Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

[gabeincal]

sitting that far back made it difficult to reach their vehicle's wheel and pedals.

 

[Drezil]

In the span of one year, some of my family/friends have gone from thinking I'm a kind, open-minded, tree-hugging, liberal-leaning, animal-rights defending hospital lab tech (who actually runs and results Covid tests), to a Qanon-Trump-voting-science-denier simply because I question the safety and logic of a world-wide mass vaccination campaign for a respiratory ailment that overwhelmingly afflicts the old/overweight/unhealthy. Seriously. I have a couple of friends that won't talk to me now simply because they read "The News"--they're not tricked by Qanon, they're too smart for that. I'm now branded a conspiracy theorist. Well, OK.

Just FYI (not to derail it even further):

Spoiler

in UK many people across all age-groups got COVID. 14% suffer long-covid. Not corrolated with age, health, etc.

And "Big Pharma" did nothing. Pfizer joind Biontech (german startup), Moderna was another startup for mrna (not "big pharma"), AstraZeneca was developed in a university in the UK, Sputnik in Russia also has no "big pharma" behind it & the chinese as well.

The only thing big pharma did: buy the winners, join conglomerates, rent out their manufacturing-capabilities.. they did not research a lot .. more like big pharma-manufacturing

Now think about CureVac & their RNA/Protein-Priter & Elons involvement in them

 

[gabeincal]

Electrek article this morning:

New modified-Tesla ride-share launching from electric moped sharing service Revel

 

[jbcarioca]

That's been repeatedly debunked. A lot of Tesla Model 3 buyers do the "stretch" to get into a BEV with lower operating costs. Also, there are a LOT of millionaires who drive Camrys, Hondas, Hyundai, etc. and for whom a Model 3 or a Model Y is not even a stretch - it's just a very inexpensive car to operate. Millionaires like that. That's how many of them became millionaires!

There is a fairly easy way to estimate the number of relatively well-off people who buy a Tesla without stretching. Just assess the proportion of sales for cash. An even stronger number si the number of cash sales without a trade in. It is not trivial to extract such data if it is not disclosed directly.

My guess is that roughly 20% of Tesla US sales fit this profile, with little difference between Models. Until 2015 I had direct access to some of this data. I no longer have it.

Historically there were a a few types of inexpensive vehicles that had atypical concentrations of wealthy people. They were things such as Jeep Wrangler, Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla and Chevrolet Suburban. When the first few years of Model S were considered the purchasers were massively bi-modal with high concentrations of stretches and wealthy people. All evidence suggests that really has not much changed with Model 3 and Model Y.

Just think about how we are here on TMC. It's quite obvious that we have a very diverse crowd in economic and other demographic terms. Clearly we are outliers to a degree because we are enthusiasts, but we're not likely to differ too drastically from broader ownership.

We all need to remember the cardinal rule of any consumer data. BEWARE Mother-in-law research. That is to say focus groups tell nothing at all statistically, nor does data skewed with section bias.. I have many examples of how easily superficial data can yield bad decisions. Just remember the famous Truman vs Dewey. The lesson remains. To wit: Tesla ownership is almost totally concentrated with computer-literate people and virtually 100% with active internet and social media use. That alone makes Tesla owners outliers from the broad population, so skewed strongly towards higher education and greater social interactions than for otter brands. Those factors accentuate a bi-model population too.

This has major consequences for investment outlook because the Tesla target market is limited to people who share those characteristics. That isn't much of a limitation, perhaps, but it does also produce an urban shift and reduce potential markets is less developed countries. Cheaper alone will not recruit the poorly educated..anywhere. FWIW, market size probably correlates pretty well with GINI coefficient. OTOH, both China and India have larger qualified markets than does the US.

 

[DarkandStormy]

FUDsters - I do not think those words mean what you think they mean...

"No guarantees = Guaranteed failure"

what silliness

Tesla (TSLA) Warns It May Never Reach FSD Capability

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) added a disclosure to its 10-Q for the first time that it may never achieve full self-driving (FSD) technology, as pointed out by GLJ Research...

www.streetinsider.com

The words "guaranteed failure" do not exist in the URL. Why create such a strawman?

 

[Unpilot]

The words "guaranteed failure" do not exist in the URL. Why create such a strawman?

How dare you! This is from that leading research firm GLJ research./ s

They (cherry pick) the facts (as he...because it's a one man show) sees them.

Then Gordo is asked (paid actually) to go on CNBC and the like and point out how foolish we all are for buying TSLA.

Lather rinse and repeat.

 

[DarkandStormy]

How dare you! This is from that leading research firm GLJ research./ s

They (cherry pick) the facts (as he...because it's a one man show) sees them.

Then Gordo is asked (paid actually) to go on CNBC and the like and point out how foolish we all are for buying TSLA.

Lather rinse and repeat.

The article merely quotes Tesla's own 10-Q and compares it to recent language in the 10-K. What are you talking about?

 

[lafrisbee]

It's amazing how Californians love to elect actors. It's something like the English knighting them. Many in other professions may be more qualified, but they are unknowns.

Actors make the best Politicians...they are professional liars

 

[AudubonB]

Keep on point, everyone. I just waded through a lot of garbage posts out of the last several dozen.

 

[lafrisbee]

And that's not to mention all the people that constantly sold on the way up, thinking it was a top. In other words, there's a ton of new TSLA shareholders that are either up a bit or underwater a bit. I'm thinking the people that rode this thing from $40 ($200 pre-split) in 2019 are not too likely to sell now if they haven't already. Many of the people who took that ride without selling have been holding since 2013'ish at around $3-$7 cost basis and aren't going to sell merely because the appreciation was put on pause.

