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

[SOULPEDL]

Good luck everyone!

 

[MP3Mike]

There's another comment elsewhere that they recognized ~300M in revenue for FSD in Q4, and plan to recogize ~$1B in the next 12 months.

They included a footnote that they expect to recognize $1B in FSD revenue in 2023.

No, they don't say in the next 12 months, or in 2023. They just say over time, with no bounds:

 

[Mengy]

I have a THEORY for the sandbagging 1.8m production number for 2023.

Please note, this is just my reading of the tea-leaves, but it fits the limited and available data we have.

In a nutshell - Project Highland for the Model 3.

Why? Tesla is going to take one or more lines in Fremont offline and completely retool them, including for casting. This is a major rework, which will cause months of lost production from each line that goes offline for the rework to a casted production line. Each line will also be slow to spool back up.

In the end, this will result in a lower cost Model 3, with higher customer demand, and higher overall production capacity.


The loss in 3 production will be offset by increased ramps from Austin and Berlin on the Y.

I thought about this too. Switching the M3 over to the new Highland version across all factories would certainly put a dent in production and deliveries for the year. We know it's coming, but we don't know how they plan to roll it out. If they switch all at once then this could make 1.8 million for the year a possibility.

Once implemented though it would certainly improve margins on the M3.

 

[SOULPEDL]

No, they don't say in the next 12 months. They just say over time:

View attachment 899978

Over time should be much higher. FSD comes with every car and the take rate increases. They were just warming up on the revenue side I believe.

 

[15Peter20]

 

[Artful Dodger]

All-time record Pre-Market Volume for TSLA this morning:

15.3M shares vs 13.7M shares previously. That's an 11.3% increase in the record high volume.



Cheers!

 

[unk45]

I have a THEORY for the sandbagging 1.8m production number for 2023.

Please note, this is just my reading of the tea-leaves, but it fits the limited and available data we have.

In a nutshell - Project Highland for the Model 3.

Why? Tesla is going to take one or more lines in Fremont offline and completely retool them, including for casting. This is a major rework, which will cause months of lost production from each line that goes offline for the rework to a casted production line. Each line will also be slow to spool back up.

In the end, this will result in a lower cost Model 3, with higher customer demand, and higher overall production capacity.


The loss in 3 production will be offset by increased ramps from Austin and Berlin on the Y.

Some of us think there is more than that, but, even so, whatever Project Highland turns out to be I think you're largely correct for 2023. Until the March 1st Investor day we'll probably hear more rumors, but that day should be epic! Elon suggested there would be something 'commercial vehicle' which could be one or several of the ones we've suggested here. Given all the suggestions and what we know, I will be surprised if there will not be some platform news leading to a number of vehicles. We've been sneaking up to that for a few years, with S&X, 3&Y, but not yet a near simultaneous family of vehicles. It certainly seeks that 2024 will see several options using the newly perfected 4680 production lines.

This is speculation, of course, but 2024 should be approaching 2,000,000 vehicles, and at that level more diverse customer-facing options that have deeply common technology and parts seems the logical path forward. Concurrently, if a Mexico GF is announced we also will see expansion into Central and South America, where both smaller commercial and smaller consumer vehicles dominate.

 

[jerry33]

Well, that was JUST the Pre-Market after all.

What are you, greedy?

No, I'm like the Ukraine. I just want to recover the lost territory.

 

[SOULPEDL]

My wounded got some first aid, maybe even lives!
I already lost 3 off the front lines, no more!
These have something in them I feel - Post Investor Day driven.

 

[bkp_duke]

Some of us think there is more than that, but, even so, whatever Project Highland turns out to be I think you're largely correct for 2023. Until the March 1st Investor day we'll probably hear more rumors, but that day should be epic! Elon suggested there would be something 'commercial vehicle' which could be one or several of the ones we've suggested here. Given all the suggestions and what we know, I will be surprised if there will not be some platform news leading to a number of vehicles. We've been sneaking up to that for a few years, with S&X, 3&Y, but not yet a near simultaneous family of vehicles. It certainly seeks that 2024 will see several options using the newly perfected 4680 production lines.

This is speculation, of course, but 2024 should be approaching 2,000,000 vehicles, and at that level more diverse customer-facing options that have deeply common technology and parts seems the logical path forward. Concurrently, if a Mexico GF is announced we also will see expansion into Central and South America, where both smaller commercial and smaller consumer vehicles dominate.

I agree about a product line-up expansion. I've got more theories for the sandbagging as well, but I'm holding them close to my vest until I get some data (Mar 1?).

 

[2daMoon]

My wounded got some first aid, maybe even lives!
I already lost 3 off the front lines, no more!
These have something in them I feel - Post Investor Day driven.

View attachment 899979

Best wishes for a speedy recovery!

