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

[BornToFly]

I was starting to worry that all of Elon's tweets about Summon updates and Autopilot updates would get him into trouble for being "Material," but then I realized that the ANALists on CNBC value Autopilot at Zero, so we're good....

 

[SPadival]

Sure, there's a dozen. Tesla's already getting loans from Chinese banks.

If they wanted to issue stock (they don't), a direct rights issue (aka warrants dividend), which gives existing stockholders rights to buy more stock at a named price before a particular date, bypasses all the investment banks.

So does a "direct public offering" but I think Musk would prefer to reward existing stockholders.

As an aside, a rights issue sucks for the short-sellers *and* for brokerages which lend to short sellers, and possibly for people who lent stock to the short-sellers. It's like a dividend, where the dividend is in the form of an option/warrant/right to buy more shares (called "rights"). The person holding stock outright can just exercise the right, or can sell it. The brokerage ought to make the stock lender whole by buying rights on the open market to give to the lender in lieu of dividend, though I'm not sure whether they actually do that. I believe the short-seller has to actually buy the rights and hand them back to the brokerage to make them whole -- since rights are not normally borrowed or short-sold, they can't leave that position open.

If issued with a strike price below the stock's current market price (as is normal), the rights would immediately be worth the difference (plus a bit for option value), amounting to a dividend to existing stockholders, which could be set to be enough to compensate for dilution. The short-sellers would have to come up with this difference in value in *cash*. Existing stockholders who wanted to expand their shareholdings could execute the warrants; those who did not want to could

That's "renouncable" (tradeable) rights. I believe Tesla could even issue non-renouncable rights, which can't be exercised by anyone but the stock owner and can't be sold. This would cause a mini short squeeze because many people with shares lent out would recall their shares in order to use the rights.

Only catch is that rights for less than 1 share would not be issued. I *think* the company is required to pay the cash value out instead, but they might not be (it's been a while since I dealt with a rights offering.) Might be a problem if TSLA has a lot of really small shareholders. If they did a 1-for-100 rights issue, for example, every odd holding which didn't round to an exact multiple of 100 shares might have to have the value of the rights paid in cash, which might even exceed the capital raised by a rights issue if you weren't careful. On the other hand, it might be legal to only offer the rights to round lots and give nothing for odd lots -- it really has been a while since I've seen a rights offering.

Rights offerings are out of fashion. The idea behind them is to raise capital from your existing loyal shareholders, allowing them to retain their percentage interest in the business and rewarding them for their loyalty, instead of raising money from randos.

Thanks. I tweeted it to Elon

S Padival on Twitter

 

[AZRI11]

Right.

And we all know what an actually raging and deranged CEO looks like:

He is deranged, bought the L.A. Clippers for 2 Billion dollars.

 

[c041v]

It appears that @Fact Checking was on the right track as this post over in the Canada forum has a little bit more details:

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This all sounds rather like there was an issue with the staff, as suggested and not the lack of interest in Teslas in Western Canada. In any case, I’ll be at a test drive event tomorrow in Edmonton that is being put on by the Calgary team. I’ll see if I can find out anything.

 

[Singer3000]

Except that the 3 is not yet available globally, so peaked demand is impossible.

Of course it is possible, I’m surprised to see anyone agree with your statement. Saying demand is peaking doesn’t mean there’s no more demand. It means that overall across all markets there may be limited growth potential in demand for premium M3s. The first differential is approaching zero if you prefer.

Peak global demand for premium models may be somewhere around 5k per week. They were able to sell this many in North America alone with the initial demand burst but likely will not sell that many premium M3s in North America alone again. Once we are in steady state demand globally, then 5k per week LR vehicle deliveries would be a good result actually. The balance to get to 10k per week is then SR/SR+, with all vehicles having further margin upside from software sales.

Of you think about the question another way, when Tesla is at 10k per week production, we know that 3k per week from Shanghai are all standard range. So what proprorton of the 7k made at Fremont for America and Europe (and a lesssr extent China) will be long range? 5k from 7k sounds pretty good to me.

