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

[Silent Ludicrosy]

I am definitely worried about the Maxwell deal. I believe it won't go through unless the deal terms are changed *or* Tesla & Maxwell run a more aggressive campaign to Maxwell stockholders to get them to tender.

I bought a few shares of Maxwell last month. I will gladly tender but haven’t received any communications about tendering (I’m using TD Ameritrade).

 

[WarpedOne]

Ppl selling on such blatant BS do not deserve a single cent of profits ...

Looking forward to Tesla going private...

 

[heltok]

It’s interesting how different people with different prior beliefs can analyze the same text so differently. Either Panasonic has given up on Tesla or Tesla has found a better way of increasing producting requiring less capital. Or something else. What matter is the prior belief, given that you can always find a way to interpret any new info however you want. Very dangerous, but also a great opportunity to make money on other people being more wrong than you! Best of luck guys, place your bets and see whomever was less wrong become rewarded!

 

[Krugerrand]

Service center locations are a valid complaint, and are the #1 reason why people decide not to get Teslas in this area, but come on, 100 miles would be close enough. My nearest is more like 230 miles away, and it's too far. People here would be fine with 100 miles away.

I thought the number #1 reason was the billboard in your front lawn that says ‘Don’t buy a Tesla! Call 555-5555 for more information!’ At which point you exhaustively explain to them about the abysmal service coverage.

 

[elasalle]

I bought a few shares of Maxwell last month. I will gladly tender but haven’t received any communications about tendering (I’m using TD Ameritrade).

Same here. For proxy votes I always get the email, but never received anything for tendering.

 

[FreqFlyer]

"We will of course continue to make new investments in Gigafactory 1, as needed," a Tesla spokesman said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg News on Thursday. "However, we think there is far more output to be gained from improving existing production equipment than was previously estimated."


Tesla Shares Fall on Conflicting Reports Over Japanese Battery Production

The whole MXL acquisition was rumored for their tech that allows production of batteries with less physical equipment. If that is true, then no, there is not a reason to expand the physical plant for future battery production. What I find interesting is that Y will be built within the present confines of GF1. Unless Tesla has learned from the M3 fiasco and found a way to assemble Y with less people and floor space.

 

[Don TLR]

WSJ trying to spin Catherine Woods comment..

irony of life on Twitter


@CGrantWSJ Cathie, did you just declare that you have access to insider information? Your statement was not an speculation, but endorsement of info not known to public! Remember you added to your position! Thoughts? $tslaq

 

[copyhacker]

"We will of course continue to make new investments in Gigafactory 1, as needed," a Tesla spokesman said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg News on Thursday. "However, we think there is far more output to be gained from improving existing production equipment than was previously estimated."

Media: Tesla will need to raise capital this year to support growth.

[stock drops]

Tesla: Actually, we're good, thanks.

Media: Tesla may not be currently planning to invest in further growth.

[stock drops]

 

[mongo]

The whole MXL acquisition was rumored for their tech that allows production of batteries with less physical equipment. If that is true, then no, there is not a reason to expand the physical plant for future battery production. What I find interesting is that Y will be built within the present confines of GF1. Unless Tesla has learned from the M3 fiasco and found a way to assemble Y with less people and floor space.

There is no reason Tesla can't add in the planned footprint of GF1 to create space for Y. As to new cell lines, they would want to install in parallel to not impact running production. If the lines are owned by Tesla, they would need to be on the Tesla side of the factory also.

 

[bhtooefr]

powerwall is 14kwh and $6700 . It is 75kwh for a long range m3. 75/14*6700 = $35892. I wound not say 4* higher?

So based on the Model 3 MR vs. LR, I believe the last time they were sold together, MR was $41,200, LR was $44,200, for $3000 of difference, for 16 kWh. And, not all of that difference was battery pricing, some was a lower-cost motor and a lower-end charger.

 

[winfield100]

Same here. For proxy votes I always get the email, but never received anything for tendering.

log onto your brokerage and if nothing is obvious, they should have a "Contact Us" link, choose "chat with a human" or "send secure message"

 

[Remus]

Stating the obvious makes one a troll? Really now... lets try for a moment to be serious.

Tesla is a company that has immense growth ambitions. Indications that those are changing and/or limited in any way should be taken seriously.

If indeed Tesla simply has enough cell production for the foreseeable future then things are fine, but the market's reaction is perfectly logical.

If that's obvious then the market won't be so volatile. Tesla has growth ambition v.s. it's valued based on it are two different things. Whether market reaction is logical that's your opinion where you provided no evidence.

You seems to have trouble with basic logic.

 

[Remus]

I don't have the source handy, but Audi said they had targeted 300 cars/day, but due to logistics issues (LG playing hardball negotiation) they were limited to 150 cars/day -- so while that is a couple of days of M3 production it is ~10 days of their production. I'm not sure when they started production, but that suggests that even at half-rate they are producing faster than they can sell.

If they did in fact break even at 600k sales volume then that suggests more than a decade to break even. Even if you go with their target 300/day that is still 6 years to break even. They would have to make and sell cars at a real rate to break even in any reasonable time frame. If their sales already can't keep up with essentially no production that does not bode well.

Regarded as an illusion sounds about right.

With LG playing critical role in several car makers EV projects, I wonder whether they will rise as the true competitor of Tesla, like Samsung is to Apple.

 

[printf42]

I am wondering if maybe Panasonic is not part of the Maxwell advancement. Not even a theory just a thought that went thru my head.

That’s a valid theory, remember Tesla bought some cell rollers lines for a Chinese vendor? Combine with Maxwell dry tech, Panasonic is out.
No wonder they are not getting more expansion contracts.
Tesla need their lines running for a while before that happens, so don’t want to break the news before Maxwell deal is done.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

I guess this Panasonic relationship is more contentuous than I estimated! FUD originating with a partner is a new one.

