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

[StarFoxisDown!]

I bought the stock @ $293 last year. My financial advisor advised against it. Said he liked the product but did not like the stock. I did not get it. If the product good and desirable thenhey would the stock not follow?

I still don't get it. The product is amazing. When I drive around, people still point fingers at the car stating: "Look, a Tesla" even when there are already driving quite a few around.
Whenever I see a Tesla store there are alway at leas five people in there, no matter what time of day. So what is it with the stock? Why the discrepancy?

Wall St has vested interests to not see Tesla succeed. The smear campaign has only intensified as Tesla has gotten more successful. I said this before but Q3 Earning was probably the best example I've ever seen of Wall St manipulating and capping a stock. You're talking about earnings expectations of greater than 700 million loss verses the results which was 300+ million profit. Free cash flow swung from negative 600 million to positive 1.4 billion. That never happens for a company as large a Tesla. Despite one of the largest beats even, the stock was instantly capped at the opening of trading and pushed down throughout the day to only a 12% gain.

 

[ricohman]

As someone who paid over $100K for my Tesla, I take exception to your silly comment.

$60K Model 3 didn't exist at the time I bought my Tesla.

The key point was, I stopped driving fossil fuel cars forever in 2013. It doesn't really matter how much you spend on a Tesla as long as you get one and never drive fossil fuel again.

The common sense is to buy a Tesla... not to hold off until it is cheaper.

Yes, ugly day on the stock market - if you're selling stock. TSLA will climb back again. It has done this many times.

The vast majority of the action today IMO was by short sellers feeding on the mis-reporting from yesterday, They will regret getting involved.

While I will buy an EV and most likely a Tesla, some of us have to rely on fossil fuels.
Even if I did drive an EV right now it would be powered by coal.

 

[wipster]

My .02

Price reductions were to offset the tax credits. If demand was unchanged, then losing the tax credits would mean lower sales, so offsetting them with price drops should even things out.

I also get the sense that they added more "bad medicine" to Q1 when they realized it was going to be a big loss. Just conjecture but that makes sense to me.

I also have to wonder how much the China "tariffs" are going to affect COGS. I really don't have any idea how much of the Tesla products are sourced from China, but I'm fairly certain they're not using steel or aluminum made in North American mills... there just aren't enough of them. Tesla is not alone in this by any means, it's going to affect a lot of US businesses. So you either have increasing prices or decreasing profits.

Oh wait, that's all paid by China right? Just like Mexico is paying for the wall...

 

[Driver Dave]

That's why you don't call it "autopilot" when it's at 10% of true autopilot capabilities.

Not sure about that. I would say 80-90% of my driving at this point is via autopilot on.

It's at the point where it feels weird to drive on the highway without it.

I'm like, why is my car not precisely in the lane? Oh yeah, it's because I'm driving. Autopilot on.

 

[Remus]

But why can't autopilot recognize a tractor trailer in front of it? It seems to me this would be a pretty easy thing to see and try to stop for. How long will it take AP to learn this? There will no FSD until it can overcome something this simple.

The autopilot system has always failed to react upon objects with very large speed differences from the car. This is consistent with previous incident when a model S crashed into a stationary fire truck.

At low speed, the car has no problem identifying these stationary or near stationary objects and react to them. I am guessing the system is not confident enough so it avoid braking at high speed which may have some negative effect if the system was wrong.

 

[Singuy]

I bought the stock @ $293 last year. My financial advisor advised against it. Said he liked the product but did not like the stock. I did not get it. If the product good and desirable thenhey would the stock not follow?

I still don't get it. The product is amazing. When I drive around, people still point fingers at the car stating: "Look, a Tesla" even when there are already driving quite a few around.
Whenever I see a Tesla store there are alway at leas five people in there, no matter what time of day. So what is it with the stock? Why the discrepancy?

Tesla stock had a lot of success priced in at the 300 dollar range when the Model 3 was just announced. People expected that this car can sell and be produced like gangbusters skyrocketing Tesla's profit through the roof. But then there were production problems, logistic problems, and now S/X took a hit..investors are no longer pricing in future production(like semi/model Y, autonomous driving) since current situation didn't exactly came to fruition as Elon promised. Production is no where near 10k/wk from Fremont which was something Elon said they can achieve and solar city is still a drag without solar roof.

