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

[schonelucht]

I think that's primarily because U.S. demand can absorb all their production.

The why is irrelevant, the result is the same. June is going to be a mad dash once more and the promise of Elon that it won't ever happen again is just that : an empty promise.

 

[SW2Fiddler]

Only commenting because the wording has confused others:
A tax liability of 15k (total tax owed for the year), not the amount due in one's April 15th final payment/ refund/ adjustment.

LOL. Sorry for laughing. But I honestly can’t wait for the tax credit to exit stage left already, for Tesla at year end and for LGM a bit later.

15k would provide liability sufficient to allow credit for 4 Tesla’s right now, or 2 Tesla’s and one Bolt right now, or ...even more! from Q3 thru Q4.

Also moving money from an IRA to a Roth IRA can be used to increase tax liability.

Be careful as to year.
I think (DON'T KNOW) that if you moved money today it would be on 2019 tax year.

Be careful on quarter of purchase, too. Credit’s $3750 per Tesla in H1 2019 vs. half that in H2 2019.

the $3750 still valid for this year

LOL sorry again for the chuckle! $3750 is of course valid until end of second quarter. Phases down to $1,875 for the rest of 2019.

Come On 2020!! Confusion reigns in 2019 and must constantly be reined in.

 

[Fact Checking]

The why is irrelevant, the result is the same. June is going to be a mad dash once more and the promise of Elon that it won't ever happen again is just that : an empty promise.

Not necessarily:

• Q2 will have a lot more deliveries in the U.S., induced both by seasonal pattern, by Standard Range availability, by HW3 and by possible refreshes.
  
• Q2 might see a drop-off in European and Chinese orders of the most expensive trims. I'd expect Tesla to keep that open for at least a month beyond the peak. (Or orders might explode in the European spring and summer - a happy problem to have.)
• early Q2 might thus see a slower sending of ships, and more U.S. batches in Fremont - this too spreads the delivery load.

Elon didn't say there will be no delivery rushes - just that this Q1 one will be the strongest one due to one-time factors where basically three big waves are cresting at the same moment in time.

Also, you didn't respond to this argument:

It cannot be such an unusual inventory cycle if I predicted it as the probable approach back in December and January already, right?

This Q1 pattern is basically forced upon Tesla by externalities and business realities, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to predict their probable Q1 and Q2 inventory cycle.

The Q2 inventory cycle will probably be less sharp than the Q1 one, due to the factors above.

 

[NicoV]

performance Y is 1k higher today, haven't looked around for other changes.
makes this look even better

The Model Y Performance that I ordered last week is now 1K euro more expensive (Belgium)

 

[KSilver2000]

Apple was able to extract obscene amounts of money for computer upgrades such as SSD and RAM. iPhone storage upgrades have also been pretty expensive. This was due to the uniqueness and desirability of their products. Not sure if this is true anymore but as an Apple investor I certainly had no problem with the pricing scheme. Frankly, I didn't give a rat's ass whether a consumer thought that this was "fair" or not as long as they ponied up the money. This approach is profitable as long as the product is unique and desirable enough.

Do you think that Apple's strategy was somehow "wrong" or "stupid"? As an investor would you have preferred them to price the upgrades in direct relation to their true cost?

As an investor (in a relatively large amount; I bet much more than compared to many on these forums) of both TSLA and AAPL myself as well, I like that they’re able to charge premiums for certain things. I think some people misunderstand me. I was just stating a fact from someone’s misquote. But of course people like to hate on the person just trying to state facts that goes against people’s bias towards something.

 

[EVNow]

OT :

Yes it is OT. Btw parliamentary systems and the US division of powers system are quite different. It makes sense for a prime minister to have to resign if they’ve lost confidence of the parliament as a whole since a prime minister has so much more legislative power than an American President. The US system is different and has worked and continues to work just fine.

It is definitely a different system.