 

[aznt1217]

In re: Panasonic Rumor

I'm a little surprised that this would even be published. It's unsubstantiated and furthermore I really like Panasonic and Tesla's response. It's financially prudent. In fact if they weren't reviewing spend I'd be worried.

In the past couple years of hypergrowth they were scaling and spending like mad men just to break, fix, and catchup quarter after quarter.

I read the approach as follows:

- Assess spend and current assets on the ground
- Do we need to really invest more in capacity or can we make up for things in efficiency
- Now that we have a better picture of demand they can focus on allocation and scaling instead of just mega spending

People want the company to mature a little bit. Well here you have it folks.

For the record: I've actually done this in the past. Real life example:

CFO: How much are we spending on capex
Everybody on my team: Really not sure. We i nvest for growth
CFO: Go find out how much we are spending. Table optional projects and find ways to prevent waste aka make the dollars go further

Long story short. I ended up saving the company hundreds of millions and the first step was similar to what Tesla and Panasonic are doing

 

[VValleyEV]

Below is a draft of a comment to the WSJ article, thanks to input here. PLEASE let me know what you think and offer suggestions.

For now I would prefer to keep my subscription in place rather than just drop itt in protest. Here again is a link to the WSJ article:
Opinion | Get Ready for a Pileup, Tesla

First point in my response is to a claim in the article that driving BEVs doesn’t actually reduce emissions, we have known that for years bla bla, seemed like a good place to start.

————————
Lots of misinformation in this article. Let’s all be civil to each other and to Mr Jenkins.

1. Driving a BEV in the US does indeed save a lot in emissions, and the picture gets better every year, thanks to improvements in power plants, NOT just the hydroelectric ones. See: New Data Show Electric Vehicles Continue to Get Cleaner
2. Tesla is showing profits while growing sales 110% YOY, while ICE manufacturer sales have been declining globally since 2017. This even as tax incentives are phasing out, and data including official guidance show margins comfortably ahead of the original $7500 tax credit, which is $3750 this year and due to expire soon. BTW, the BEV incentives are a tiny fraction of our massive oil industry incentives. If you resent the BEV incentives as distorting the market, you should resent oil industry incentives much more. Lots of data available publicly on all these topics.
3. The McKinsey study cited by this piece came up with a $12k vehicle cost difference comparing BEVs to “comparable” ICE vehicles. While that may be true of the Chevy Bolt, I don’t believe this claim is remotely supportable for the Tesla Model 3. The 3 is designed to compete against mid-sized luxury sedans, and it does extremely well.
4. The very large BEV success stories in Europe are indeed helped by a variety of government incentives designed to reduce emissions. They are also helped by a much lower level of oil company incentives than we have here int his country. Is that a market distortion? Perhaps not, if there is a real cost to CO2 emissions that does not appear in the market. I would argue that we could benefit from adopting some of the ideas, and it wouldn’t have to mean some grim march to central planning and negative growth and stagnation of innovation etc etc. We can have innovation, growth, and free markets without choking on emissions. And if we really believe in a level playing field, we really need to stop subsidizing and incentivizing the fossil fuel industry.

———

Below is the comment I just posted to the WSJ Holman Jenkins opinion piece, and they accepted it. I had to shorten it to 1000 characters to fit within their comment quota size quota. Thanks for the comments here on my attempt to draft something coherent, and wow as someone noted what a cesspool that comment thread is..

Again the WSJ opinion piece link:
Opinion | Get Ready for a Pileup, Tesla

And my short comment, way too much work for almost certainly no effect, but perhaps a good exercise:

>>>>>>
Lots of misinformation in this article. Let’s all be civil to each other and to Mr Jenkins.


1. Driving a BEV in the US does indeed save a lot in emissions, and the picture gets better every year, thanks to improvements in power plants, NOT just the hydroelectric ones. See: New Data Show Electric Vehicles Continue to Get Cleaner


2. Tesla is showing profits while growing sales 110% YOY. ICE OEM profits are stagnating, with sales declining globally since 2017. This even as BEV tax incentives for Tesla are phasing out, with margins comfortably ahead of the incentives. BTW, the BEV incentives are a tiny fraction of our massive oil industry incentives.


3. Chevy Bolt appears to be manufactured at a loss. Tesla models are not.


4. The European higher BEV incentives and lower fossil fuel incentives are something we should consider emulating.


5. Here’s a great deep dive into the technology from an independent analyst:

>>>>>>>

 

[elasalle]

That’s a valid theory, remember Tesla bought some cell rollers lines for a Chinese vendor? Combine with Maxwell dry tech, Panasonic is out.
No wonder they are not getting more expansion contracts.
Tesla need their lines running for a while before that happens, so don’t want to break the news before Maxwell deal is done.

the TSLA/Panasonic partnership is not just for GF1, but also for GF2 (Buffalo), solar panels, roof etc. I think they have a good understanding.
I don't think TSLA will push out Panasonic just because they get MXWL, but just like with battery chemistry/research they will work with Panasonic in incorporating new technology to existing line.

The Panasonic stmt seems to suggest that they have caught up with current TSLA demand for 35GWh - but at the same time it looks like TSLA for some reason has not been able to suck up all the capacity available.

 

[tinm]

So last year, Tesla released Q1 2018 results on May 2, 2018.

This year they're releasing Q1 2019 results on April 24, 2019, two days after the AI / Autopilot / FSD event.

Any significance to this moving up of the schedule?

 

[anthonyj]

How is Tesla going to make a profit in Q2 with low S/X sales and they are practically giving them away, still?