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

[Antares Nebula]

Moderators' Choice: Posts of Particular Merit

All right, who are the big dogs here with more than $10mil in TSLA stock?

 

[Antares Nebula]

Moderators' Choice: Posts of Particular Merit

This post is on the money. I, for my part, have been doing this on Seeking Alfalfa, while also correcting misinformed friends and family. I don't know how successful these efforts are, but I'm determined to try. (Media) perception can become reality. Recall the story of Fairfax Financial and other short and distort attacks. We, as investors, cannot be passive and naively believe that truth will win in the end. Remember, in WW2, Hitler was able to convince the masses that what he was doing to the Jews was okay. That is the scary part. Not Hitler, but how he was able to influence the people by media. Climate change deniers and cigarette advocates recognize this power. People who know better cannot just sit idly by, they have to fight the FUD and lies.

 

[Antares Nebula]

Moderators or TMC programmers: need links please to the original posts and threads from:

Moderators' Choice: Posts of Particular Merit

Since you cannot reply in that thread. Otherwise, very difficult to quote and reply in the original thread. Have to go searching for that post in the appropriate thread. Too hard. And so I (being my lazy self) did not bother.

 

[Fact Checking]

Tesla also brought about 6k of 2018 Model 3 production into Q1 as inventory. Suspect that nearly all of these 2018 inventory cars have been flushed out. I'm thinking about 66k Model 3 deliveries +/-4k.

They made those 6k RWD inventory units at the end of December, to serve the North American market in January, without crowding out high ASP European and Chinese production.

They might carry a similar inventory into Q2 as well, to allocate Fremont's April production exclusively for the European and Chinese markets.

 

[Causalien]

Moderators' Choice: Posts of Particular Merit

This post is on the money. I, for my part, have been doing this on Seeking Alfalfa, while also correcting misinformed friends and family. I don't know how successful these efforts are, but I'm determined to try. (Media) perception can become reality. Recall the story of Fairfax Financial and other short and distort attacks. We, as investors, cannot be passive and naively believe that truth will win in the end. Remember, in WW2, Hitler was able to convince the masses that what he was doing to the Jews was okay. That is the scary part. Not Hitler, but how he was able to influence the people by media. Climate change deniers and cigarette advocates recognize this power. People who know better cannot just sit idly by, they have to fight the FUD and lies.

You guys go ahead. I need to catch a breath. Been fighting this misinformation too long.

 

[Krugerrand]

Wonder what the top three configs are.

And that ruins the Jack.

 

[Fact Checking]

If production was running smoothly through January, they may well have seen that 100K total units was possible and set that as the marching order.

There were four days in January when Fremont was shut down: January 1,11-13. My guess is that the latter 3 days was related to the EU parts supply hick-up Elon alluded to recently.

So 100k production is a "maybe", with significant doubts attached, especially if we are bullish, which tends to be a source unjustified optimism.

 

[Krugerrand]

See that is were your wrong. I asked my dog about Tesla production and delivery numbers and he gave me the side eye and said..."dude they can't build them fast enough...sell everyone they make...what's the big deal"
I had to agree it was a dumb question.

Pfft! A cat wouldn’t even acknowledge the question had been asked in the first place.

 

[Fact Checking]

more... tweeted to Tom Randall. note that at the bottom of my tweet is Visible Alpha Insight (Tom's data source as plainly stated in today's article) tweet from earlier today reflecting that their consensus S/X production estimate is 21k.

View attachment 392091

link to tweet above if anyone wants to retweet, like, and/or comment.

will not post this kind of stuff on this thread when weekend is over (plan to create a new separate thread for this, but, want to write up an explanatory intro).

Your link wasn't clickable, here's your tweet as a link:

vistacruiser7 on Twitter

"@tsrandall Confusion re your Bloomberg story today. Visible Alpha (VA) has consensus S/X production at 21K for Q1. Your report cited VA as data source but said avg S/X prod est 26.9k. Apparent this is due to your leaving out most of VA's data set. A 25+% impact, wondering why?"​

Production of 26.9k is WAY too high: in Q1'18 they made 22k units, and in Q1'19 (January) they stopped selling the most popular model, the 75D, which was about 50% of demand - plus they reduced S/X production shifts from 3 to 2, with some layoffs as well. Netherlands and Norway S/X deliveries numbers are very low, a fraction of the Q1'18 numbers.

Some S/X expectations are as low as 15k units in Q1.

 

[Tslynk67]

Interesting to note that Bloomberg have pulled their Q1 estimate from their tracker today...

Also the reported VIN's above the international VIN's is interesting - I assume the number series is the same, even though maybe not contiguous, but it does hint at quite some deliveries in NA.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

 

[Fact Checking]

I think AlphaHat is throwing out inaccurate round numbers for ship loadings, and that it's low. Not sure how low, but a good guess would be 40K - 50K cars sent overseas.

I've seen speculation that it was 2,500 Model 3's and 700 S/X per ship: 3,200 total.

The problem with very high shipment expectations is:

• Q1 S/X registrations are awfully low in Norway and in the Netherlands - the biggest European markets where we can see registrations immediately.
• January had 4 shutdown days in Fremont according to Alpha Hat, which reduced production.
• Long Range AWD and Performance configurations take more time to assemble - the 6k/week peak in December was achieved with Medium Range RWD units.

So it's all a bit of a mystery and I wouldn't be surprised by bearish and bullish outcomes either.

 

[SteveG3]

They made those 6k RWD inventory units at the end of December, to serve the North American market in January, without crowding out high ASP European and Chinese production.

