sundaymorning
Active Member
With Elon being on the team today I'm curious how shorts will spin this? Hmmmm, well, they can always resort to the old "demand constraint" BS. Shorts should really have Maoing on speed dial for this...
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sundaymorning
Active Member
sundaymorning
Active Member
"Tesla is selling 50,000 cars."
Ahem it's 80,000 now... and at $100k a pop, on 30% margins it's equivalent to GM selling 650,000 cars on 10% matgin.
SMH these "analysts".
here's a short's take...
what you currently have from tesla in relation to level 4/5 automation are a number of promises... not successes... and now you are watching the most capable companies roll back investments and getting shut down... these are not examples of companies that can't compete with Tesla... instead this is real time data emphasizing my (and others) negative sentiment towards the stock pumping statements being made by many companies suggesting that they're going to "really soon" start replacing everything we've known about personal transport for the last century with robot cars... and Tesla has now cornered itself by marketing the M3 to be the solution to all of this.
I commend all of these companies for trying... but this &$*# is HARD!!!... and many will fail at trying... but while Apple, Google and Uber fail... their core business is not dented a bit... but Tesla on the other hand is propped up on promises based on completely incredible challenges like this, massive manufacturing scaling, disrupting energy sector, etc.
you might see your list as competitors falling off... while I see it as examples of the ridiculous challenges Tesla has risked it's entire company and shareholders with.
why didn't they just make the M3... and leave this kind of stuff as extra credit?
Actually, it is currently selling cars at the rate of 100K/year.
Dont lump uber in, until they have autonomous cars they lose money on a daily basis.
To your credit, youve gone from being a potential mark spiegel/montana skeptic cover name to being more eloquent and descriptive in your skepticism.
I think what the rest of us have felt for a long time is Tesla is a company that doesn't value salesmanship or marketing, but rather spends all that money on R+D and moves with an ultimate purpose that i dont think even Elon has a complete vision of yet. But every day they company's goal seems to be "how can we make it better and improve the way we make it". There are zero companies in the world that deal with physical products and think this way (other than spacex). Tech companies always do this. Google constantly refines search. Facebook for better or worse is always rolling out new features.
It hasn't just been a blind faith in the idea that 'Elon' is a god amoungst men. Its that he is taking a mentality from a sector that constantly improves itself with intangible and fascinating features and taken it to one that is over a century old and said "well, we made money on this, lets make more money on the next iteration rather than spend money trying to sell the old thing we made". Its that forward thinking mentality where sales people are not the lifeblood of the company but rather the engineers are that is what makes tesla what it is. Elon is not personally designing and coding these things.
Elon is a leader who replaces the phrase "always be closing "with always be innovating"
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So where do you see yourself in terms of comparative expertise versus Stirling Anderson and his team in Tesla ?
sundaymorning
Active Member
You have some really good points. Do us a favor and keep shorting, and please spread your wealth of knowledge to your family and friends..
I'll follow Elon in the meantime.
We've gone over relative personal experience in the past on this board and it leads to a lot of noise... I think it's probably best just to compare the amount of effort and funding the massive companies that are being referenced in these posts to Tesla and ask... why do you think Tesla is more capable than Google, Apple, Uber, GM, Mercedes, etc.?... try taking Elon out of the equation when you mull over this... he's a brilliant marketer... but that really isn't relevant when the "rubber hits the road".
Tesla makes money on its existing business, it wants to take its business to another level, which requires a lot of investment.
Um, no. Marketers sell things that are not real. 99% of products out there are complete junk compared to the marketing promises. The only thing Musk has "marketed" so far are timelines and he's getting better at it.
Elon by traditional salesmanship and marketing is probably the worst of both that I've ever seen. Watch any video of him talking and pull up any footage of any other salesman (Jobs comes to mind) and ask yourself if you would buy what Elon is selling. If it wasn't for the products being as great as they are Elon would be ****ed. He's awkward and doesn't know how to respond to ignorance without getting vindictive.
The fact he's so bad at sales is probably one of the companies greatest strengths. Instead of selling what he has he tries to 1-up himself every day.
You will get your ass handed to you if you dare doubt Musk on technical competence.
listen... as stupid as you might think all those short on tesla are... we actually understand this. but what we also understand is that if Tesla stopped growing and just decided to target value instead of growth... the stock would be trading at $40... Tesla needs to grow to 1m/yr or more with M3 just to match the current valuation relative to its competitors... and that alone has massive risk... then they added fully autonomous features... why?... my belief is to portray a possible share price beyond current levels... then there's SCTY merger and energy... again... massive risks with many examples of failed companies attempting similar goals.
it's easy to say what you've said... tesla could make a few bucks now if it wanted to... but that story doesn't support these stock price levels and doesn't persuade investors for gains... so quite simply... this is not a useful argument unless TSLA is trading well below $100.
"The fact he's so bad at sales is probably one of the companies greatest strengths."...
look at that statement... it's incredible... you stated his weakness as a strength while still calling it a weakness.
he is a brilliant marketer for this reason.
Autonomy for CARS is alone worth orders of magnitude more than the value of Tesla today.
If you agree with all the other points I made, then the value of Tesla is not the product they sell, its the innovation and products AND SERVICES they will provide. One thing that rarely comes up is autonomous trucking. Trucking employs 8 million people in the US. Innovations in efficiency in that sector are potentially orders of magnitude above anything else tesla has done.
Tesla as many of us see it is only the tip of the iceburg. And really, wheres the risk? Something happens to Tesla that somehow prevents another tesla branded car from ever selling again, they still have a gigafactorys battery production capacity for the legacy OEMs to buy from. They still have ground breaking innovations in solar roofing and grid level energy storage. Even if the M3 never comes to be (which I don't see being even remotely possible) Tesla is still a massive player in many other games.
In fact it appeared scripted. Perhaps Trump asked Thiel to suggest to Elon that when he introduces himself he mention making products in the US. Elon twice emphasized US. Then Trump appeared to reply, "Thank you" with a smile. Trump may have been giving notice to the others that Elon is now the poster boy for American manufacturing.
So...
* Tesla now has nobody close in autonomous driving
* More and more analysts are figuring out that EVs are the future and companies like Tesla will be well rewarded
* Trump and Musk are hanging out together these days and Trump says, "Call me any time I can help you."
* Q4 could well be another profitable quarter with the addition of some TE revenue and
* Model 3 likely is released in 8 to 12 months
Yet shorts weren't worried until they heard THIS news today:
AlMc is thinking of buying back in again.
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