 

[SPadival]

EDIT: It is hard to watch this video and not come out of it feeling incredibly good about what Tesla is doing. Everyone feeling unsure about TSLA should do themselves a favor and watch this video. Seriously.

Media's reporting of your comments.
I
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EDIT: It is hard to watch this video

EDIT: @Antares Nebula .. Excellent suggestion.. tagged them all and more - Baron, Baillee & James Anderson, Gali. I wish Ron Baron had a twitter account.

S Padival on Twitter

 

[Antares Nebula]

Thanks. I tweeted it to Elon

S Padival on Twitter

Awesome!!!

@SPadival Another suggestion if I may, (re)tweet also to:

Cathie Wood (@CathieDWood) | Twitter
Ross Gerber (@GerberKawasaki) | Twitter
Loup Ventures (@LoupVentures) | Twitter

....and any other of the big Tesla investors. They would likely support it, as they all whole-heartedly support the idea of Tesla raising more money.

 

[Antares Nebula]

This.

The City of Stratford in Ontario, Canada announced a while back (like over a year or more) that they’d begun a five year/80 million project to set up the city as a testing grounds for autonomous cars.

We’ll change our cities, change the layout, change the signage, turn parking meters into chargers etc...

People always get stuck thinking in a static mode. Thinking the cars have to be programmed for everything as it is now rather than things changing from multiple sides and merging somewhere in the middle. Just as new homes and apartments and condos in certain cities now have to have electric charging capabilities or solar set ups, so too will cities change to meet new demands if its populace and the vehicles they drive.

Agree also. This will absolutely happen.

 

[Antares Nebula]

So, Options 101: Learned Lesson #3

- If your broker has an auto-sell facility, you may want to understand when it's triggered and how to disable it

So what happened today was that I put a buy order during pre-market for $272.5 strike and got it for $1.20 - seemed obvious to me that $TSLA would trade up today, and I was right. I figured that we'd gravitate to Max Pain and decided to leave the call to close and pocket the $250 was my best bet.

Imagine my surprise when at 17:13 local time, that's what 11:13 NYC?, I received a sell email for said option at the market rate of $1.65!!

So indeed my broker, unless you manually adapt it, sell calls on closure day at market value 17:00CET onwards.

At least I got $45 out of it, no wait, have to deduct the $20 buy and $20 sell fee = $15, still enough for a few beers...

...except that I still had the $307.5 call there from earlier in the week, which the also sold for $0.001 - with a $20 fee = net loss of $15

OK, it's not much loss, but would have been a nice little profit otherwise, if only I had paid a bit more attention.

And how stupid to force a sell on a call which is totally outside the money, that's surely just a scam, to collect money from the unwary = me.

Anyway, I learned a hell of a lot in this short, turbulent week. Has been fun!

Why did that 307.5 call sell? Did you put in an order that you forgot? Otherwise the broker should not have sold that call. It should have just expired worthless and then removed from your account overnight for no fee. That's the normal practice.

But, yes, expiring in the money calls will be executed Friday starting about 30 min or so before close, depending on the broker, unless you give specific instructions otherwise.

 

[RobStark]

He is deranged, bought the L.A. Clippers for 2 Billion dollars.

He outbid this lady for the Clippers.

 

[Artful Dodger]

I don't get it. Isn't it the judge's job to RULE of a case like this? It's like a school principal sending a victim and a bully into a back room telling them to "come to an agreement".

What am I missing here?

The judge was the mom saying "Don't make me stop this car".

 

[hacer]

...Peak global demand for premium models may be somewhere around 5k per week. They were able to sell this many in North America alone with the initial demand burst but likely will not sell that many premium M3s in North America alone again. ....

There are quite a few states where Tesla can't have stores, a few even where service centers are forbidden. There are large numbers of people in the U.S. who know virtually nothing about Tesla's cars (many don't even know they are made in the USA). Finally there is a huge numbers of people with completely false preconceptions about electric vehicles. You seem to think none of these things will ever change. I think that at least the last two will change as more and more Tesla's are driving around. Once all of those factors are eliminated then North America could easily have greater sustained demand for the premium M3 than was seen in Q4 of 2018.

