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

[anthonyj]

Would love to see a hovering Roadster tonight. And then an announcement that SpaceX built a 2% stake in Tesla

 

[Cosmacelf]

The thing that kills me about the SEC’s action around the 420 tweet is that they pursued the wrong remedy.

If they believed Musk misled investors (I don’t, but it’s an understandable point of view), the correct remedy is to force him to purchase the shares at $420— essentially, everyone who bought shares following the 420 tweet would have the right to sell those shares to Musk for $420.

A completely inappropriate remedy is the one the SEC actually pursued— taking power out of the hands of shareholders by forcing new board members, a new chair, and a restrictive policy on the CEO’s ability to communicate with customers. As a believer in shareholder democracy, the SEC’s actions still outrage me all these months later.

Had the SEC pursued the correct remedy, shareholders would not have suffered billions in SEC-related damages, Musk would own a larger portion of the company, and a contempt motion wouldn’t be casting shade over the Model Y reveal.

Not quite. The right remedy would be to force Elon to buy the shares at whatever we bought them at, not to buy them at $420. So Elon would be forced to buy them at $350 to about $380, making everyone whole. But that’s a lot of money. 30m shares changed hands that day. That’s something like $15B. Elon just doesn’t have that kind of liquid wealth, and even if he did, the SEC never presumes a company or individual can pay a “fine” of that magnitude.

And besides, investors were knowingly taking a calculated gamble buying those shares, as does anyone who buys stocks. So this wouldn’t quite be the right remedy anyways.

 

[Mike Smith]

According to the crystal ball just delivered to me from Amazon, the conclusion of this CNBC discussion will be, "don't own Tesla stock, and have deep distrust, even contempt, for anything Elon Musk says." I'm excitedly looking forward to reports on this CNBC segment and finding out if this crystal ball is trash or treasure.

I predict their take tomorrow will be that it was a disappointment because they didn't give any details about where it will be built, cost to build, or what the margins will be. They've done this before - pretending to be confused about the difference between a product launch and an investor presentation.

 

[CorneliusXX]

Not Unsworth. Tripp.

ED: I think this is the newest: Docket for Tesla, Inc. v. Tripp, 3:18-cv-00296 - CourtListener.com

The AI needs a little more training.

 

[Buckminster]

Strong hints this is the first of several loans. There was talk of "Chinese banks" and this is from only one Chinese bank, singular.

OT

I am going to try to stop posting here (the investor forum) for a while. I do so out of an unhealthy compulsion to provide information to people. On the whole, people don't want to learn anything which disagrees with their preconceptions, so I really shouldn't. I've been told this by many wise people: let people believe whatever nonsense they want to believe; practically nobody wants to learn anything, and it'll just be frustration to explain things to 99% of people. They're right. Almost everything I've posted for the last year is a repeat of something which has been posted before, usually many times, by myself or others; I'm just seeing the same misapprehensions over and over again, and there's really no point in discussion. If I do start posting, I shouldn't be doing so.

Thanks and massive props to Brian45011 for being the only person here to disagree with me who really proved me wrong.
Thanks to jbcarioca for genuinely insightful responses on *all* occasions, even to content which moderators are deleting.
Thanks to those who have collected data.
Thanks to many of the rest of you for being interested in analysis.

I'll still be lurking and reading. I just won't post.

Nerode N signing out.

This is very very sad. Today is a happy day otherwise - Model Y reveal, Brexit postponed maybe.
Can you go out with a Model Y summary for us - pretty please?
Maybe post occasionally in one of the more grown up threads??

 

[M3Rider]

what for?

For example, we had a blizzard yesterday and 1-2 feet of wet snow on the driveway. I'm staying home the last 2 days since I don't want to risk getting stuck and/or in the ditch.
My wife has CUV and barely got out (that is after the driveway was cleaned). She has to drive since she works in a hospital.
So, I was thinking Y for her, but it shouldn't get stuck in the amount of snow we're having. Our street is not cleaned by the city or HOA. So, the snow pretty much stays around until it melts.

 

[SebastianR]

I predict their take tomorrow will be that it was a disappointment because they didn't give any details about where it will be built, cost to build, or what the margins will be. They've done this before - pretending to be confused about the difference between a product launch and an investor presentation.

I would hope that Tesla makes this clear in their presentation: this event is aimed at customers (and also at the competition). Not at investors - since Tesla doesn't need more money, but they need the rest of the car makers go electric.

So CNBC & Co. just got their reporting all wrong lately. They should not have finance guys in their shows, they should have production engineers (the Munro's of this world) and discuss scale, scope, quality of production etc. But that won't happen...

 

[Joe F]

Gotta work on your cadence, but your heart's in the right place. lol!

