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

[Krugerrand]

Hey, guys. I'm new here.

I bought TSLA pre-SP500 inclusion at average price of under $400. I sold at $880ish and then rebought at $600.

With the marketcap approaching close to $1 trillion, I'm starting to wonder if all of the growth from the automotive side has been priced in already and if I'm better off investing in something else. Yes, I'm well aware of the potential of robotaxis, but I'm a FSD-bear and don't think it's ever happening.

If we're valuing Tesla solely as a car company and assuming they can manufacture 20 million cars annually, would their current valuation be justified? I'd imagine most of the cars sold then would be a cheaper $25K model with lower margins, so my initial instinct is no.

I have to admit that getting called a moron by friends and people online for investing in TSLA has been making me second-guess my investment choice. Hoping that some of you can bring a different opinion on the matter.

Yup, you’re definitely new here. Here’s what you should do - start at the beginning of this thread and read every single post. You’ll have your answer with great clarity as if God himself came down from Heaven and told you what to do. Is advice.

 

[Krugerrand]

I know you're being sarcastic, but I actually read through many of them, and they don't seem to do any kind of analysis that answers my questions.

Ah, read the ones that are in English as opposed to the ones that are in Russian.

 

[UnknownSoldier]

Yup, you’re definitely new here. Here’s what you should do - start at the beginning of this thread and read every single post. You’ll have your answer with great clarity as if God himself came down from Heaven and told you what to do. Is advice.

LMAO, see him back in 2023 I guess. This thread has 295,000 posts now.

 

[Krugerrand]

LMAO, see him back in 2023 I guess. This thread has 295,000 posts now.

Not saying that might have been my agenda, but that might have been my agenda.

 

[SN_8]

LMAO, see him back in 2023 I guess. This thread has 295,000 posts now.

Not a bad strategy. By the time he's done reading, he'll have reaped the rewards of holding for two more years.

But seriously, start with the posts of particular merit. There's only 100+ of those.

 

[FS_FRA]

I was hoping someone would bring this up. From the world of sailing, I can say that the three main ways of connecting the helm (wheel) and the rudder are rod, cable or hydraulic (with +/- steering by electric wire perhaps available on superyachts - I don't know). The best "feel" comes from rod; the worst - i.e., the helmsman feels disconnected - is from hydraulic (unless supremely tweaked...a difficult task). So I wonder whether the "easy" (ha!) task of flying an airplane through +/- limitless 3D space may be fine for fly-by-wire, but when one has the 1D-to-2D task of handling an automobile, with a slight third dimension in the bumps etc of the road, drive-by-wire might, it seems to me, be an insipind, uncomfortable experience. Thoughts?

As a yachtie myself, I fully agree with your take on steering.

The key to me with fly-by-wire has always been the question on how you engineer the active feedback from the road. I believe that the active input is easy and fast enough. But it’s the feeling you need from the road to make the countless minute adjustments to steering that you consciously or subconsciously do to keep the car “comfortable”, or even safe when considering say icy roads, that are tricky. I’m thinking you need “force feedback” like on gaming console controllers, but at a much more refined rate. And in the end, does that add or subtract cost?

Of course, when you disconnect the driver from the car by having the car do it all with FSD, then this feedback loop is probably required anyways and no longer a question of how/why.

 

[dhanson865]

@GOVA provided a great video. But I think I can speak for many here that the very short shrift given what so many of us find unendingly important and fascinating - battery situation - was a small frustration. Only a tiny bit, near the very end at around the 25m mark. Perhaps the videographer was getting a bit tired.

It sure would have been nice to see the text on the two boards in the battery section.

 

[EV forever]

LMAO, see him back in 2023 I guess. This thread has 295,000 posts now.

Yup, you’re definitely new here. Here’s what you should do - start at the beginning of this thread and read every single post. You’ll have your answer with great clarity as if God himself came down from Heaven and told you what to do. Is advice.

