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

[Sofie]

One really wonders who's selling right now? Seems to me that most of the retail on margin already capitulated, likely most retail left are early investors who still see a strong return on their initial investment

TBH, I think you need to be brave, or stupid, to short down here, the trade must be very crowded indeed. However, I think the primary mechanism recently has been the massive put selling every week, forcing the MM's to hedge and sell stock. Put selling is less risky than short-selling shares, so they can be bolder

But again, why sell short here? People and institutions primarily trade to make profits, the profit on the downside seems severely limited at this price-point, makes no sense. I do wonder if it's not covertly backed by some nefarious deep-pockets - not that the SP going low will necessarily hurt the company, but it froments anger with shareholderst. It's one of my pet theories that they keep forcing the price down to try to get Elon ousted from the company. I may be in cloud-cuckoo land, but it's one of the few reasons I can think for this continual selling, along with the barrage of FUD levelled at home (some of which he has Brough own himself, of course)

But it also might just be the Hedgies - after all there were a lot of >2 years LEAPS sold during the spilt and S&P run-ups that would be worth a fortune over the last few months, huge motivation to kill the SP and wipe them all out

And now, with the puts piling-up, maybe it's time to harvest those...?

Also we must note that many shareholders have been converting shares to LEAPS recently, that will surely put upward price-pressure on the stock over time

But until we get some kind of positive news, good earnings, new models, refreshes, CT order page at competitive prices, etc., it's hard to see a recovery... the silence from Tesla is quite deafening

Hard to imagine it going lower than $100 but I guess never know in this market

 

[Artful Dodger]

Leo is buying

https://twitter.com/x/status/1611004987743797252

100K shares bought by Leo isn't nearly enough to account for that dark pool transaction. That was 51M shares traded.

 

[Usain]

If you go back to my posts on this in the last couple of days you'll find my personal view as being that in the utility market (rephrased):
- Tesla mostly winning in USA;
- China winning entirely in China;
- scaredy-cat "won't buy China" customers elsewhere mostly buying Tesla (if "you never got sacked for buying IBM" fear is great enough), or buying China LFP assembled by Western integrators (if price a concern);
- China winning much (but not all) of the rest.

If you go back a year or two (I cannot recall which) in my end-year battery numbers I pointed out that at the time Tesla was winning some phenomenal number (I forget exactly what, something like 80%) of the utility market. Given the above that has clearly changed very markedly. An example is the 1.2 GW of completed utility storage in just the last few days in China alone. The implication is that in market % terms Tesla has lost ground, even if in absolute terms it has increased utility scale output.

That other product is also coming out of factories. A factory to build utility scale containers and stuff them with LFP is not exactly a high tech factory. Sheesh, even I had such a factory back in the day making containerised storage/etc. The hardest bit is getting a good supply of LFP going in the door, which these folks all clearly have.

(I struggle to understand what is going on in the New York factory such that Lathrop is necessary)

So Tesla is getting a smaller slice of a growing pie. I can live with that.

So how big is the pie? Elon called it "quasi-infinite". I can live with that too.

 

[StealthP3D]

If we really want to eliminate any form of bias and go strictly with science, there are multiple factors that determine fatality (or lack thereof) in a crash. To include speed/angle/surface/position of vehicle upon impact/rollover or lack of/, etc.

Make/model is not the sole factor. Scientifically speaking, of course. Its always easy to see a very bad accident aftermath and go "the only reason those persons survived is because the make/model of the vehicle", but scientifically speaking, its deeper than that.

So true! This is proof the media understands there is no point in singling out the make/model of the unfortunate vehicle!

Following the same reasoning, the brand of the car involved in a car fire should always be in national headlines if it's a Tesla because we wouldn't want any bias to creep in! Here, there was no fire, and everyone lived, so there was nothing compelling about mentioning the brand. Is that how you see it too? /s

 

[NicoV]

Then go SolarEdge.

Worse specs. IP55, operating temperature only to -10 degrees. Not acceptable in my climate for outdoor installation. That Powerwall is looking better and better.

 

[Mengy]

100K shares bought by Leo isn't nearly enough to account for that dark pool transaction. That was 51M shares traded.

Maybe it's Buffett finally buying TSLA? He did sell all of his BYD a bit ago....

 

[Ogre]

Worse specs. IP55, operating temperature only to -10 degrees. Not acceptable in my climate for outdoor installation. That Powerwall is looking better and better.

Does this conversation really belong in this thread?

I think we all get that there is competition for Powerwall, but I really don’t think we need to hash out this level of detail in the investor thread.

