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

[Anstandswauwau]

You should really ask SpaceX to update their website:

Elon Musk

"Elon Musk leads Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), where he oversees the development and manufacturing of advanced rockets and spacecraft for missions to and beyond Earth orbit."​

Looks like 52-week lows turned this into Bash-Elon-Week. By most accounts Elon is much more involved with SpaceX's engineering and strategic decisions than many other CEOs. The whole reusable rockets idea wouldn't have happened without him.

I.e. you are just repeating the TSLAQ argument that tries to marginalize Elon's involvement with SpaceX, in an attempt to isolate him and pin only the failures on him, never credit him for successes. That's intellectually dishonest.

You do get the difference between "leading" in a visionary sense and running a business on a day-to-day basis (CEO), right?

I'm not marginalizing Elon's involvement in any way, all I do is suggesting a role that may fit Elon's skills better.

 

[schonelucht]

But that's what it came down on in the end, right? Influential shareholders indicated that they couldn't stay on board and keeping retail was more difficult as well than Elon imagined.

What other reasons were there other than whether shareholders wanted it?

For one, we still don't know how much funding was actually secured and how secure it really was.

 

[Fact Checking]

Yes, this is well known. Tesla captures the ITC tax credits in the very first months/years of the VIE and from then on it bleeds. The lifetime of these things is measured in decades.

So you are calling a cumulative cash benefit of $750m+ "bleeding", and proof for why the Solar City acquisition was a bad idea?

Oh, and you do this after Q4 and Q1, the two autumn-winter quarters with weak solar sales, right before Q2 where the VIEs will seasonally probably generate cash again?

Rather disingenuous arguments.

 

[Artful Dodger]

God (Zeus, Hercules, Groot, Oprah, Ryan Reynolds - whomever you follow) bless you!

Ooh, so close too! Wotan, mang!

Cheers!

 

[Dan Detweiler]

I am in bed from being punched one time too hard in Muay Thai. So there's nothing I can do but watch stock price.

That's what you get for eating Thai food. lol!

Dan

 

[Singer3000]

So you call a cumulative cash benefit of $750m+ "bleeding", and proof for why the Solar City acquisition was a bad idea?

Oh, and you do this after Q4 and Q1, the two autumn-winter quarters with weak solar sales, right before Q2 where the VIEs will seasonally probably generate cash again?

Rather disingenuous arguments.

Indeed. You could have said the same thing after Q1 2018. Even though over the year it generated $92m of net cashflow.

 

[W84M3]

You do get the difference between "leading" in a visionary sense and running a business on a day-to-day basis (CEO), right?

I'm not marginalizing Elon's involvement in any way, all I do is suggesting a role that may fit Elon's skills better.

Err... Elon is the founder, owner, CEO, CTO & lead designer of SpaceX... don't confuse it with COO (Gwynne)

 

[lklundin]

My guess is the Chinese government wants Tesla to buy the cells from Chinese suppliers.

Right.

Also, for as long as Tesla uses Cobalt in their cells (i.e. for the nearer term production), they get access to Chinese Cobalt, which by law cannot be exported.

 

[Fact Checking]

You do get the difference between "leading" in a visionary sense and running a business on a day-to-day basis (CEO), right?

Running day to day business is actually the COO's (Gwynne Shotwell's) role:

Chief operating officer - Wikipedia

"The chief operating officer (COO), also called the chief operations officer, is one of the highest-ranking executive positions in an organization, comprising part of the "C-Suite". The COO is responsible for the daily operation of the company,[1] and routinely reports to the highest-ranking executive, usually the chief executive officer (CEO).[2]"​

A CEO's primary role on the other hand is to lead and be visionary, among other things:

Chief executive officer - Wikipedia

"Typically, responsibilities include being a decision maker on strategy and other key policy issues, leader, manager, and executor. The communicator role can involve speaking to the press and the rest of the outside world, as well as to the organization's management and employees; the decision-making role involves high-level decisions about policy and strategy."​

The whole purpose of a COO is to offload the day-to-day management responsibilities from a CEO.

To suggest that Elon isn't the CEO of SpaceX is false, disingenuous, intellectually dishonest and bordering on a lie.

 

[Artful Dodger]

I am in bed from being punched one time too hard in Muay Thai. So there's nothing I can do but watch stock price.

One time? ONE TIME? We've been punched hard TEN times over the last year in
Muay TSLA.

Cheers!

 

[mrdoubleb]

Elon first tweet was on Feb 19th. Shortly thereafter, the committee started the internal review, which must have included Dane. Elon tweeted the clarification after consultation 4 hours later. Resignation of Dane was confirmed by Tesla the next day. My speculation was that the resignation was part of the review process. Technically you are right that the resignation could have happened after the clarification tweet up to a window of 12 hours instead of 6. Doesn't really change anything with regards to the probable causality of the two events.

