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

[neroden]

So, lets talk Ford...

• under DOJ criminal investigation for emissions certification
• brag they'll have "100 self-driving cars on the roads by the end of this year"
• up 8% on the news that they sold more pickups

That's the reality folks. F*ck anything else, it's the sales that matter...

This is probably the reality. At this point I am anticipating a positive reaction to the InsideEV sales guesstimates for Tesla in April.

Dammmmit, I have to buy stock next week if it's still low. This is below my "really quite safe to buy" price.

 

[anthonyj]

Just how ridiculous the current SP is, to put it plainly, if tomorrow Tesla just spin off the FSD/Robotaxi unit into sth like Waymo, should it be valued at least the same as Waymo? which is ~4 times of current Tesla market cap.

Waymo hasn't been valued by the public market, so their "valuation" can't really be compared to Tesla which is a public company. Also, Waymo is attached to a cash faucet called Google

 

[neroden]

Weak retail investors selling their shares to strong retail investors and strong institutional investors.

IMO, weak //institutional// investors. Think T Rowe.

 

[anthonyj]

This is probably the reality. At this point I am anticipating a positive reaction to the InsideEV sales guesstimates for Tesla in April.

Dammmmit, I have to buy stock next week if it's still low. This is below my "really quite safe to buy" price.

I've observed that when InsideEVs reports #s during market hours, it doesn't cause SP to move. However, if April really is a big month, I am sure Elon will "leak" an email to employees or there will be some sort of announcement. That would be a nice catalyst

 

[TradingInvest]

It's the weekend, I guess a little bit OT is ok.

I feel investment and trading are not trivial tasks. To do well we need a lot of knowledge, experience, discipline, rational thinking...

Planning is also an important step. Plan for your daily exercise. Health first.

Plan ahead what you would do for each situation. For example, I plan to increase 2.5% if the stock drops to xyz level if no major reason, or cut loss for trading shares at xyz level. Write down the plan, act accordingly, and revisit what you did right or wrong.

Plan the upper limit for each holding, respect your plan unless you can write a valid reason to change the plan.

Surprise can happen. I never thought TSLA could drop this much while the stock market is so strong, while nothing major happened. Luckily my plan has been keep saving cash, wait for big drops then buy more. So far I have been acting according to my plan, so I don't feel too bad seeing the drop. While my plan is to keep adding after big drops, that doesn't mean I keep adding blindly. At certain level I have to stop and check if my thesis is wrong.

If TSLA goes significantly lower from the current level, a lot of share holders will get hurt permanently, many will be forced to sell. I hope Tesla quickly find one or a few strategic partners, There are a few candidates we discussed in the past: Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Softbank, Tencent, Alibaba, Oracle, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeffrey Bezos.... If this partnership can help Tesla grow strong and faster, it may be worth it. Tesla can always buy back shares from the market in later years when they get boat load of cash.

If one of the above parties buy 10% from the market, then Tesla issues another 10 new shares to this partner, the situation will be quite different.

Or if Tesla can find three of the above each buy 10% from the market, then Tesla issues another 3% to each of them...

 

[Singer3000]

Have caught up. As ever at times of exhuberance or despair in the stock price, this forum is a great insight into the mind of the market.

Suspect I’m in a similar position to many, with smaller early purchases still massively in the money and then progressively larger ones made over the years far less so, or even now well under the water.

Am reminded of Elon’s story about the stranger shouting your house value at you each morning. It’s quite a helpful metaphor at times like these. If you invest with a long term outlook (which is really what investing means) and still believe in the fundamentals, today’s stock price is noise.

If you no longer believe in the fundamentals then time to de-risk yourself. This will certainly apply to some.

Beyond that, we’re seeing the falls magnified by an apparently massive build up in short selling and accelerated by margin calls on leveraged buyers.

Such storms have raged before and passed, I’ve little doubt the same is true now. Tesla really do need to start delivering serious volumes of cars however. If we’re still sat here on 2 Oct staring at 5k Model 3s per week produced then my own view on the fundamentals story will certainly shift. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that!

