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

[Pras]

SEC should have put a condition on Tesla that every time Elon breaks the rule he gets a fine ($, leading to twitter timeouts) which increases progressively.

This would have done shareholders a huge favor by removing this overhang / uncertainty all the time.

 

[Remus]

You haven't heard about Tesla's $700 million dollar quarterly loss and chose to base your argument on the number of BMW M3s in stock ?

You do realize the BMW M3 is a different car than a Tesla Model 3 ?

Yes we did hear about that and many of us also known most of it can't be fault to global demand.

Iooks like you're the one who didn't pay attention as many members have predicted the demands pulling forward in u.s. by the tax credit cut off. And it's already common knowledge among bulls here Tesla was not made to order for more than half year now. Hello! Keep up please.

 

[Zhelko Dimic]

...
I generally don't reply to private messages for topics that can be discussed publicly, and no, the message you wrote wasn't conciliatory as you now pretend. If you disagree with me or want to attack me, write a public message.

To clarify since I didn't answer it before, I disagree with your answers on this topic, as the whole 'constitutional speech' is red herring. This discussion is not about what Musk can do from the legal standpoint, but what is good for shareholders. As he is the CEO of the large public company, and that entails responsibilities.

And yeah, my private message wasn't conciliatory. You missed the point that it was private so to NOT shame you publicly and add to the noise. The act of making it private rather than public IS conciliatory.

Conversely, I feel you think this forum is a debate club, where you need to win on points or otherwise. I'm here to learn and share thoughts that I think may be useful. I'll let your future answers stand unchallenged for two reasons:
- You prefer to not use private channel, and I'm sure moderators prefer to avoid public attacks.
- No point in arguing with someone who treats arguing as a sport; I'm comfortable enough with who I am, to not have to win a fight.

 

[Krugerrand]

I worry more about him saying something stupid in another interview like 60 minutes and it edited in a way that gets him in trouble.

He really likes to touch fire. If it were me, I wouldn't want to even bring up the SEC anymore for the sake of my employees, fans, etc. and yet here he is back on twitter making references even today.

I’m a fan. Shocker, right? I found the tweet hilarious on several levels. It’s something I’d do in a heartbeat, so I understand exactly where that comes from and more importantly the why of it.

Understanding why people behave the way they do goes a long way to being able to either accept them as they are or remove them from your life. My couch, my home, my car, my money is always available to him. My cat, though, is not.

 

[bdy0627]

Very very vaguely speaking, it takes ~5000 Model 3s / week, ~2000 Model S/X per week, and no inventory-in-transit buildup. More Model 3 means less model S/X needed, obviously. There are lots of other things which move the cash flow one way or another but basically they need to be making enough cars.


Wish I could be more precise, but basically, they need to be making enough cars. When they hit 10,000 Model 3/week they'll be very comfortably generating plenty of cash. Sadly it appears that's not until early 2020 at this point.

I agree that it's looking like they should hit 10,000 model 3/week between Fremont and Shanghai some time during Q1 or possibly Q2 of 2020. I think everyone should scale back expectations of hitting 10,000/week in 2019. That appears unlikely. If they have to rely on a heavy mix of SR+ out of Fremont then Shanghai becomes really important for GMs. Tesla needs to find a way to execute at least well enough to get through this year and then they should be a in a much better place financially. I can see why they are trying to get the Shanghai factory up and running in record time.

 

[Krugerrand]

Elon is not stupid.

He certainly is not stupid. But as a human he does sometimes do stupid things, as we all do. I’m okay with that. I’ve extrapolated for it.

 

[bdy0627]

It seems that Fremont is maxing out at 7.5k/week right? So they will not hit 10k until GF3 is online. But based on how Elon is pretty bullish on energy storage, I think there will be more cells produced than they need for cars by the q3 and q4. We should expect an explosion of revenue coming from storage at that time.

I think that's pretty optimistic to expect a huge jump in storage sales this year, though it's possible Panasonic may really be cranking battery production by then. Better to keep expectations in check on that front and expect status quo or a modest increase in storage sales. It certainly looks like the growth, if it happens this year, will likely happen late in the year.

 

[ZachF]

Good point. I wonder, has anyone done the math yet for S&P500 inclusion after the Q2 results are in? IE: sum of profit-loss from Q3-Q4-Q1 = ??

How much profit would Tesla actually need to declare in Q2 to be net profitable over the last 4 quarters? @Fact Checking may know who knows.

Cheers!