So that priced in sentiment is beginning to collapse turning Tesla into a "show me" stock vs a speculation stock. "Show me" Tesla can get through this mess and we'll start pricing in future projects.

 

[Prunesquallor]

The dryer buddy is nice solution but at that point just pay an electrician to install a separate circuit already!

Jeez, this. $40k+ for a car and people want to save a couple of hundred and end up with a Rube Goldberg charging solution? Just get it properly wired for God's sake with a dedicated 14-50 or HPWC. The only consideration for something like the dryer buddy would be if your house amperage is maxed out.

 

[Alphacrux]

Not sure about that. I would say 80-90% of my driving at this point is via autopilot on.

It's at the point where it feels weird to drive on the highway without it.

I'm like, why is my car not precisely in the lane? Oh yeah, it's because I'm driving. Autopilot on.

I'm quite impressed by the recent improvements in AP, automatic lane switching, and recognition of vehicles in on the display (hey, AP recognized that it was a motorcycle that just passed us).

So much so that I just sold my AP1 S today (yes, even with free supercharging) and have a SRaven on order with FSD. Just, Wall Street, get with the program!

 

[Wooloomooloo]

The vast majority of the action today IMO was by short sellers feeding on the mis-reporting from yesterday, They will regret getting involved.

Including this, there are at least 4 posts on this page saying the share slide is due to "FUD" on some kind. It's so easy, and I am sure re-assuring to say that, but it's pure denial of some hard realities. The stock has been on the slide ALL YEAR, with a few caffeine breaks in between. T Rowe took a huge dump on the stock (after being bullish) - I suppose they are full of idiots falling for the "FUD" right? Maybe, but unlikely.

Then you have Elon on the earnings call casually downgrading the target Model 3 margins from 25% to 20% (they're actually closer to 15%), immediately wiping away $750m in revenue this year alone (around $2500 per car if current ASP's are correct). That's basically an admission that their best selling product won't meet profitability targets that were asserted last year, in 2019. Why? We have no idea.

I'm not crapping on the stock, but blaming the drop on conspiracy theories and shorts is nonsense. The reason is simple: hugely mismanaged expectations on an ongoing basis, over the last 4 years.

Personally I still think Tesla will pull a few things out of the bag, and could be a good bet, but I'm pretty sure we're not at the bottom and I'm also pretty sure we're only a few quarters away from a major global downturn. Tesla will have to survive a recession before it gets back to 2018's $374.

 

[ZeApelido]

Rest assured mine are feeling the same, even though we've been preparing for a recession since the first hint of china trade war started.

The switch from china to other places is happening, but currently we are in that vaccum phase where ppl are still building new capacity, so very inefficient manufacturing has to take over the slack from China. Not everyone can throw up gigafactoties in 1 year like Jina.

Except my company is the Chinese company Trump is trying to tear apart to gain leverage over Xi...

 

[kakamora]

What happens if the deliveries in Q2 are well off the 90k guidance, as sales estimates are indicating?

Why do u feel that way. Don’t break my heart

 

[Driver Dave]

So much so that I just sold my AP1 S today (yes, even with free supercharging) and have a SRaven on order with FSD. Just, Wall Street, get with the program!

Yes, I had an mobile-eye AP1 S as well.

The Tesla AP 2 (or is 2.5) is way way way beyond it.

 

[Menifeer]

Losing a small fortune will do that to you.

I can make a small fortune for you. All you have to do is put me in charge of your LARGE fortune...

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

Including this, there are at least 4 posts on this page saying the share slide is due to "FUD" on some kind. It's so easy, and I am sure re-assuring to say that, but it's pure denial of some hard realities. The stock has been on the slide ALL YEAR, with a few caffeine breaks in between. T Rowe took a huge dump on the stock (after being bullish) - I suppose they are full of idiots falling for the "FUD" right? Maybe, but unlikely.

Then you have Elon on the earnings call casually downgrading the target Model 3 margins from 25% to 20% (they're actually closer to 15%), immediately wiping away $750m in revenue this year alone (around $2500 per car if current ASP's are correct). That's basically an admission that their best selling product won't meet profitability targets that were asserted last year, in 2019. Why? We have no idea.

I'm not crapping on the stock, but blaming the drop on conspiracy theories and shorts is nonsense. The reason is simple: hugely mismanaged expectations on an ongoing basis, over the last 4 years.