 

[EVNow]

Just how ridiculous the current SP is, to put it plainly, if tomorrow Tesla just spin off the FSD/Robotaxi unit into sth like Waymo, should it be valued at least the same as Waymo? which is ~4 times of current Tesla market cap.

Market doesn't buy Tesla's anywhere close to Waymo.

Also, Waymo was valued by ML sometime back - market may not value it as such. Also since then, generally media seems to treat FSD as a low probability event.

 

[GeoX750]

The tax credit cliff tested

I'm not so sure this is a good idea. There's a lot of pent up demand. In U.S., SR+ mostly starts deliveries this quarter, in Europe/China likely some LR pent up demand left, plus the whole SR+. RHD countries will likely see deliveries in Q3. Therefore, there's likely enough demand for 2 quarters. Anybody who sees ads now and wants to buy, may see increased wait times, which is not a good experience. It feels like these ads should start towards Q4, otherwise they may be a disservice to Tesla and customers.

On the other hand, just NY will prob. not make much difference overall, but could be evaluated on the effectiveness.

Pent up US demand ? Already lots of inventory SR+ available in Chicago.

 

[neroden]

I am going to use this excellent post to leapfrog back to one of my earliest-ever posts on TMC. Around report time for 2013 1Q or 2Q, I posited that the very most defensive and offensive (OFF-ensive, not of-FEN-sive)* plays Tesla could do would be to report sales and/or deliveries at midnight PST every single day.
In this manner, not only would Tesla control the narrative, with no one on Wall St being able to complain against a lack of transparency, but it would come close to completely defusing this malevolent Quarterly Trauma, AND it would generate ceaseless gastric eructations amongst executives in every other auto company on earth.

This proposal was met with near-unanimous disagreement amongst the then-active Forum members, many of whom claiming it was unwieldy and presenting unnecessary and confusing information.

After three dozen subsequent quarters, I bring it up again, unshaken not only in my belief of its merits but as a further effort in my desire to upend that deplorable Cult Of The Quarterly.


*Well, it would be of-FEN-sive, as well. But only to those who most dearly need to be offended.

I don't think Tesla even has that information on a real-time daily basis. I mean, their comms would be a lot better if they did.

 

[EinSV]

Market doesn't buy Tesla's anywhere close to Waymo.

Also, Waymo was valued by ML sometime back - market may not value it as such. Also since then, generally media seems to treat FSD as a low probability event.

To state the obvious, for long-term investors it doesn't really matter what the market thinks about FSD. It's totally irrelevant.

All that matters for FSD is whether it performs at a level that allows the Tesla Network to take the lead in autonomous ride-sharing. If it does, long-term shareholders should be richly rewarded.

 

[1101011]

FWIW, one of the amendments to Tesla's deal with NY means that the employment requirements for the deal don't have to be at the factory at all, they just have to be in the right part of NY.

Service Centers in Buffalo and Syracuse please

Incidently, when I spoke to that Tesla employee working at Riverbend Gigafactory (alias GF3), he said while they are progressing on solar roof, they are also designated as the manufacturing center of the V3 superchargers.

That should at a few more jobs in that factory.

 

[brian45011]

If you dig into the old SCTY presentations you see four phases of solar leasing:

1) Installation - financed ~100% by non-recourse lenders and "tax equity" + "cash equity" investors.
2) First ~10 years of lease - monthly cash receipts go almost entirely to repay lenders and tax/cash equity investors.
3) Second ~10 years - monthly cash receipts mostly flow to SCTY
4) 10 year renewal period - monthly cash receipts flow to SCTY

I found SCTY's assumptions. ..laughable for phase 4.

The idea that solar technology/pricing wouldn't improve markedly during the twenty years of phases 2 and 3 to the extent most property owners, rather than renewing for an additional ten years, would tell SCTY (now Tesla) to "get that antiquated mess off my roof" always seemed like an inevitable outcome --yet lease/PPA extensions between years 20 an 30 were a major component of the financial "no brainer" justification for buying out SCTY. If removals rather than renewals ensue, phase 4 will not be monthly cash flow receipts but a profit/cash drain.