 

[unk45]

FYI:

"The term cost of funds refers to how much banks and financial institutions spend in order to acquire money to lend to their customers. Put simply, the cost of funds refers to the interest rate banks must pay when they borrow from a Federal Reserve bank."​

Mar 21, 2022​

COF is the stock symbol of Capital One. I failed to make that clear, although I thought my comments would have been obvious, but it was my neglect. It's time for me to do an edit. Thanks .

 

[Artful Dodger]

This is speculation, of course, but 2024 should be approaching 2,500,000 vehicles

FTFY.

Cheers!

 

[Hiline]

Over time should be much higher. FSD comes with every car and the take rate increases. They were just warming up on the revenue side I believe.

In a few years once FSD is perfected and given as a trial to every single new owner, people are going to see how life changing it is and Tesla is going to have an entire new market to itself worth a few hundred billion dollars.

 

[EVMeister]

Yahoo Finance still shows the the stock graph as red. Seems to draw it red if it drops below the opening price instead of looking at the previous closing price. Does Yahoo know how stocks work?

 

[Pezpunk]

I'm a little surprised at wall street's unsubdued reaction to the earnings call. Personally i heard as many questions as answers. I thought it was a decidedly mixed bag. I'm an optimist so i'll start with the cons, and end on a positive note with the pros:

Cons:

• Cybertruck volume production in 2024 at the earliest (and I think that's optimistic based on its radical design and where they are in the process).
• 4680 volume production is still not close.
• Margins will probably tighten further.
• Sales in China do not appear to be growing quarter over quarter.
• Next-gen FSD will not be retrofittable to existing cars (so much for the whole "Teslas will become appreciating assets" line)
• Primary focus seems to be on maintaining the short-term margin and cash numbers rather than R&D (and to a lesser extent, service). I would prefer Tesla were less worried about Wall Street's reactions quarter to quarter, and made fewer choices based on ruthless cost cutting and more choices based on providing a superior product to the market.
• Solar? Do we still do that? Looking at P&L it looks like Solar makes up less than 1% of profit and is low margin at best, and its growth is anemic. Hard to glean specifics since it's lumped in with Energy Storage on several charts, which is doing much better.

Pros:

• Immediate bottom line still extraordinarily healthy in terms of free cash flow, cash on hand, and margins relative to the industry.
• Model 3 and Model Y are crushing it everywhere around the world.
• Solid if conservative guidance of 1.8 million units (which Elon immediately and stupidly torpedoed by resetting expectations to 2 million -- there was no benefit in doing so ... sorry i know this is supposed to be the positive portion of the post)
• Energy storage revenue is growing at a very healthy rate, even faster than Auto, and looks like it will continue to do so.

So like I said, kind of a mixed bag. Obviously I'm happy that Wall Street is happy, but I definitely have my own set of serious risks and questions in my personal valuation of the company that I would love to see addressed somehow. I know we're all banking on future product reveal events to clear some of these up. We shall see.

 

[SOULPEDL]

Is this typical? Says it was updated this AM.
Are the lights on?

 

[snellenr]

This is not been my experience at all. Their proprietary approach to service has only caused delays and incompetence. They are finally coming next week, allegedly, because it usually gets pushed to fix my passenger restraint system. The price has gone up $20 since last fall when they didn’t have the parts.

This is the service appointment for my girlfriends Tesla, to come and flip the cabin view camera. It’s amazing that this was not caught during Tesla’s QA. We did not know till the new in cabin view was available on the app. I’m sure it didn’t affect the safety score.

A normal person would try to schedule both service visits at the same time. Since they are coming to the same house twice in a week. Not sure how I can do this with Tesla.



View attachment 899961
View attachment 899962

Just add additional issues to the initial post as a comment using that icon on bottom right. Just did that - primary issue was about a "Power Limited" alert, then added a comment asking them to look into a separate issue regarding windows.

 

[larmor]

Some of us think there is more than that, but, even so, whatever Project Highland turns out to be I think you're largely correct for 2023. Until the March 1st Investor day we'll probably hear more rumors, but that day should be epic! Elon suggested there would be something 'commercial vehicle' which could be one or several of the ones we've suggested here. Given all the suggestions and what we know, I will be surprised if there will not be some platform news leading to a number of vehicles. We've been sneaking up to that for a few years, with S&X, 3&Y, but not yet a near simultaneous family of vehicles. It certainly seeks that 2024 will see several options using the newly perfected 4680 production lines.

This is speculation, of course, but 2024 should be approaching 2,000,000 vehicles, and at that level more diverse customer-facing options that have deeply common technology and parts seems the logical path forward. Concurrently, if a Mexico GF is announced we also will see expansion into Central and South America, where both smaller commercial and smaller consumer vehicles dominate.

Also the new unannounced robotaxi model 2 what have you will be in volume equal to the production of all other cars so that puts it at 1.3 to 1.8 million in volume.

 

[jerry33]

Yahoo Finance still shows the the stock graph as red. Seems to draw it red if it drops below the opening price instead of looking at the previous closing price. Does Yahoo know how stocks work?

I've never seen any evidence of it.