Or resignation could have happened any number of days or weeks before for whatever reason with effective date being that date. You may be right, there may be a connection, but it's not like we have copies of resignation letters with dates or the parties involved disclosing the details.

 

[Fact Checking]

Elon first tweet was on Feb 19th. Shortly thereafter, the committee started the internal review, which must have included Dane. Elon tweeted the clarification after consultation 4 hours later. Resignation of Dane was confirmed by Tesla the next day. My speculation was that the resignation was part of the review process. Technically you are right that the resignation could have happened after the clarification tweet up to a window of 12 hours instead of 6. Doesn't really change anything with regards to the probable causality of the two events.

I agree with you that the two events are probably linked. Whether it was:

• an already forming decision with the tweet being the 'final straw',
• or Dane saw the writing on the wall and suspected that the SEC would sue and didn't want to be involved,
• or whether Elon was unhappy with Dane's legal strategy and how the SEC settlement worked out,
• or whether Elon simply ignored Dane's advice to stop communicating altogether (which I think Dane, a cautious lawyer, probably advised),
• or whether it was Dane seeing a share price below $300 while he signed up at around $350,
• or whether it was Dane experiencing the corporate culture at Tesla and not liking how little influence non-technical people and lawyers in particular have,

... is anyone's guess - it could be a mixture of all of these factors.

But when it comes to legal advice there's really no room for significant disagreement: either client and lawyer are on the same page or it's not going to work out.

 

[Fact Checking]

I am in bed from being punched one time too hard in Muay Thai. So there's nothing I can do but watch stock price.

So which one is more pain, the Muay Thai punch or the 52-week low?

 

[Artful Dodger]

Teslas have 8 cameras running on their cars at all times. Why can’t they partner with Google for StreetView? Pics of my street are 5 years old on Google, would be nice to get updates. Customers can opt out of sending info to Google of course. Idk just an idea

Lol, do they have to give Google the NN too as part of this deal, or can we assume that Google can build their own. SMDH. #DataIsKing

 

[Fact Checking]

Teslas have 8 cameras running on their cars at all times. Why can’t they partner with Google for StreetView? Pics of my street are 5 years old on Google, would be nice to get updates. Customers can opt out of sending info to Google of course. Idk just an idea

Joking aside, beyond taking pictures the Google StreetView cars have other ... more controversial features too, like sniffing and mapping Wifi IDs and for a time they even packet-sniffed traffic on open Wifi networks, which Tesla would likely not be willing to perform. (And I'm sure Google would have loved to crack & record encrypted Wifi networks as well, had they access to the hardware capacity for that. )

 

[schonelucht]

So you are calling a cumulative cash benefit of $750m+ "bleeding", and proof for why the Solar City acquisition was a bad idea?

I think it was clear I was speaking about quarterly bleeding, but I admit I could have been more precise.

Oh, and you do this after Q4 and Q1, the two autumn-winter quarters with weak solar sales, right before Q2 where the VIEs will seasonally probably generate cash again?

What's disingenuous is not mentioning that solar sales are on a steady decline and that the coming Q2 will not look like the previous Q2. For a taste what is coming, compare 2017Q2 and 2018Q2.

 

[Tslynk67]

Ah crap, the SEC extension kills-off any hope for today's expiring option, boooo! Was only ever a lotto ticket anyway... However, a bit of pre-market love, at least, take come comfort in the mid-range of the visible light spectrum you're being treated to:

Seems that shorty was pretty active yesterday - as always, doubling down in the dips = smart!

Didn't see this posted, but an ER transcription for those that wish to nit-pick through it: Tesla, Inc. (TSLA) Q1 2019 Earnings Call Transcript -- The Motley Fool

And Model Y? I think it looks fabulous. The trend with CUV, at least in Europe, is for them to be rather overly angular and macho. The MY is a much softer and svelte approach and I really like it. For what it's worth, my wife wants one over the M3, so... And seriously, does anyone think this looks bad?

 

[jerry33]

Kinda like the Nissan LEAF. Nissan has caved and agreed 2011 LEAF design is a failure.

Nissan did two things with the Classic Leaf. First they made it as cheaply as possible by using an existing car as the base instead of designing from a clean slate. Second, once they built a couple of cars they found that wind noise was horrific, so they put the bug eyes on it to get rid of the wind noise. Those were forced on them by the body choice. They couldn't do anything to fix it without redesigning the body and raising the costs to the unprofitable level. Now that they have confidence that BEV isn't going away, they did a better job on the newer cars.

 

[Tslynk67]

We can all use some humor today, right?

Tesla Posts Massive First Quarter Loss After Self-Driving Car Absconds With $702 Million in Cash

Cmon, that's clearly FUD - they say M3 in the article and the picture is a Model S - I bet this is photoshopped fake, Tesla should investigate!!

 

[Causalien]

One time? ONE TIME? We've been punched hard TEN times over the last year in
Muay TSLA.

Cheers!

Muay thai is brutal. Stress from TSLA's fall isn't helping my recovery.