 

[Curt Renz]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1611066362876534789

Investing.com - 2:04 pm EST:
Tesla will continue to grow due to global regulations — Edward Jones

 

[NicoV]

Does this conversation really belong in this thread?

I think we all get that there is competition for Powerwall, but I really don’t think we need to hash out this level of detail in the investor thread.

I agree. My last message on his topic.

 

[mongo]

FYI it is January 5th Noon Central. Tesla website still makes no mention of tax credits for Model 3 or Model Y LR 7 seater.

For Y, the estimated delivery window straddles the March Treasury update.
They could update Electric Vehicle & Solar Incentives | Tesla Support though.

 

[insaneoctane]

Good analysis here:

What is a fair P/E ratio for Tesla?

Earnings growth and earnings resilience

fallacyalarm.substack.com

Finally got around to reading this. I'd highly recommend any investor looking for some non-TMC inspired investment justification give it a read. It seemed well thought out and written. Thank you for the link @MikeC

 

[loquitur]

A number of Chinese cell manufacturers will be building new factories in the North America and Europe.

[....]

Due to the no-battery-materials-provided-by-anyone-owned-or-controlled-by-a-foreign-entity-of-concern clause in the IRA, this has to be done very carefully in the US.

The way Ford and CATL are attempting such is that Ford will own 100% of a US factory while CATL
uses their own intellectual property (IP) to keep LFP cell production knowledge close, basically working as a subcontractor. The raw materials must be extracted/refined by US trade-friendly entities. See:

Ford, China's CATL considering building U.S. battery plant -Bloomberg

Ford Motor Co and China's Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd (CATL) are considering building a battery plant in Michigan or Virginia to reap tax benefits without treading on Sino-U.S. political sensitivities, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.

www.reuters.com

Will this arrangement be "arms-length" enough to fly with the feds? If not, then (for autos but not storage, for now), the other way is to have LFP cells engineered from scratch using expired patents & different trade secrets.

Tesla remains mum. Perhaps there's something arising from Canadian partners associated with
Prof. Jeff Dahn's work, which is not even LFP-based according to their patents.

 

[StealthP3D]

Except other OEMs don't have this issue. I'll post more details later ... But what is happening sees clear to me.

Like in any recession, Chinese consumers are switching to lower priced cars from BYD.

Tesla needs lower priced models / trims. Tesla is absolutely in a unique place in China - high volume &high price. See Tesla Daily from a few days ago where he showed the graph of volume vs price for various models.

Tesla has such strong margins in China that their "lower cost models" that you yearn for are the models they are already selling. They continue to get cheaper to build. But they will only lower prices as far as necessary to move 100% of production into consumers hands. They don't care if that consumer is in China, Australia or elsewhere, they will send them where it makes the most sense from a dollars and cents perspective. If that means the sales ratio of cars sold outside of China increases for a quarter or two, or even as an on-going trend, that's OK as long as it improves the bottom line while allowing them to continue ramping production higher.

As it has been pointed out, BYD has a better presence in China over a greater geographical area. If Tesla ships more cars to other countries, then BYD will take up some of the slack. Also, BYD sells a lot of gas hybrids whose subsidies were ending at the end of 2022 so that likely incentivized a rush of last-minute gas hybrid sales even in the face of regional COVID impacts

The actual supply and demand situation at any given moment is always complex, shaped by many constantly moving factors, and I don't claim to be able to perfectly model everything we see, but it does make me sad to observe how easily some Tesla investors are swayed by flimsy, but convenient, narratives constructed from things that are quite tenuous when not viewed in isolation, things pushed repeatedly by Tesla detractors, while ignoring all the evidence to the contrary.

A simple lie is an easier sell than a complicated truth. It's just sad that people don't have a bit more discrimination. I feel sorry for people who believe the Tesla growth story in China is hitting a local maximum when there is so much evidence to the contrary. China is nowhere near saturated with Tesla sales.

I predict Tesla will sell record numbers of EV's in China in 2023, many more than in 2022 (which was also a record year). There is no end in sight yet.

 

[StealthP3D]

More info: Mercedes launching new EV charging network; to kick off in North America this year

Partnering with Chargepoint (so they might actually work, unlike EA).

2,500 stalls at 400 sites within 4 years. So about 6 stalls per site on average. versus Tesla's (US numbers only): 17,400 stalls at 1630 sites (10 stalls/site).