Like $300 million in profit

 

[elasalle]

Yes, it looks like there are lots of model 3 inventory available to buy now, mostly SR+ and also some LR AWD. Lots of S/X as well. It will be interesting to see how quickly they move. I'm tracking Chicago. I think this is really a new chapter for Tesla having so much inventory rather than build to order or even batch build for pent up demand. They are now providing lots of inventory in the U.S. without buyers already lined up. Let's see how this develops.

Inventory also can be replenished by new deliveries from Fremont. (latest is there are switching batches b/w US, EU, CN consistently)

Inventory shows VINs though, and I think Tesla should hide that. .. Else I am sure some one will come up with some screen scraping app to really see what is happening.

I'm seeing many more M3's on the road in NOVA. ...

 

[Singuy]

I am hoping your “Oct 2018” is a typo. I purchased my MS in Sept 2018, it was an inventory car made in late Feb 2018, and I paid for FSD as part of the purchase. I believe the car has AP2.5.

I have been assuming that my FSD purchase gets me a free upgrade to HW3. Any reason that it might not?

Thx

Any car including HW 2.0 for X, and S where the customer purchased FSD will get a retrofit of the FSD computer for free. Has nothing to do with when you purchased the car, as long as FSD was purchased. This was reiterated by Elon on Twitter twice now.

 

[Tslynk67]

Definitely worried about a text battle I had with my dad yesterday. He is one of the smartest people I know (and I'm a surgeon). He is a VERY successful long term investor in the market, focusing on multiple companies, and selling options. He reads constantly. He keeps telling me to stay away from TSLA. That the stock is going to drop more. That Tesla is getting killed by Jaguar and Audi in Europe, etc. If he is getting mislead by the Bear articles, it makes me worry what less intelligent investors think after reading the headlines.

Well you can fight his misperceptions regarding Audi and Jag easily enough. Fighting the general sentiment and full-plaid FUD is a little harder tho’.

 

[bdy0627]

Well, orders were opened 2/28, deliveries prob. a week later, I believe insideevs estimates U.S. deliveries in March ~10k and not all of them were SRs. So, I thought that is not all that there is to it with so many people bugging Elon on twitter about his $35k promise, so many of them should be getting deliveries now or still getting their finances in order, 200k high trims were delivered so far, so I think there's got to be more to it than 10k SRs.

Also, those inventories you see they may not be stagnant, but getting replaced daily with new cars and getting assigned daily to those people whose turn came up. If you see cars on the lot it doesn't necessarily mean there's no demand.

I believe the new process was said to be that all cars are delivered to stores first and assigned to inventory(which you see), only then they are matched to buyers.

I just checked the website and custom ordering all model 3 trims are showing delivery within 2 weeks, which I think is legit at this point. Of course, you aren't really custom ordering. Tesla is just lining up your "custom" order with one of the batches that has been made or will be made soon. I guess all we can say right now is that Tesla is able to supply current U.S. demand in a very timely fashion. People don't need to wait long at all. The current inventory mix in Chicago is 19/31 SR+ (60%). ASP of all 31 model 3 is $45,820.

 

[Cherry Wine]

SEC should have put a condition on Tesla that every time Elon breaks the rule he gets a fine ($, leading to twitter timeouts) which increases progressively.

This would have done shareholders a huge favor by removing this overhang / uncertainty all the time.

That intent was made clear during the hearing. Anyone that was paying attention knows that his removal as CEO, for instance, is not a viable outcome of a violation of the agreement.

 

[Hock1]

Any car including HW 2.0 for X, and S where the customer purchased FSD will get a retrofit of the FSD computer for free. Has nothing to do with when you purchased the car, as long as FSD was purchased. This was reiterated by Elon on Twitter twice now.

Slightly OT, but it's a weekend: I purchased my MS75 in September 2018, at which time I paid $5,000 for EAP. Where do I stand relative to HW3 and FSD? TIA

 

[SebastianR]

I'm a huge optimist, I'm as much as a Tesla bull as you can imagine. But I would like to caution everyone to not discard the FUD potential around the SEC settlement:

Case in point: German media already insinuating that Tesla/Elon lost the case:

Börsenaufsicht: Elon Musk muss Tweets zu Tesla vorab prüfen lassen

Elon Musk muss Tweets zu Tesla vorab prüfen lassen
Tesla-Chef Elon Musk und die US-Börsenaufsicht SEC haben eine Einigung im Rechtsstreit über die Social-Media-Aktivitäten des Tech-Milliardärs erzielt. Der Kompromiss regelt, unter welchen Bedingungen Musk künftig twittern darf. [...] Vereinbart wurde, dass Musk keine Informationen mehr eigenmächtig in schriftlicher Form verbreiten darf, die Teslas Aktienkurs beeinflussen könnten.