Having said that, I still wouldn't be surprised to visit the $500's again, at least briefly. If the market falls apart, which I don't really expect but which wouldn't be all that surprising, it will be lower than that. We will almost never have enough data to know in advance which way it's going to go (or how far it's going to go) with any certainty.

I think I said that succinctly.
"We are all Ants."

 

[AudubonB]

Succinctness disappears when you’ve posted that more times than there are ants in the universe.

 

[2daMoon]

I'm a not-an-ant.

 

[Curt Renz]

FUDsters - I do not think those words mean what you think they mean...

"No guarantees = Guaranteed failure"

what silliness

Tesla (TSLA) Warns It May Never Reach FSD Capability

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) added a disclosure to its 10-Q for the first time that it may never achieve full self-driving (FSD) technology, as pointed out by GLJ Research...

www.streetinsider.com

The 10-Q of virtually every public corporation contains a "risk factors" section written by ultra-cautious lawyers. These make it appear that almost every corporation will fail in all of its endeavors and soon go bankrupt. Yet Tesla detractors immediately single it out and make it appear in the media that Elon and his team believe their goals will never be achieved failure is the likely outcome.

 

[AudubonB]

This is not some high school open-mike debate club.

 

[thx1139]

Further, from the Q1 10-Q:

• During the first quarter of 2021, all remaining market capitalization milestones except for the milestone relating to $650.0 billion were achieved
• During the first quarter of 2021, the operational milestone of annualized revenue of $55.0 billion became probable of being achieved and consequently, we recognized a catch-up expense of $116 million
• As of March 31, 2021, we had $129 million of total unrecognized stock-based compensation expense for the operational milestones that were considered probable of achievement, which will be recognized over a weighted-average period of 0.9 years
• As of March 31, 2021, we had unrecognized stock-based compensation expense of $548 million for the operational milestones that were considered not probable of achievement

So, less than two-more quarters-worth of large CEO comp expenses like Q1. Profits will zoom.

Cheers!

Do we have an estimate on what the monetary values of the large CEO comp expenses left comes out to?

 

[insaneoctane]

CNN article refuting Tesla’s claim that AP wasn’t engaged in the TX accident by claiming cruise control counts....

”It's unclear, however, whether Musk was defining Autopilot in a way that was most beneficial to his company by referring to the entire suite, rather than the individual features that make up the suite.”

Typical MM BS. Show me a cruise control that acts differently....only let’s try to paint Tesla in a corner and claim that technically AP was involved. Unbelievable. If possible, I lose more respect for journalists every single day.

 

[ZachF]

The leaked cybertruck and FSD visualizations look pretty nice (I saw them on elektrek)

yep.

Slick.

Cybertruck is going to be the "it" car of the 2020s. watch.

https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/04/Tesla-cybertruck-ui.gif

 

[st_lopes]

Do we have an estimate on what the monetary values of the large CEO comp expenses left comes out to?

Yes.

"During the first quarter of 2021, the operational milestone of annualized revenue of $55.0 billion became probable of being achieved and consequently, we recognized a catch-up expense of $116 million.

As of March 31, 2021, we had $129 million of total unrecognized stock-based compensation expense for the operational milestones that were considered probable of achievement, which will be recognized over a weighted-average period of 0.9 years. As of March 31, 2021, we had unrecognized stock-based compensation expense of $548 million for the operational milestones that were considered not probable of achievement. For the three months ended March 31, 2021 and 2020 we recorded stock-based compensation expense of $299 million and $66 million related to the 2018 CEO Performance Award, respectively."

$677M left to recognize, $129M will be recognized over the next 12 months, with the balance $548M being conditional on achievement of additional milestones. Milestones which are likely to be achieved in the next 2-3 quarters. So, it would be reasonable to think that Q2 and Q3 will again have high values for CEO SBC, but that subsequent quarters will drop off very quickly.

 

[ZachF]

TTM revenues for Tesla.. 2021q2 is an estimate assuming a slight increase in rev to $11b

2014q4 $3,199m
2015q1 $3,518m
2015q2 $3,704m
2015q3 $3,789m
2015q4 $4,046m
2016q1 $4,253m
2016q2 $4,568m
2016q3 $5,929m
2016q4 $7,000m
2017q1 $8,549m
2017q2 $10,069m
2017q3 $10,756m
2017q4 $11,759m
2018q1 $12,472m
2018q2 $13,684m
2018q3 $17,523m
2018q4 $21,461m
2019q1 $22,593m
2019q2 $24,941m
2019q3 $24,420m
2019q4 $24,578m
2020q1 $26,022m
2020q2 $25,708m
2020q3 $28,176m
2020q4 $31,532m
2021q1 $35,937m
2021q2 $42,000m

10x in 5 years!

 

[Chunky Jr.]

”It's unclear, however, whether Musk was defining Autopilot in a way that was most beneficial to his company by referring to the entire suite, rather than the individual features that make up the suite.”

Typical MM BS. Show me a cruise control that acts differently....only let’s try to paint Tesla in a corner and claim that technically AP was involved. Unbelievable. If possible, I lose more respect for journalists every single day.

Tesla : he didn't eat a cheeseburger
Media : but he did eat some cheese, so technically he had part of a cheeseburger