But saying it has worked fine is not correct - at all. It is simply more status quo oriented and of all the western democracies, least democratic & most like an oligarchy. Routinely policies that have high approval do not get implemented - like stricter gun laws(2/3rds), net neutrality (80% of Republicans !).

The House just passed the bill to make the Mueller report public unanimously by 420 - 0. ONE senator has put a hold on it in the senate ! If this is not a broken system, I don't know what is.

 

[Causalien]

The why is irrelevant, the result is the same. June is going to be a mad dash once more and the promise of Elon that it won't ever happen again is just that : an empty promise.

It's probably cheaper to book ships full and in batches than to spread it out over the quarter. Not my expertise

 

[MP3Mike]

Not necessarily:

• Q2 will have a lot more deliveries in the U.S., induced both by seasonal pattern, by Standard Range availability, by HW3 and by possible refreshes.

Don't forget about people in the US trying to get the $3,750 tax credit that drops in half starting in Q3. That should drive some additional US demand.

 

[Sudre]

So I am deliberately not writing this as a reply to a certain member who posted something similar recently as this is not about them, but rather a general observation. There is a well known practice/tactic when trying to win arguments where the basic hypothesis is weak or flawed. This is also often used to spread FUD or - actual - fake news and is used in disinformation campaigns as well.

The strategy is quite simple: once you've presented the the false narrative you wish to seed.....

Thanks for pointing this out so very well. I have been thinking the same thing about demand but wasn't coming up with a good way to phrase it. Personally I just don't understand why people were falling for the demand bull. Tesla is only going to make at most 10K likely only 7K M3 a week this year. The USA better start slowing in demand or the rest of the world will have to do without.

 

[printf42]

The why is irrelevant, the result is the same. June is going to be a mad dash once more and the promise of Elon that it won't ever happen again is just that : an empty promise.

My interpretation is Q1 filled up the overseas delivery pipeline so they want to engineer a big end of Q push to make numbers look not that bad.
Going forward since the pipeline is already filled there is no need to do any end of Q push so delivery will be smoothed out more evenly throughout the Q.
Or, they won’t care about QoQ numbers anymore after April 20th.

 

[EVNow]

The Model Y Performance that I ordered last week is now 1K euro more expensive (Belgium)

I don't remember exactly how much the configuration I ordered was. That is not in the order confirmation either. Hmmm ...

 

[Off Shore]

LOL. Sorry for laughing. But I honestly can’t wait for the tax credit to exit stage left already, for Tesla at year end and for LGM a bit later.

15k would provide liability sufficient to allow credit for 4 Tesla’s right now, or 2 Tesla’s and one Bolt right now, or ...even more! from Q3 thru Q4.


Be careful on quarter of purchase, too. Credit’s $3750 per Tesla in H1 2019 vs. half that in H2 2019.



LOL sorry again for the chuckle! $3750 is of course valid until end of second quarter. Phases down to $1,875 for the rest of 2019.

Come On 2020!! Confusion reigns in 2019 and must constantly be reined in.

And you imagine that will change in 2020? Now I'll laugh

 

[Fact Checking]

I was just stating a fact from someone’s misquote. But of course people like to hate on the person just trying to state facts that goes against people’s bias towards something.

Sorry, but you didn't just "state facts", you mixed facts with opinion:

And let’s not argue that the no-cost or cheaper cost paint options from the other brands are “built into” their car prices; that’s ridiculous. Metallic paint does not cost $1,500-$2,500 to produce. This is one area Tesla milks money.

"Tesla milks money" is your opinion which happens to be a false characterization as well: Tesla primarily uses paint options to subsidize lower priced base models, just like California customers who pay the $1,000 delivery fee are subsidizing East Coast customers who get their cars delivered for the same $1,000 (which costs much more in reality).

Tesla does this not to "milk money", but to increase the affordability spectrum of their offerings. They do this in a hope of selling high-margin options such as AutoPilot and FSD.

Tesla would only be 'milking' customers if they had no realistic option to avoid choosing a non-black color.