Seems like a perfectly valid piece of advice to me. By 2023 - he will no longer be wondering if he should be selling now - so he gets his answer.

Sorry, but I smell a carebear here - is he really an investor or a trader? He bought at 400 pre-split, sold at 800, rebought at 600 and now is asking this group if TSLA is overvalued and he should be selling. That to me is a trader - he should be following Gary or Squakesquare on twitter. If he has even scanned through this thread he has know that the main theme here is HODL - and that will be the collective advice. He is asking us indirectly to justify our conviction in staying invested in TSLA - don't see why anyone should be wasting their time doing so.

 

[willow_hiller]

Cool FSD update.

Remember a few weeks back when Elon said their neural networks could detect arbitrary objects and avoid them even if it couldn't classify them (e.g. UFOs)? Well it looks like they've cracked the problem of visualizing those arbitrary obstacles:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1447384328304922631

 

[lafrisbee]

The only possibility of my getting you wrong...is that I believe you reinforced everything I said: it is the bane of every skipper to have a dead, i.e., "feelless" helm. That is why I queried the sensitivity of a drive-by-wire system.

The "get wrong" part was how it is much less important to worry about in a danged ol car. Most of the time they go straight on their own. And when you turn em you control the wind(accelerator). So drive by wire is a nuthinburger.

 

[StrongGuy]

Seems like a perfectly valid piece of advice to me. By 2023 - he will no longer be wondering if he should be selling now - so he gets his answer.

Sorry, but I smell a carebear here - is he really an investor or a trader? He bought at 400 pre-split, sold at 800, rebought at 600 and now is asking this group if TSLA is overvalued and he should be selling. That to me is a trader - he should be following Gary or Squakesquare on twitter. If he has even scanned through this thread he has know that the main theme here is HODL - and that will be the collective advice. He is asking us indirectly to justify our conviction in staying invested in TSLA - don't see why anyone should be wasting their time doing so.

I admit that I only got into TSLA after the announcement that it wouldn't be added to the SP500. That was an obvious sign for me to get in before the inclusion.
I didn't seriously look into the company until it started hitting the $695 price point on that Friday the funds started buying.

I have a pretty open mind and looked into a lot of bull arguments from Frank Peelan and youtubers. Right now, the only thing keeping me in TSLA is this unexplainable hunch that it will go much higher than anyone expects. I can't justify the valuation without FSD and robotaxis.

 

[lafrisbee]

Honestly I would be surprised if the average taxi driver/uber put more than 200 miles on their car in a day, Which will most likely be in urban slow crawl than anything else. I doubt a current LFP SR+ would need charging in a day

ah? in a day...how long is a robo-taxi day?

 

[RobDickinson]

A robo taxi isnt going to to be too worried about spending an hour or two a day charging? It'll need some downtime for cleaning etc anyhow.

 

[lafrisbee]

I got into a pretty constructive argument with a Tesla bear on reddit, and he's the one who convinced me to do some simple napkin math assuming very generous sales volumes and margins for Tesla.
I understand the argument for robotaxis.

The only reason I'm in Tesla right now is that I have a hunch the valuation could go into the multi-trillions even if I can't explain it with numbers.

Geez WHY ME!
it is well known and believed that a psychologist is much better at making money in the stock market than any of the numbers guys. So what the hell are you asking for numbers?
Numbers are used by the financial advisors to get people to buy stocks...after that they are useless. If numbers could predict the market then what the hell would happen? We'd start believing them! just look at tesla's numbers during the Quarterly financial statement and see how far the stock drops...and then explain it to me.
The market's more complex than numbers.

 

[Singuy]

I admit that I only got into TSLA after the announcement that it wouldn't be added to the SP500. That was an obvious sign for me to get in before the inclusion.
I didn't seriously look into the company until it started hitting the $695 price point on that Friday the funds started buying.

I have a pretty open mind and looked into a lot of bull arguments from Frank Peelan and youtubers. Right now, the only thing keeping me in TSLA is this unexplainable hunch that it will go much higher than anyone expects. I can't justify the valuation without FSD and robotaxis.

