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

[Singuy]

Markets closed for July 4th. Trump holiday.

Something about how he is recreating that scene from Idiocracy. Tanks, airplanes, trucks, rock music, flamethrowers, and tree burning

 

[kbM3]

Reminder : After Q1 disastrous ER, TSLA floor was 231. It only went down because of Musk email along with bad macros.

The shorts claim that the ER was overly optimistic by showing Model 3 gross margin of 20%. It wasn’t until the 10Q that it was shown it would have been more like 13-15% without the FCA deal, and IIRC it was after the 10Q that the stock really resumed its drop.

Disclaimer: definitely not an accountant, and I’m just repeating what I heard the shorts say from recollection, so I may be completely off-base.

I am convinced that big money is primarily concerned over gross margins.

 

[kbM3]

Answer to that always is "gaap profit doesn't matter. Its not as if Tesla wants to pay dividends anytime soon. As long as they generate enough cash to cover capex and keep growing, everything is fine".

$1.4B op cash flow sounds might fine to me.

As I understand it, cash flow gets a large boost when deliveries > production. Do you have an estimate how much boost that produced in Q2? It’s obviously not fair to try and measure Tesla’s current cash flow generation ability based on a quarter where deliveries exceed production.

 

[keydiver]

Something about how he is recreating that scene from Idiocracy. Tanks, airplanes, trucks, rock music, flamethrowers, and tree burning

And Trump on a Harley chopper with a machine gun, drinking a beer? That would be epic.

 

[MartinAustin]

So regarding the new default simple white paint, it's not happening yet.
We seem to have forgotten about this.

"Starting next month, Tesla will charge $1000 for color black (same price as silver)"
Elon Musk on Twitter

Just checked, black is still included with no extra charge.
Punctuality still needs improving.
View attachment 426010

I've been looking for this change, too.

They haven't left the website alone though, X and S no longer have the cream-coloured headliner any more... all options have black headliner. As of a day or two ago. Perhaps that is the interior refresh many have been waiting for!

 

[Driver Dave]

Roger McNamee: Tesla's 'fantastic' delivery numbers buy time but they're not a long-term fix

“But McNamee warned the company needs to become better at the basics, such as manufacturing and forecasting, if it wants to "survive" as an auto company.”


All these investors waiting for Tesla to become this super clear bet, by the time it does, it will be too late.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

mercedes and bmw sell pretty well in japan. They aren't exactly known for small vehicles. Trying to find info on which models they sell well in japan.

2018 (Full Year) Japan: Best-Selling Vehicle Manufacturers and Car Brands - Car Sales Statistics

Best-Selling Car Manufacturers in Japan in 2018 (Full Year)

New vehicle registrations, including passenger cars, commercial vehicles and buses, by brand in Japan in 2018 were as follows according to JADA:

–	Total 		5,272,067	0.7	5,234,166	4,970,258
1	Toyota		1,508,647	-4.9	1,587,062	1,528,173
2	Honda		747,226		3.1	724,834		707,044
...
11	Mercedes Benz	67,554		-1.0	68,221		67,386
12	Lexus		55,096		20.8	45,605		52,150
13	Volkswagen	51,961		6.0	49,040		47,234
14	BMW		50,982		-2.9	52,527		50,571
15	Mitsubishi Fuso	42,348		-4.0	44,134		45,210
16	Audi		26,473		-6.6	28,336		28,502
17	Mini		25,984		2.2	25,427		24,548
18	Volvo		17,805		10.5	16,120		14,914
19	Jeep		11,438		13.2	10,102		9,392
20	UD Trucks	9,974		-8.1	10,858		10,529
21	Peugeot		9,881		19.9	8,242		7,403
22	Renault		7,253		1.9	7,121		5,304
23	Porsche		7,166		3.5	6,923		6,887
24	Fiat		6,014		-7.8	6,523		6,717
25	Land Rover	3,972		9.8	3,619		3,259

Scaled to US equivalent market size,
Mercedes Benz 221,344. US 2018: 349,084
BMW 167,045. US 2018: 311,014

So, not doing as well, but I'm sure Tesla would love to be selling as many.

 

[Singuy]

And Trump on a Harley chopper with a machine gun, drinking a beer? That would be epic.

Oh man I would pay good money if they play the Team America theme song to go with this.

 

[UncaNed]

Next (this) month still has a lot of runway in it.

I'll point out to those of us who, based on a few posts here appear to be using lots of margin, that runways can be used for either takeoff or for landing. If margin calls are even a concern, then you're using too much.