They might carry a similar inventory into Q2 as well, to allocate Fremont's April production exclusively for the European and Chinese markets.

My understanding is that Bloomberg averages their number over the full 13 weeks of the quarter, ignoring the nuance of factory halts, sometimes an entire week. Relevant point, baked into by 66k +/- 4k figure is that 80-90% of the production the final week of March will not be delivered, which is very likely US spec production that will cary over to Q2. Sticking with 66k +/-4k estimate.

 

[Tslynk67]

View attachment 392061 I apologize if this is already posted but the overtaking by model 3 in Europe is amazing. Netherlands, Norway and Spain data. Missing last couple days. From EV registration statistics for The Netherlands, Norway and Spain

Now just imagine, for one moment, that the red line, as of today, is the ongoing demand and trend

OK, it's a bit too optimistic, perhaps, but I would imagine that it's somewhere between current rate and the (now) following pack. This graphic is going to be quite something to see end of the year!

 

[Fact Checking]

Interesting to note that Bloomberg have pulled their Q1 estimate from their tracker today...

Also the reported VIN's above the international VIN's is interesting - I assume the number series is the same, even though maybe not contiguous, but it does hint at quite some deliveries in NA.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

View attachment 392131

View attachment 392133

I've been saving the numbers, 79,477 was Bloomberg's last estimate.

I cannot fault Tom Randall for chickening out: he already tweaked the model once because he thought the estimate was too high, if yesterday's new VIN registrations brought the Bloomberg estimate above 80k then he'd set himself up for a spectacular miss if Tesla ends up reporting ~65k production as Wall Street is expecting, with very little to gain.

Better to skip this quarter, publish uncertainties and a lower estimate like he did recently, and recalibrate the model for Q2.

 

[Tslynk67]

more... tweeted to Tom Randall. note that at the bottom of my tweet is Visible Alpha Insight (Tom's data source as plainly stated in today's article) tweet from earlier today reflecting that their consensus S/X production estimate is 21k.

View attachment 392091

link to tweet above if anyone wants to retweet, like, and/or comment.

will not post this kind of stuff on this thread when weekend is over (plan to create a new separate thread for this, but, want to write up an explanatory intro).

Steve, you need to give the tweet link each time se we can easily jump in.

Same applied to all here - post a screenshot for those that just want to see, put the URL too.

 

[SteveG3]

(...snip)

Production of 26.9k is WAY too high: in Q1'18 they made 22k units, and in Q1'19 (January) they stopped selling the most popular model, the 75D, which was about 50% of demand - plus they reduced S/X production shifts from 3 to 2, with some layoffs as well. Netherlands and Norway S/X deliveries numbers are very low, a fraction of the Q1'18 numbers.

Some S/X expectations are as low as 15k units in Q1.

yes, WAY to high. That is the point. The tweet you were looking up was a follow up to earlier tweets imploring Randall to investigate how the set of analysts in the avg Q1 S/X production forecast he cited could have arrived at a figure, 26.9k, which is at or near record quarterly S/X production, when Tesla explicitly and publicly told us all months ago that for Q1 they would drop from 3 shifts for S/X production to 2.

 

[SteveG3]

Steve, you need to give the tweet link each time se we can easily jump in.

Same applied to all here - post a screenshot for those that just want to see, put the URL too.

Thanks. Was my intent, as you can see from what I wrote, but, after posting image must of forgot to post the link itself.

Here's a repost of the image and then a link below to the tweet. Here I retweeted the Visible Alpha Insight's tweet with a message to Tom. Note the VAI tweet in the image below indicates their full data set for S/X production averaged to 21k, quite different than the 26.9k figure in Tom's article Saturday that was actually only based on 4 analysts from within VAI's data set.

vistacruiser7 on Twitter

 

[SteveG3]

You guys go ahead. I need to catch a breath. Been fighting this misinformation too long.

Oh I don't doubt that.

In fact, the fundamental point I was trying to get across in the post Antares Nebula just linked is that it is exhausting and inefficient the way we have been trying to rebut misinformation/FUD. I put some effort into explaining why what we've been doing is a draining and not very effective response to the tools being used for the FUD effort. I also included my suggestion of a far more efficient and impactful approach.

 

[Artful Dodger]

There were four days in January when Fremont was shut down: January 1,11-13. My guess is that the latter 3 days was related to the EU parts supply hick-up Elon alluded to recently.

So 100k production is a "maybe", with significant doubts attached, especially if we are bullish, which tends to be a source unjustified optimism.

When including State Holidays, there were 6 days with no Model 3 production in 2019Q1 (this leaves 84 days with production):

2019 California State Holidays:

Q1:

• Tuesday, January 1 New Year's Day.
• Monday, January 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
• Monday, February 18 Presidents' Day.

Q2:

• Monday, April 1 Cesar Chavez Day**
• Monday, May 27 Memorial Day.

Q3:

• Thursday, July 4 Independence Day.
• Monday, September 2 Labor Day.

Q4:

• Monday, November 11 Veterans Day
• Wednesday, December 25 Christmas Day

**When a holiday falls on a Sunday, the holiday is observed on the following Monday.

Also note that tomorrow, Mon Apr 1st, is a holiday in California. This could delay the P&D report by a day.

 

[Tslynk67]

Maybe then the media and shorts did Tesla a favor. Creating the perception that Tesla and EVs were a horrible business, which resulted in competitors delaying their plans. Whereas in reality, consumers are eager to buy the cars. That would be so funny!

Not funny for the future of our kids though