 

[mongo]

I'd assume they would configure new module sizes to optimize the space, not use the existing Model 3 modules.

The issue is the structural ribs in the pack. 2170s wouldn't pack well in the available space. Tesla would need to redesign the structure with is a big part of the car's strength.

Might even explain why they put the effort into eliminating the bottom plate. If they have managed to shave 5mm, it provides a pathway to like for like pack replacement.

Having connections on the top only is a big complexity save. All cells are oriented the same way and connecting only reques access to one side.

 

[EVNow]

He is deranged, bought the L.A. Clippers for 2 Billion dollars.

He bought aQuantive for $6B and sold it later to Facebook for $100M.

Facebook buys Microsoft ad platform Atlas

And then there is the Nokia buy which was later written off costing $7.6B. Skype was $8.5B … not sure what it would be worth now.

Looks like $2B for Clippers isn't bad.
​

 

[Antares Nebula]

EDIT: @Antares Nebula .. Excellent suggestion.. tagged them all and more - Baron, Baillee & James Anderson, Gali. I wish Ron Baron had a twitter account.

S Padival on Twitter

That's what I'm talking about!!!

That's teamwork. Thank you @SPadival and @neroden !!

Maybe nothing happens, but at least we're trying. Same thing with the whole SEC contempt thing. TMC members meticulously pointing out the errors, here and on social media and even emailing Tesla/Elon (yours truly). Weeks later, Elon's defense almost mirroring it. Maybe coincidence, maybe not.

TMC and Tesla investors, customers, and fans coming together to fight the shorts and all the FUD, especially during the hard times, like this week, when the shorts and the media wanted to all but put us in the grave. We all can make a difference and contribute to the cause. Keep it up people!!

 

[AZRI11]

He bought aQuantive for $6B and sold it later to Facebook for $100M.

Facebook buys Microsoft ad platform Atlas

And then there is the Nokia buy which was later written off costing $7.6B. Skype was $8.5B … not sure what it would be worth now.

Looks like $2B for Clippers isn't bad.
​

Is he the big investor funding Mark b.s.?

 

[oneday]

I think they can handle the last <percentage point of FSD with remote pilots. As long as they can create an algorithm that knows when to hand it over to the remote pilots, if the AI can handle >99.9% of driving then +/-1000 remote pilots could control 1,000,000 cars when the AI doesn't know what to do.

The cars will of course learn from what the remote pilots do and the amount needed would decrease over time.

Works great in theory, don’t think that would be possible with current car hardware and certainly won’t work in areas with no cell signal, which is also where there are a lot of edge cases for FSD.

 

[Prunesquallor]

Tesla mobile can do most of the work. Trusted auto body shops can cover the rest. Local non tesla shop near where I live does some warranty work. I saw a Model X with FWD alignment issues being fixed under warranty. Tesla approved body shop in Warren R.I.

Same here. Got some minor body work done at local Tesla approved shop.

 

[BBone]

That's what I'm talking about!!!

That's teamwork. Thank you @SPadival and @neroden !!

Maybe nothing happens, but at least we're trying. Same thing with the whole SEC contempt thing. TMC members meticulously pointing out the errors, here and on social media and even emailing Tesla/Elon (yours truly). Weeks later, Elon's defense almost mirroring it. Maybe coincidence, maybe not.

TMC and Tesla investors, customers, and fans coming together to fight the shorts and all the FUD, especially during the hard times, like this week, when the shorts and the media wanted to all but put us in the grave. We all can make a difference and contribute to the cause. Keep it up people!!

Hey Antares. I really like your attitude. Keep everyone on the positive up and up my friend!

 

[scaesare]

The Model 3 has been out a while.

Have we had a single "F!re" report?

Not any pack fires that I can recall.

I wonder how much if this might be attributable to what appears to be intumescent goo employed in the Model 3 pack...