IMHO margin should only be used when you have funds but can't transfer them as fast as you'd like. Truth be told, the number times my plans were foiled by slow transfers are equal to the times that slow transfers caused my deals to IMPROVE after the extra transfer time... illustrating that perhaps I'm not as smart as I think I am.

 

[Tslynk67]

CNBC's Fast Money on Twitter

Gene sounding way more positive than a few months back.

The moron with the back hair and the pink tie at 3'50" says that (not verbatim): "Fact is that the top talent of this company, outside of Elon Musk, have all left" - very interesting that he knows all the skills and capabilities of all Tesla employees, plus I suspect Franz, JB and Jerome might beg to differ.

What a dick!

 

[kengchang]

The shorts claim that the ER was overly optimistic by showing Model 3 gross margin of 20%. It wasn’t until the 10Q that it was shown it would have been more like 13-15% without the FCA deal, and IIRC it was after the 10Q that the stock really resumed its drop.

Disclaimer: definitely not an accountant, and I’m just repeating what I heard the shorts say from recollection, so I may be completely off-base.

I am convinced that big money is primarily concerned over gross margins.

Not sure where that come from,

Gross margin for total automotive remained relatively consistent at 20% in the three months ended March 31, 2019 and 2018. Model 3 margins improved compared to the prior period as we achieved significant manufacturing efficiencies in the production of Model 3 in the second half of 2018. This increase was partially offset by lower Model S and Model X deliveries at lower margins due to lower average selling prices from price adjustments we made to our vehicle offerings in the three months ended March 31, 2019. Additionally, the price adjustments also resulted in a reduction in gross automotive sales profit of $91.7 million from the adjustment of our sales return reserve on vehicles previously sold under our buyback options program.

 

[Freder Reeve]

Gene sounding way more positive that a few months back.

The moron with the back hair and the pink tie at 3'50" says that (not verbatim): "Fact is that the top talent of this company, outside of Elon Musk, have all left" - very interesting that he knows all the skills and capabilities of all Tesla employees, plus I suspect Franz, JB and Jerome might beg to differ.

What a dick!

made worse imo by bull guy agreeing like 'oh ya i agree it's a concern but the cars are selling at least'.
-wish someone just spoke up here and there like 'sometimes people can't hack it at tesla, we all hope they'll thrive elsewhere.'

 

[RobStark]

• While it's indeed a large economy, car sales are comparatively lower, new car sales were ~5 million in 2018 - while the U.S. market is 16 million new vehicles per year and the European market is ~15 million new vehicles per year.

Of the ~5M cars sold per year in Japan ~2M are itty bitty kei cars.

Tesla is competing in that 3M cars per year category. About the size of Germany.

 

[ZsoZso]

mercedes and bmw sell pretty well in japan. They aren't exactly known for small vehicles. Trying to find info on which models they sell well in japan.

Well, BMW owns the brand Mini and Mercedes owns Smart, so they both do have small cars...

 

[Nocturnal]

Edit. Blue angels jets keep buzzing my office building. IDK if cool or not.

The DMCA pretty much eliminated most "fair use".

Parodying CNBC isn't the same as using media etc. though.

Something about how he is recreating that scene from Idiocracy. Tanks, airplanes, trucks, rock music, flamethrowers, and tree burning

If only. President Kumacho was smart/humble enough to find the smartest guy and listen to him. Our President believes he is an expert on everything. ​

 

[Tslynk67]

so you’d rather me not post them?

For my side, I thank you for posting.

Makes the MS, GS, UBS's of this world look utterly pathetic.

Mod Edit: LFOL at ellipses you explained in post I guess you deleted. I'm too old to be annoyed by almost everything.

 

[Steve m]

It'll be a lotharder for tsla to penetrate Japan than iphone.

Japanese are notorious for country loyalty. And even the model 3 is too long of a car in Japan. The majority of cars there looks squished in the front to save space.

And let's face it. Public transport is cheaper and gets to your destination faster.

They do respect good tech though and are less likely to be swayed by false advertising being more tech savvy.

How about a car powered by Panasonic batteries?

 

[UncaNed]

Tomorrow I'll build my model with puts, thesis being we'll be back under 220$ by next week. Love a good horse race.

That would be very much appreciated by some of us!

 

[Tslynk67]

This magic blew my mind, so I went looking for answers. Well, I learned something today!

Isn't that the great thing about this thread - on any given day you can learn almost ANYTHING, with the exception of why the SP is going up, or down, at any particular moment in time...

 

[RobStark]

In name only, just like Firestone, BFG, and Uniroyal (among others). The brand is still there but the owners are different. I don't really call that surviving.

Chinese TV manufacturers have purchased the names Zenith and RCA and selling TVs under those brand names.