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

[CorneliusXX]

The head of Tesla in China described it as a Chinese designed built for the world market.

There is an Electric Viking video with the following rumors-

• A prototype is nearly complete.
• It will use close to 100% locally sourced parts.

My guess is that they will rapidly build a new factory to make the car on the pile of dirt close to GF Shanghai. My hunch is that factory construction might start in the first half of this year.

They need to produce high volumes if they intend to export to global markets.

Someone may ask a question on this in the earnings call, and Tesla may answer it.

As an aside - I am enjoying that we can reference a pile of dirt on the other side of the world and everyone knows what we are talking about.

 

[kbeckley]

Curious about Kato Road. From battery day I believe it is supposed to be a 10GWh facility one year from battery day (so Sept 2021). Assume that was late, only ran at 25% of capacity and only for half a year that leaves 1.25GWh of cells produced from that facility so far. That is 12,500 100kWh packs. I wonder where all those batteries are? Shipped to Germany for structural packs with a few for semis? If they have not made that many then they certainly have had more issues than anticipated.

 

[Discoducky]

Question for the hive mind:. Has any other company, with a significant market cap, had as high of an operating margin as Tesla?

Or to say it another way: What is the highest in recent history?

This is behind a paywall: Picking the Most-Profitable Companies Was a Winning Stock-Picking Strategy for the Past 3 Years

Edit: stupid typo

 

[MC3OZ]

As an aside - I am enjoying that we can reference a pile of dirt on the other side of the world and everyone knows what we are talking about.

This was the video I referenced:-

I couldn't go back and edit the original post.

 

[MC3OZ]

Curious about Kato Road. From battery day I believe it is supposed to be a 10GWh facility one year from battery day (so Sept 2021). Assume that was late, only ran at 25% of capacity and only for half a year that leaves 1.25GWh of cells produced from that facility so far. That is 12,500 100kWh packs. I wonder where all those batteries are? Shipped to Germany for structural packs with a few for semis? If they have not made that many then they certainly have had more issues than anticipated.

They were stopping an restarting the line frequently while working on problems.

Still your 12,500 100kWh pack estimate might be right,

IMO these are mostly stockpiled for the start of Model Y production in Austin, with perhaps some shipped to Berlin.

They are only doing low volume production for the Semi, we don't know what cells they are initially using.

 

[dl003]

Question for the hive mind:. Has any other company, with a significant market cap, had as high of an operating margin as Tesla?

Or to say it another way: What is the highest in recent history?

This is behind a paywall: Picking the Most-Profitable Companies Was a Winning Stock-Picking Strategy for the Past 3 Years

Edit: stupid typo

Operating as a criteria does not place TLSA at the top of any list. The company's latest OM is 9.57%. If you use the finviz screener on mega cap companies with > 10% OM, you'll get plenty of results. The highest (over 70%) are BAC and WFC. In fact, financial services have crazy high OM. Excluding those, we have MSFT, TSM, and FB, each topping 40% OM.

 

[RobDickinson]

Kato cells outside of testing etc will go to Austin for model Y, Berlin will use 2170 structural until their cell plant spools up

 

[Discoducky]

Operating as a criteria does not place TLSA at the top of any list. The company's latest OM is 9.57%. If you use the finviz screener on mega cap companies with > 10% OM, you'll get plenty of results. The highest (over 70%) are BAC and WFC. In fact, financial services have crazy high OM. Excluding those, we have MSFT, TSM, and FB, each topping 40% OM.

View attachment 752737

Wow, we have a ways to go! Very helpful for my prediction model. Thank you!

 

[Zhelko Dimic]

You may be right, but that also makes me wonder, if this is true and the news is negative, why would Elon pre-announce it in early December/late November (whenever it was), so far in advance? Situation could change after a few months. And if that were the case, how was production so high in Q4? Again, you may be right, but I'm leaning toward it being about 4680 production starting to come online. Like "we've got it all figured out and we're ramping, but it will take a year to reach full production speed."

I feel/speculate that this is less about need for a roadmap update and more about Elon's need to get back in the spotlight.

I almost was gonna say "like a Tony Stark" but then I remember that Robert Downie Jr. (aka Tony Stark, aka IronMan) has picked that treat from the study of Elon Musk, and not vice versa...