Robotaxi is overrated today. Even if Tesla solves FSD tomorrow, the Tesla network will generate stupid low revenue. Waymo is already experiencing this in Phoenix in which each of their robotaxi is only generating 2 rides per WEEK. It's ahead of it's time and people are not yet ready to fully trust a computer driving them around. This can only happen if you get people's butt in seats, and have them experience complex scenarios without interventions for months or years before one can fully trust the system(or else you'll just think Waymo's 5 million intervention free miles came from a straight line and the minute you sit in the car it's going to hit an edge case and kill you). This is seriously how humans think about the unknown. You can tell because those who haven't experienced AP think it's dangerous and those who have can't live without it after they get used to it.

So the crazy twist is if enough people have experienced Tesla's FSD (because they have it) and went through intervention free miles for a year or two, these people will ONLY want to trust a Tesla's robotaxi and not look at the competitor's. When you are putting your life on the line, you go with the safest option..the one you are familiar with the most. So I really don't know how these other companies can generate enough income from robotaxies without that human trust connection and just need to take their words for it. They really need to ditch all those sensors and make cars cheap enough so people can grow along with autonomy to build that trust when the car is affordable to own.

 

[JRP3]

On the subject of Mr Burry, one Mr Gary is caught by one of our former posters

https://twitter.com/x/status/1447350193737781250

https://twitter.com/x/status/1447363567334957057

 

[2daMoon]

Here's something else to consider. Tesla's manufacturing prowess.

 

[Skryll]

Since it’s Sunday, could you all swing by

https://twitter.com/x/status/1447402998267662344

and upvote and retweet my plea to elon to forgive one (track) day when there were 7 perfect days overall ? I bet this would improve the stock price on Monday

 

[PeterJA]

Assuming that Tesla will maintain a 30% gross margin and ASP of $35,000.
Gross profit will be $210 billion. Maybe profit margin will be 15%, which is outstanding for a mass-market auto company leading to a net income of $105 Billion.
I think the company would stop growing then, and so P/E ratio will be something modest like 5-8.

I'm just having trouble justifying Tesla's valuation if Tesla doesn't solve FSD.

In addition to the helpful replies you've received, I'll say the biggest error in your math (and that of your mocking friends) is this:

"I think the company would stop growing then, and so P/E ratio will be something modest like 5-8."

Tesla will not stop growing in 2030, nor have a modest P/E ratio. As others have mentioned, Tesla has many other products and services coming besides autos, and likely many that we can't guess. Eight years is a long time for this innovation juggernaut.

Elon has built, and continues to build, a global braintrust of the smartest, most ambitious engineers in the world, as demonstrated by what they have done so far, and by the multiple annual surveys ranking Tesla and SpaceX as the most desirable employers for graduating engineers. Elon attracts extraordinary talent with his missions (tackling the biggest technical problems for survival of civilization), and with his corporate culture of flat hierarchies, interdisciplinary teamwork, rapid implementation of innovations, and no fear of failure from trying something new. This highly unusual work environment has been described by Elon in interviews, and by observers such as Sandy Munro.

The men and women attracted to this work environment will not stop when they have solved sustainable transport and energy. The veterans will have a taste of saving the world, and the new recruits will want their own taste. There are plenty of other monumental engineering problems to solve, such as reversing the damage to Earth's atmosphere and terraforming Mars. In 2030, if civilization survives that long, Tesla will be just warming up.

 

[dhanson865]

Since it’s Sunday, could you all swing by

https://twitter.com/x/status/1447402998267662344

and upvote and retweet my plea to elon to forgive one (track) day when there were 7 perfect days overall ? I bet this would improve the stock price on Monday

99 vs 100 you'll get it what, a week, maybe two weeks later? Even if it's three weeks or four weeks it's coming you'll get it on the car you already own before I get a new tesla and have a chance to get it.