust for management, when they said in April that 'production was going according to plan' while just three months later in July they had to confess that production was so messed up in the beginning of the quarter that it made them miss their guidance big time. How does that make you feel about managements ability to evaluate how things are going?

Again, I am willing to accept hard data. For example, if anyone can point inconsistenties in the VIN tracking method I am all ears and I will adapt my models accordingly. So far, nothing.

 

[maoing]

I have similar feeling, Q3 will be the first quarter to show production outspace demand with margin. It used to have too much production noise, which overshadowed demand constraint. My gestimate for Q3 delivery is 18-19K. It'll be the best quarter (beat Q4 17K). After disappointing July number (< 5K), I think we should have much better idea when August number is out.

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.

 

[maoing]

Bonaire, is it a typo? This implies the US annual demand only in 7-8K level for model S, can't be that low.

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?

 

[sundaymorning]

There is a big difference between a company not meeting its overly ambitious target vs. demand constraint. Growing 50% year after year isn't demand constraint.

On the other hand, going from producing several hundred cars per week to a couple thousand per week is called production efficiency.

 

[Papafox]

Would one of you S and X order spreadsheet trackers please provide a current link to the current S and the current X order spreadsheets? Many thanks

 

[schonelucht]

Would one of you S and X order spreadsheet trackers please provide a current link to the current S and the current X order spreadsheets? Many thanks

Here is the one for the S : Model S Order & Delivery 2016

Unfortunately for the X it was decided to create a website to gather this data, but the website frankly is not that at all suited for VIN tracking (and also misses much more entries than the S spreadsheet). Therefore I track these by hand in my private spreadsheet. Maybe it'd be good to create a public google spreadsheet specifically only for X vin tracking. I am sure I made mistakes, miss entries etc.

 

[schonelucht]

Bonaire, is it a typo? This implies the US annual demand only in 7-8K level for model S, can't be that low.

I am pretty sure he meant 140/day not 140/week.

 

[PaulRocket]

Quick side note, Tesla just posted this video about the Powerwall on their YouTube channel. I'm guessing they are serious about ramping up production in a big way:

 

[schonelucht]

I have similar feeling, Q3 will be the first quarter to show production outspace demand with margin. It used to have too much production noise, which overshadowed demand constraint. My gestimate for Q3 delivery is 18-19K. It'll be the best quarter (beat Q4 17K). After disappointing July number (< 5K), I think we should have much better idea when August number is out.

You have by far the lowest estimate that I've seen so far. I am sticking with 22k right now. That's possible with the VIN numbers we are seeing (but it does require priming everything they have like inventories etc) and would be consistent with production guidance. Finally, if it were really 18k, then Tesla must have had visibility on that number as well on the conference call and I think they'd have revised full year guidance.

 

[uselesslogin]

Again, I am willing to accept hard data. For example, if anyone can point inconsistenties in the VIN tracking method I am all ears and I will adapt my models accordingly. So far, nothing.

Well I mean wasn't Q3 2013 the famous example? The VIN rate was very high since EU orders were getting VINs but then they were not delivered until Q4 so deliveries were much lower than VINs. Then in Q4 not only did they get delivered but they emptied inventory as well so VIN counting failed again to predict a large beat.

 

[Hogfighter]

There won't be a short squeeze. There are too many investors on the sidelines waiting for the stock to climb again so they can short it. This company will be polarizing for the next few years, until (to paraphrase EM) they can't help but be GAAP profitable.

As long as TSLA is primarily a car company, it will be compared to other car companies (as incorrect as that may be).

 

[bonaire]

Bonaire, is it a typo? This implies the US annual demand only in 7-8K level for model S, can't be that low.

I am sorry - yes, big typo. 142 per day or just slightly less than 1000/wk.