Tesla started their Supercharger Network buildout in California. I think Mercedes will need a lot of stations up and down Long Island and between Manhattan and Martha's Vinyards. Also, the corridor to Florida. That will allocate most of their 400 locations. /s

 

[ZeApelido]

@danahull has a piece of Tesla investors lamenting the company's "sneaky" notifying of the shareholder meeting date (in May) and deadline to submit proposals (2 weeks ago).

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

Ironically one of the main subjects of the story is @KarenRei and her motion to have the board make a key-man risk report.

This is funny to me, because about 4 years ago Karen was helping me come up with faked emails to send Dana to expose her.

How times have changed!

 

[Max Plaid]

Auntie Cathie or Uncle Leo?

View attachment 892642

14:53 spike that hardly moved the price up at all, actually it fell after that

 

[Captkerosene]

Waiting for somebody to do an analysis on the new lithium refinery. Any "experts" out there?

Just spit-balling here but if the IRA requires non-China battery materials and China refines close to all of the lithium out there ... then doesn't our new plant represent a huge opportunity?

This project seems to have better "durable competitive advantages" to me than assembling Chinese made grid storage batteries. Maybe a domestic/non-China lithium supply in the missing piece to IRA compliant battery production for Tesla going forward?

Elon seems very excited about lithium refining and he's qualified to make reasonable guesses about future margins.

 

[growler23]

Ahhh yes, SolarEdge - the company that made the inverters for my brother’s 20kw ground mount system in the Midwest. The only thing positive about that system at the moment is that he used 2 arrays, 2 inverters, and 2 batteries, because when only one of the SolarEdge inverters has an issue at least he still has 50% production. But sometimes both halves are down because both inverters are having issues. The technicians seemed pleased that it was the more recent version of inverters because the previous generation was very problematic and replacements were not easily available according to them. But the newer version my brother has are failing routinely too, and this issue has gone on for 7 months now without full inverter replacement yet. Our Tesla solar project manager is aware of similar SolarEdge issues across the Southeast US and seemed fairly certain months ago that things would proceed just as troublesome and unresolved as the have……and all the while SolarEdge is continuing to provide inverters for new installs while customers with problematic systems can’t seem to get replacements from what we have observed and been told. We were advised to ask the install company for a trade in credit of the LG batteries and SolarEdge inverters towards Powerwalls - which are now readily available in my brothers vicinity, but we have received no response. And all the while the warranty and the efficiency of production of the solar panels continues to grow smaller with age. Thanks for the reminder to inquire again regarding trading the SolarEdge inverters in for any other brand they can possibly find while trying to find a solar project attorney that works on commission that we can use if this isn’t resolved asap.

The rule of digging holes is stop digging so the hole doesn’t get bigger, which is what SolarEdge is doing in my opinion and our installers opinion by not addressing these failures while continuing to provide new installs. But I am certain this is not unique to SolarEdge. The IRA is waiving a lot of money at the solar industry, and some will try to respond in ways that exceed their means. I don’t see this with Tesla. Nor have I spoken with anyone else who does. They ramped slower than all of us hoped. But the did so in a manner that has them well prepared with the superior products for 2023 and the IRA. I appreciate the tempering of expectations by @petit_bateau for Tesla Energy. I actually under-represented mine yesterday. I don’t just expect Tesla to become the largest company in the world, I see a path for them to become the largest energy provider as well.

Spoiler: OT - personal experience with LG and SolarEdge

A little concerned about this ... my personal experience:
Bought a house recently. Former owners were obviously big into solar and battery. They had originally gone with LG house backup batteries, which failed, and were replaced by other LG batteries, which failed, and were replaced... eventually with a Powerwall.
My inverters are SolarEdge - former owners did mention one of them having had problems and been replaced. Recently, our solar contractor (still under warranty apparently) came out and replaced some sort of comm modules that those inverters used, if I understood right.
I appreciate hearing your experience in this, anyway. Will eye the existing inverters with suspicion but not much else I can do here.

 

[coolmanfever]

Retail traders dumping stocks en masse including record amounts of Tesla

Retail traders unloaded $3.1 billion in assets this past week, making it the third worst week of net selling in history, according to JPMorgan.

www.cnbc.com

Are you guys dumping tsla stocks?

 

[elasalle]

Retail traders dumping stocks en masse including record amounts of Tesla

Retail traders unloaded $3.1 billion in assets this past week, making it the third worst week of net selling in history, according to JPMorgan.

www.cnbc.com

Are you guys dumping tsla stocks?

those who got MC'd ..

I want to buy
But not sure if the end is nigh
So will wait, till I give it another try ..
will wait till I give it another try ...

+ Fed CPI next week