Personally I still think Tesla will pull a few things out of the bag, and could be a good bet, but I'm pretty sure we're not at the bottom and I'm also pretty sure we're only a few quarters away from a major global downturn. Tesla will have to survive a recession before it gets back to 2018's $374.

After Q3 and going through Q4, you thought Tesla was fairly valued at 55 billion when they were on course to do 26-28 billion annually, profitable, with one of the best margins in the industry for S, X, and 3, and with 3 product launches over the next 2 years? Yeah ok buddy. You have a strange method for valuing a company.

 

[wipster]

I can make a small fortune for you. All you have to do is put me in charge of your LARGE fortune...

Do you sell bridges too?

 

[mrmage]

I bought the stock @ $293 last year. My financial advisor advised against it. Said he liked the product but did not like the stock. I did not get it. If the product good and desirable thenhey would the stock not follow?

I still don't get it. The product is amazing. When I drive around, people still point fingers at the car stating: "Look, a Tesla" even when there are already driving quite a few around.
Whenever I see a Tesla store there are alway at leas five people in there, no matter what time of day. So what is it with the stock? Why the discrepancy?

Stocks are not the same as products because a stock can be overvalued, just like a product can be overvalued. The best car in the world cannot sell for $100M, no matter how good it is. Similarly, the best EV company in the world may be worth $50B today, even if it makes the best cars.

Whenever you buy stock, you should assess whether its market cap is properly valued, and whether that value is likely to go higher in the future. Because so much of Tesla's value is tied into self driving and becoming a market leader in the auto industry (today it only has 10% of the sales of the leaders), there's a lot of risk.

In five years, Tesla could be worth $0, $50B, $500B or anything else in between. It's an unusual stock because it can grow so much, but also a chance of being worth very little if it fails to execute.

IMO, the Tesla convertible bonds are the best long term way to invest in Tesla. When stocks crash, the bonds drop less than half as much, are somewhat protected from bankruptcy, and go up nearly as fast as shares if tlsa breaks $310 within 5 years. They offer most the upside with much less risk.

 

[2virgule5]

Feeling like a neutrino right now.

Great, virtually nothing can affect you then!

 

[Wooloomooloo]

After Q3 and going through Q4, you thought Tesla was fairly valued at 55 billion when they were on course to do 26-28 billion annually, profitable, with one of the best margins in the industry for S, X, and 3, and with 3 product launches over the next 2 years? Yeah ok buddy. You have a strange method for valuing a company.

Who is "you" in the above? I've opined on the valuation before, but never made a comment about revenue being in that ballpark at all.

 

[dww12]

Wall St has vested interests to not see Tesla succeed. The smear campaign has only intensified as Tesla has gotten more successful. I said this before but Q3 Earning was probably the best example I've ever seen of Wall St manipulating and capping a stock. You're talking about earnings expectations of greater than 700 million loss verses the results which was 300+ million profit. Free cash flow swung from negative 600 million to positive 1.4 billion. That never happens for a company as large a Tesla. Despite one of the largest beats even, the stock was instantly capped at the opening of trading and pushed down throughout the day to only a 12% gain.

No pretty much EVERYONE has a vested interest to see Tesla fail. Everyone in O&G, automakers, mechanics, car dealers, ADVERTISERS, Drivers, power operators, grid operators and EVERYONE invested in those industries. There is nobody that Tesla is not going after and since they are basically only paying their employees, they have zero leverage with politicians or the media. The only friend Tesla has is the future planet Earth, unfortunatly she has no shares. Tesla’s only chance is to become very profitable very fast.

 

[moneyburner1]

I bought the stock @ $293 last year. My financial advisor advised against it. Said he liked the product but did not like the stock. I did not get it. If the product good and desirable thenhey would the stock not follow?

I still don't get it. The product is amazing. When I drive around, people still point fingers at the car stating: "Look, a Tesla" even when there are already driving quite a few around.
Whenever I see a Tesla store there are alway at leas five people in there, no matter what time of day. So what is it with the stock? Why the discrepancy?

Tesla is currently making no profit and in the long run Tesla need to justify 37 Bn market cap with currently 4.6 Bn equity.
This is a lot discounted cash flow Tesla needs to generate in the future...