They don't report about the new settlement as a setback for the SEC, but they report on it, as a further clamping down on Tesla and (quite wrongly) say that any Tesla related tweet will now need to be pre-approved by a lawyer. So as much as I would like to see some pop based on that piece of news, beware that this might be reported in a very slanted way...

I should say that Zeit.de is a reputable German new source. They are typically pretty liberal and have been around forever.

I think 2013 counts. But technically the real oldtimer is someone who bought in 2010 and didn't sell after they were up 20% on the first day like I did. (I still bought back in at $40 though after the profitability tweet.)

Thanks - yea, wasn't quite IPO times for me (had some pretty big real-estate expenses back then). But got in pretty low and soon after created my account here...

This is not a thinking moment in time, this is a doing moment.

Couldn't agree more with you (and also @Lycanthrope) and will do both - drink the beer and buy TSLA...

 

[Prunesquallor]

This is probably the reality. At

Show him the hard numbers on sales figure for ipace and etron. Being a numbers guy he will directly appreciate it.

But I think it is a generation thing as well. Most experienced investor still think Tesla as automaker and miss the tech aspect of it. For example, nobody values autopilot and data, let alone FSD.

I think the battle to win traditional bankers and investors is already lost. Tesla will best be served if some tech focused investor recognize Tesla’s true value as a service and tech company. With the moves like FSD, insurance, Tesla will soon be recognized beyond #of cars.

And grid storage. Jeez, with the massive wind and solar coming online, the grid must be begging for Megapacks.

 

[Krugerrand]

Agreed. I have a couple potential Model X buyers but this certainly has spooked them. And just the other day again, I had a couple people kinda snickering that Tesla is “failing”. GDammit I thought I was past having to defend Tesla in this capacity. It sure better be at least “manageable” Q3 and forward.

Don’t worry about it. Just do your song and dance and let them come to the right conclusion on their own. It works out in the end.

The big thing I’m hearing from people is their fear of relinquishing control of driving to their car. That only seems to apply to people 35ish and up. But then you show them a video of advanced summon in a busy parking lot and you can see the internal struggle begin.

The other day I was chatting with a guy who regularly does some work for me. I was telling him about EAP/FSD features and his comment was that he’d not use it because he’d fall asleep behind the wheel if he didn’t have to ‘drive’ - meaning if he didn’t have to concentrate on the (a) task he’d fall asleep.

That right there is spoken like someone who has zero experience with EAP/FSD features and has made an assumption based on analogy.

I explained to him that that’s not actually what happens. And all of us who’ve travelled long distances using those features knows this. He didn’t believe me. I understood his disbelief, smiled, and then explained: People fall asleep behind the wheel when fully driving cars all the time. If you’re overtired, you’re going to fall asleep no matter what you are or are not doing. That caused an internal dilemma for him, but he still wouldn’t verbally admit I had a point that totally messed up his belief. No worries. He’s a smart guy and he’ll come to the right decision eventually or he won’t until he’s forced to face it. Either way, I’m still right and that’s all that matters.

 

[Navin]

I just checked the website and custom ordering all model 3 trims are showing delivery within 2 weeks, which I think is legit at this point. Of course, you aren't really custom ordering. Tesla is just lining up your "custom" order with one of the batches that has been made or will be made soon. I guess all we can say right now is that Tesla is able to supply current U.S. demand in a very timely fashion. People don't need to wait long at all. The current inventory mix in Chicago is 19/31 SR+ (60%). ASP of all 31 model 3 is $45,820.

Can u post your thoughts on the recent share price drop compared to other drops and provide some perspective as you have done so in the past in terms of %s

 

[Krugerrand]

No idea what Oldtimer means but I’m still long and strong

In fact, I think I should add to my position...

This is not a thinking moment in time, this is a doing moment.

 

[Beaver]

Yes, it looks like there are lots of model 3 inventory available to buy now, mostly SR+ and also some LR AWD. Lots of S/X as well. It will be interesting to see how quickly they move. I'm tracking Chicago. I think this is really a new chapter for Tesla having so much inventory rather than build to order or even batch build for pent up demand. They are now providing lots of inventory in the U.S. without buyers already lined up. Let's see how this develops.

Last Friday Chicago was at 32 3s. After the weekend it was low teens. Over the week inventory jumped two times.

S and X have been high and more were add this past week. I’d think they would need to be discounted to move with the refresh vehicles coming.

We have 4-8 inches of snow coming so I bet this weekend will be soft.