 

[Knightshade]

That is good to know.

We had unusually cold weather recently where I live (low 20’s Fahrenheit). My Model 3 was using what seemed to me to be an unusually large amount of energy when I was driving around with the heat going. I only noticed after the most recent software update and mentioned that release in my bug report, however I don’t drive all that much and it wasn’t that cold previously, so the issue could have crept in in an earlier release. I’m curious now to see how fast Tesla can address this.

FWIW if you mean you just did the voice command "bug report" the answer is never- because those don't get sent anywhere. They just bookmark the current car state and logs, in case you open a service ticket, at which point the service center can reference the report that is stored locally on your vehicle.... so if you think something's wrong (though using noticeably more power when it's below freezing and running the heat is normal on an EV) you'll need to open a service ticket before anyone will look at that.

I did a quick Google search for "Stock Split Pending ...." and found this:

"NVIDIA today announced that its board of directors declared a four-for-one split of NVIDIA’s common stock in the form of a stock dividend to make stock ownership more accessible to investors and employees. The stock dividend is conditioned on obtaining stockholder approval at the company’s 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders ― to be held virtually on Thursday, June 3, at 11 a.m. PT ― to increase the number of authorized shares of common stock to 4 billion shares."

Conveniently, counting day of announce and day of vote, the time between the two was...10 business days

 

[Cherry Wine]

You may be right, but that also makes me wonder, if this is true and the news is negative, why would Elon pre-announce it in early December/late November (whenever it was), so far in advance? Situation could change after a few months. And if that were the case, how was production so high in Q4? Again, you may be right, but I'm leaning toward it being about 4680 production starting to come online. Like "we've got it all figured out and we're ramping, but it will take a year to reach full production speed."

It's not like Tesla to osborne their own products through such announcements, though. I'm kind of expecting 4680s to be in cars that are shipping to customers before any announcement is made. Furthermore, I expect there to be few obvious consumer-facing differences between 2170- and 4680-based vehicles (meaning range, etc.) -- unless Tesla creates a new trim for 4680 vehicles, or until 2170s are repurposed for other uses and all Ys are made using 4680s.

 

[Singuy]

Operating as a criteria does not place TLSA at the top of any list. The company's latest OM is 9.57%. If you use the finviz screener on mega cap companies with > 10% OM, you'll get plenty of results. The highest (over 70%) are BAC and WFC. In fact, financial services have crazy high OM. Excluding those, we have MSFT, TSM, and FB, each topping 40% OM.

View attachment 752737

I thought the latest OM was 14.6%. Is 9.57% a trailing 12 months?

 

[Singuy]

Question for the hive mind:. Has any other company, with a significant market cap, had as high of an operating margin as Tesla?

Or to say it another way: What is the highest in recent history?

This is behind a paywall: Picking the Most-Profitable Companies Was a Winning Stock-Picking Strategy for the Past 3 Years

Edit: stupid typo

Comparing to software companies Tesla lags behind by a long shot. In a vacuum comparing to many mega caps, Tesla's OM is meh. However top line revenue growth of 50%+ yoy plus multi trillion dollar TAM in conjunction with OM over 10% despite in a high capital intensive sector makes Tesla extremely unique.

 

[M|S|M MYP]

Hey....at least its higher than JP Moron's Ryan Brinkman

 

[Cattledog]

^ Separated at birth from Gordon?

 

[dl003]

I thought the latest OM was 14.6%. Is 9.57% a trailing 12 months?

Maybe. I just did a quick look on macrotrends without knowing if it was ttm or not.

 

[Unpilot]

Back from my walk....I see after hours we are up $12.....maybe I should head back out?

 

[Todd Burch]

Back from my walk....I see after hours we are up $12.....maybe I should head back out?

Come back when we hit $2000. Maybe pack a lunch.

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

I thought the latest OM was 14.6%. Is 9.57% a trailing 12 months?

It must be. Operating Margin was 14.6% in Q3 and 11.0% in Q2.

 

[jerry33]

I think this is true now, but the distinction was helpful earlier. EVs for the win! Tesla is the clear leader of course, and will be for the foreseeable future.

Mostly EV Market has been used to show that EVs aren't "real cars", just a passing fad. I don't think EV Market was ever helpful. Agreed this is more clear today than in the past.