Dan

It was early with little sleep (Y you ask?) and only one cup of coffee.

I thought the first stanza was okay, especially the "4and20 Black 3's" nod to my now favorite number.

Takes me about 5 seconds to plug in my car at home.



Going out of your way would be having to keep a constant eye on your gas tank, think about when to refill, delaying the inevitable fill up because you’re too tired and the gas station is only around the corner (so you’ll pump gas in the morning instead), then you set an alarm to wake yourself up 15 minutes earlier than usual so you can do your favorite morning activity, which is to spend $50-60 on gas (let’s not forget about that $100 oil change that gets you exited every 3-4 months). When said alarm goes off in the morning you end up snoozing (waking up at your usual time), instead of being 15 minutes early you’re now running 5 minutes late because of a bad hair do, you pull over for a quick 5 minute gas fill up, the 5 minute fill up is now causing you to be 15 minutes late because of morning traffic. You spend your entire trip (45 minutes to work) cursing at yourself.

This is how many GAS heads wake up in the morning and drive to work. Ever wonder why roadrage happens? I suspect a lot of that rage is due to being forced to fill up the tank at the wrong time, usually when one is running late.

You miscalculated the time to fill up. Many others lined up in front of them at the pumps makes for longer than a quick 5 minute fill up, as best as I can recall. Can't remember when it only took 5 minutes back in the ICE daze (SIC).

Off to dinner. Can't wait for the Y event!

 

[SebastianR]

I predict their take tomorrow will be that it was a disappointment because they didn't give any details about where it will be built, cost to build, or what the margins will be. They've done this before - pretending to be confused about the difference between a product launch and an investor presentation.

I would hope that Tesla makes this clear in their presentation: this event is aimed at customers (and also at the competition). Not at investors - since Tesla doesn't need more money, but they need the rest of the car makers go electric.

So CNBC & Co. just got their reporting all wrong lately. They should not have finance guys in their shows, they should have production engineers (the Munro's of this world) and discuss scale, scope, quality of production etc. But that won't happen...

 

[Curt Renz]

Gene Munster will appear shortly on CNBC to discuss Tesla and the Model Y.

 

[HG Wells]

Well its possible she was behind me when I was trying to get 160 watt hours per mile out of my leaf. Speed limit was 45 and I was doing 35. Line of 18 cars behind me, when I finally pulled over to let them pass.

And to think I had liked you up to this point...

Next time I wont pull over !

 

[Cherry Wine]

Hahaha

Yun Lin on Twitter

 

[anthonyj]

Kimbal leaves Chipotle BoD and TSLA got slammed to 287 AH. Seems legit

 

[Fact Checking]

Just wondering whether there's any connection between TMC going down for about an hour, and a wild TSLAQ rumor-storm starting on Twitter about the Tesla BoD?

AH price dipped to ~$286, now back to ~$290, roughly to the closing price.

The basis of the rumor was changes to the Tesla IR website, where all 11 members of the board are listed on the main corporate governance webpage:

"Board of Directors | Tesla, Inc."​

But the 'Committee Composition' tab is only listing 8 independent directors now.

"Committee Composition | Tesla, Inc."​

Here's how that tab looked like before (Wayback Machine snapshot from February 28):

"Committee Composition | Tesla, Inc." [Wayback Machine]​

Adding to the smoke is the news that Kimball Musk notified Chipotle that he won't stand for re-election to their board on the next shareholder meeting in May anymore:

"Chipotle Announces Changes To Its Board Of Directors"

Kimbal Musk, notified the Board that he has decided to not stand for re-election at the 2019 annual meeting of shareholders." In addition to the new board members, one of Chipotle's current directors, Kimbal Musk, notified the Board that he has decided to not stand for re-election at the 2019 annual meeting of shareholders.

"Kimbal has served on the Chipotle Board of Directors since 2013, and we extend our most sincere gratitude and heartfelt appreciation for the tremendous contributions he has made to our success," said Niccol. "We value his time, leadership and experience and wish him all the very best."​

If I'm reading Chipotle's announcement correctly then Kimbal Musk would still be on their board until the May election.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Discussed a few times in the past in depth. Conclusion: We’ve no way to be accurate because there’s not enough hard data and there’s just too many variables and things that can go wrong or right on a day to day basis.

First of all you need to know the ‘designed’ run rate of each part. Going to the Schuler website can’t tell you that. At best it’ll give you a run rate range for a similar press line, at worse it’ll give you max run rate.

Run rate for class A body panels can be as low as 12 strokes per minute or as high as 20ish. That doesn’t seem too big a range at first glance, but it might as well be night and day when you’re talking 10’s of thousands of parts every single day.