Tesla would probably be milking their customers if the Standard Range $35,000 car was painted neon pink:

... and every other color would be $2,500 extra. (That kind of pricing scheme wouldn't just be the obvious 'milking' of customers, I'd consider it outright extortion.)

With black being an entirely reasonable color, and it is in fact the most popular car color in the U.S. and in the E.U., subsidizing that color instead of a less desirable color is in fact a very customer friendly approach.

So you mixed facts and opinion, and when people disagreed with your opinion you started pretending that they are disagreeing with your facts, and started attacking/name-calling them. Not cool.

 

[ZeApelido]

Wait a minute - haven't you been claiming that Q4 sales (86,555 vehicles) were higher than the steady-state demand due to pull-forward demand from Jan-Mar of 2019? The current product mix has far less gross margin and revenue per vehicle than 2018Q4, so even if sales eventually reach that Q4 level operating cash flow will be less until unit sales increase well beyond the Q4 level.

Can we discuss more pertinent questions?

Like, why do you have a user name that means butter goose table?

 

[joefee]

I think the conference call this quarter will exceed the lower expectations for global demand for S 3 X Y! I continue to accumulate shares and will buy again @ 245 if TSLA drops after the CC. Shorts have fully paid for my S and my M3 and I'm looking forward to them paying for my new roadster !!!!

 

[ReflexFunds]

Yes, that kind of agrees with my method working back from Norway data.

Don't believe the hype. There are no plans in place and those that are will be discarded, changed and mutilated as new circumstances present themselves. This company will never enter a steady state without a change of leadership. Look no further for evidence of this than the number of ships currently on the water. None. Zero. Zilch. Come June it's once more going to be all hands on deck for a mad dash and there will again be some kind of excuse ('we just launched SR for Europe' seems a convenient one), some kind of pat-on-the-back-sorry-you-are-incredible leaked email from Elon and then the next quarter will roll on again.

For those trigger happy to disagree : I am making not a single value statement in this post. It's just factual observation.

I'm sorry, but whether you turn out to be right or wrong, factual observations about the future do not exist.

 

[NicoV]

I don't remember exactly how much the configuration I ordered was. That is not in the order confirmation either. Hmmm ...

It’s on your ‘My Tesla’ page for your reservation.

 

[EVNow]

An anecdote.

Attended a kid's birthday party yesterday. Two new 3s. One of them traded in their X - easier to drive. The other one surprisingly turned out to be my neighbor ! I had talked to him a couple of months back about getting an EV. He had rejected the idea and wanted to get a BMW X5. But he thought more about it, test drove 3 and liked it. Immediately ordered and got one - he didn't even ask me about it again.

Moral of the story : talk to folks you know about getting EVs. Even if they seem not open to the idea, the very fact of you talking to them makes them open to the idea.

 

[EVNow]

It’s on your ‘My Tesla’ page for your reservation.

Thanks for that.

The config I ordered was $56k - AWD, White & 7 seats. Now it is $57k. Hope they make it in 2020, instead of 2021.

 

[Sudre]

Let’s not start this classic deflection of argument. It’s what the shorts like to do. You can do this with them.
In your mind then, no one is allowed to compare Tesla to any other car in the world on any basis.
Not sure why I just bothered to respond.

It appeared to me that comparing cars was exactly what was being done. When comparing cars one does not just look at the cost of paint. When I compare cars I look at the total package for the cost I am paying. SO when someone asks to see a list of cars that do XYZ for $$$ they are comparing. When someone is unhappy about pay extra for paint... that's not comparing. If that is the only thing one wishes to compare then go buy the cheaper paint cars in white.

One example. The new Nissan Leaf with the extend range (S plus or whatever). If I buy that car with comparable options I am paying more no matter what color I choose. One can pick any color M3 you want and still be cheaper.

BUT hey.... go ahead and just compare paint upgrade cost. LOL.