 

[neroden]

Unfortunately there really isn't any major potential positive catalysts on the horizon until like june/july....

April InsideEVs US delivery estimates come out in early to mid-May. If production "secret sources" are correct, they're going to really surprise a lot of people who aren't paying attention, so it could act as a positive catalyst.

 

[Causalien]

Market doesn't buy Tesla's anywhere close to Waymo.

Also, Waymo was valued by ML sometime back - market may not value it as such. Also since then, generally media seems to treat FSD as a low probability event.

I watched a few GM cruise and Waymo self driving video. To be fair they are probably better or equal to TSLA's FSD right now in terms of city driving. TSLA probably have a better setup for high waydriving due to the better range of detection. But city driving wise, it is still the Lidar solution that is shown to be better. On top of that, who is to say that they are not using cameras and NN learning as well.

I still stand in the middle. I believe both TSLA and Waymo will arrive at their own solution. The neural net learning technique can be applied to both sensor suits. Waymo's valuation is warranted. TSLA's valuation is zero now due to the market not believing Elon anymore.

 

[neroden]

At this point it's about sufficient cash on hand to fund future projects. No way can they fund Semi, Roadster, Y, Pickup even if the lines were free. $2b in cash is insufficient for these projects. I bet he has funding lined up for a cap raise

He did point out on the conference call that Tesla's already done a capital raise recently. In China. There's more where that came from.

 

[neroden]

I watched a few GM cruise and Waymo self driving video. To be fair they are probably better or equal to TSLA's FSD right now in terms of city driving. TSLA probably have a better setup for high waydriving due to the better range of detection. But city driving wise, it is still the Lidar solution that is shown to be better. On top of that, who is to say that they are not using cameras and NN learning as well.

Cruise are using NN learning and cameras (and of course you can use NN with LIDAR). This isn't Waymo's "maps maps maps" stuff.

 

[Singuy]

To state the obvious, for long-term investors it doesn't really matter what the market thinks about FSD. It's totally irrelevant.

All that matters for FSD is whether it performs at a level that allows the Tesla Network to take the lead in autonomous ride-sharing. If it does, long-term shareholders should be richly rewarded.

So why is the market thinking that FSD is vaporware when they just came out of an investor event getting a ride using FSD?

Robo-Taxi in itself is a little bit sci-fi for people to wrap their heads around. But if FSD is working 95% of the time, then it's a pretty good must have feature that no other car manufactures can replicate. This alone should drive sells.

 

[DocZ]

Imo it was the wrong move to focus on robotaxis. It’s just not tangible enough. No one believes it’s actually coming in a usable capacity in 2020. This was a complete and total misstep, with half baked messaging and more unrealistic promises from Elon.

Let’s focus on the things Tesla is good at. EV tech. Let’s scale it in a more reasonable manner. Let’s execute quarter to quarter. Let’s find ways to derisk the business.

 

[Causalien]

Cruise are using NN learning and cameras (and of course you can use NN with LIDAR). This isn't Waymo's "maps maps maps" stuff.

Good to know.

But going forward, it is best if this forum doesn't become too conceited about TSLA FSD. There's going to be a first mover advantage here and GM or Waymo will probably be first. Upon completion GM will probably partner with Uber. So TSLA will be fighting an upward battle to gain market share. ANd without a good cash flow, TSLA will lose the cash bleeding competition like Uber lost against DIDI in China.

Part of the reason why it is valued at 0. There's really no benefit at taking #3 market share in robotaxi.

 

[Krugerrand]

So any old timer still in TSLA? How many did we lose on this round?

I’ve got all mine from early 2012, plus others I’ve added over the years now and again, plus the ones I’ll be buying for the next however long it takes for people to let go of demand is an issue and irrational panic. Thanks to all of you currently and futurely involved in that endeavor. Appreciate you monetarily enriching me. I’ll think of you all fondly and mention you by name in my memoirs.

I can’t be cajoled, threatened, panicked or whatever into selling before I’m darn good and ready to drown myself in tequila on my own island. Middle finger to all the thieves and bandits of the world.