Each die set can have a different run rate and it would be wrong to assume they are all designed for max press line run rate. That’s not how it works. Run rate is determined by many factors but essentially it boils down to the part you’re making; the material it’s made from including the specs of that material, the shaping/depth of draw of various stages, the complexity of the part and then how good the design of the dies are to achieve the desired result.

If you think they run max run rate on each die set every day, all day long - hahahaha. Not how it works in real life. Poo happens.

That’s one factor explained is very simplistic terms. There are quite literally dozens upon dozens of other factors that would need to be considered. We don’t have that information.

I’d take your figure and cut it in half. It won’t be an accurate number, but it’s much more likely to be in the achieveable realm.

Yeah, Imma take you word for it, brother. I have no expertise in this area. My estimate was arrived at very simply: I looked up the specs for the model of press that purchased, which was 10K units per week.

I combined that with other comments that Telsa made some engineering changes that increased throughput by 40%.

Voila, the 14K/wk estimate. So I don't know how realistic that is, but I know its based on hearsay and innuendo... so there's that.

Bottom line, I don't know what Tesla has or what they'll need, but I'm confident that Tesla knows.

Ya know? It's gonna be alright. They gonna be fine, and do good.

Cheers!

 

[Cherry Wine]

Just wondering whether there's any connection between TMC going down for about an hour, and a wild TSLAQ rumor-storm starting on Twitter about the Tesla BoD?

AH price dipped to ~$286, now back to ~$290.

The amount of times TMC goes down in conjunction with a FUDstorm comes pretty close to defying coincidence. What was the rumor? I missed it.

 

[Esme Es Mejor]

Not quite. The right remedy would be to force Elon to buy the shares at whatever we bought them at, not to buy them at $420. So Elon would be forced to buy them at $350 to about $380, making everyone whole. But that’s a lot of money. 30m shares changed hands that day. That’s something like $15B. Elon just doesn’t have that kind of liquid wealth, and even if he did, the SEC never presumes a company or individual can pay a “fine” of that magnitude.

And besides, investors were knowingly taking a calculated gamble buying those shares, as does anyone who buys stocks. So this wouldn’t quite be the right remedy anyways.

Right. I agree with you that “investors were knowingly taking a calculated gamble” and that the SEC shouldn’t have taken any action. Just pointing out that, even if the SEC believed that Elon misled investors and “promised” to buy at $420, they could have taken action that didn’t harm shareholders & didn’t deprive us of control over corporate governance. Instead, they chose a path that cost us billions, gives us less control over Tesla, and infringes on Elon’s free speech.

 

[keydiver]

Gene Munster will appear shortly on CNBC to discuss Tesla and the Model Y.

Who was the d**khead that said "Never gonna build it"??
Are these ANALysts EVER held accountable for the crap that spews out of their mouths?

 

[Nocturnal]

Who was the d**khead that said "Never gonna build it"??
Are these ANALysts EVER held accountable for the crap that spews out of their mouths?

Why would they be held accountable? If they are wrong only 50% of the time they are considered rock stars.

 

[KarenRei]

Just wondering whether there's any connection between TMC going down for about an hour, and a wild TSLAQ rumor-storm starting on Twitter about the Tesla BoD?

AH price dipped to ~$286, now back to ~$290, roughly to the closing price.

The basis of the rumor was changes to the Tesla IR website, where all 11 members of the board are listed on the main corporate governance webpage:

"Board of Directors | Tesla, Inc."​

But the 'Committee Composition' tab is only listing 8 independent directors now.

"Committee Composition | Tesla, Inc."​

Here's how that tab looked like before (Wayback Machine snapshot from February 28):

"Committee Composition | Tesla, Inc." [Wayback Machine]​

Adding to the smoke is the news that Kimball Musk notified Chipotle that he won't stand for re-election to their board on the next shareholder meeting in May anymore:

"Chipotle Announces Changes To Its Board Of Directors"

Kimbal Musk, notified the Board that he has decided to not stand for re-election at the 2019 annual meeting of shareholders." In addition to the new board members, one of Chipotle's current directors, Kimbal Musk, notified the Board that he has decided to not stand for re-election at the 2019 annual meeting of shareholders.

"Kimbal has served on the Chipotle Board of Directors since 2013, and we extend our most sincere gratitude and heartfelt appreciation for the tremendous contributions he has made to our success," said Niccol. "We value his time, leadership and experience and wish him all the very best."​

If I'm reading Chipotle's announcement correctly then Kimbal Musk would still be on their board until the May election.

Looks like a Drupal mess on Tesla's site. The committee disappearances coincided with the removal of "titles" from Musk's bio page (something he hates), e.g. the same table is used to generate two separate pages. The committee page is in general messed up, showing two committees with no chair. Also, apparently Deepak was still listed on the management page until they started messing with the site today.