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

[mrmage]

I'd guess less than $100m will be recognized in Q3:

• only a part of deferred revenue is FSD related,
• only a small part of the delivery milestones has been met via Smart Summon: there's still stop light recognition, traffic sign recognition, unprotected left turns, etc. - to make FSD feature complete.
• Only U.S. FSD owners are getting V10 for now, and only those who opted in.

I'd guess $50m deferred revenue recognized in Q3.

@EVNow might be able to give more accurate figures.

I’ll take one for the team to help Tesla by opting in. The sacrifices I make...

 

[elasalle]

Remember this guy?

RBC Capital Markets analyst Joseph Spak, who was cut off by Elon Musk during an earnings call, says he will “hold Tesla accountable” for performance.

Yesterday he upped his forecast for Q3 deliveries from 86,300 to 97,200.

Why? Same old trick, we’ve seen this over and over again, a week before the release all predictions go up to make sure there is never a wall street surprise.

If Tesla doesn’t deliver 100,000+ the stock will tank next week to below $200, I’m on record for this prediction.

Everything hinges on Tesla's ability to meet yearly guidance of 360K-400K.
I wish note just adds when China will come online and also give their target estimate for Year (even though it is just regarding 3Q deliveries)

 

[Todd Burch]

Remember this guy?

RBC Capital Markets analyst Joseph Spak, who was cut off by Elon Musk during an earnings call, says he will “hold Tesla accountable” for performance.

Yesterday he upped his forecast for Q3 deliveries from 86,300 to 97,200.

He's insane. We all did the deep analysis here and we all agreed somewhere between 71k and 72k deliveries, right? Let me see if I can find our crowd-sourced spreadsheet...

 

[Skryll]

Just had to take my I-PACE in due to a recall. [...] Got to the dealership early this morning and was told the update should take an hour and a half... It took 3 hours, then on top of that there were a few other separate recall issues to address. Like a new information sticker needed on the charge port door. So I spent 6 hours in or around the dealership waiting for the issues to be fixed.

i-pacing while waiting

 

[Steve m]

I know this might be considered a bit OT during active market hours but I know you enjoy the misery of non-Tesla car owners.

Just had to take my I-PACE in due to a recall. It needed a software update to fix a regenerative breaking issue. Exactly the sort of thing you lucky Tesla owners would have fixed OTA whilst you sleep.

No such luck for me. Got to the dealership early this morning and was told the update should take an hour and a half... It took 3 hours, then on top of that there were a few other separate recall issues to address. Like a new information sticker needed on the charge port door. So I spent 6 hours in or around the dealership waiting for the issues to be fixed. At least they had some nice hot drinks and biscuits, I tried 5 of each!

So no OTA leads to more time at dealer which leads to weight gain which leads to lower milage...

I think we have discovered the cause of the ipace range problem.

 

[Green Pete]

I'd guess less than $100m will be recognized in Q3:

• only a part of deferred revenue is FSD related,
• only a small part of the delivery milestones has been met via Smart Summon: there's still stop light recognition, traffic sign recognition, unprotected left turns, etc. - to make FSD feature complete.
• Only U.S. FSD owners are getting V10 for now, and only those who opted in.

I'd guess $50m deferred revenue recognized in Q3.

@EVNow might be able to give more accurate figures.

Given that it seems like they were testing part of the features on various different peoples cars and were all under big NDAs is it not possible that stop light/traffic sign recognition was on a branch that was hush hush and will come out today? Well obviously find out shortly but i dont think anyone has had the complete v10 installed until today. Just pieces on different cars

 

[Silentk]

Remember this guy?

If Tesla doesn’t deliver 100,000+ the stock will tank next week to below $200, I’m on record for this prediction.

@tivoboy comment from few weeks ago: Overall, I think from a price standpoint we'll see BELOW 200$ before we see OVER $270. There are many resistance levels above that are strong ones.. ~$235, certainly around the $255 level and ~$269. Getting up and through them will require a very strong upside surprise - like "taking private".. or some merger or battery partnership (build a plant for VW in europe or something like that). And I don't see that on the horizon at this point. I'll be back in a couple months and we'll discuss."

 

[Krugerrand]

Hope the Roadster pays great attention to interior and luxury feel - leather seats what have you's. This seems to be the only metric that Porsche outdoes Tesla ... IMHO

Tesla will not ever do a ‘leather’ interior.

 

[larmor]

Remember this guy?

RBC Capital Markets analyst Joseph Spak, who was cut off by Elon Musk during an earnings call, says he will “hold Tesla accountable” for performance.

Yesterday he upped his forecast for Q3 deliveries from 86,300 to 97,200.

Why? Same old trick, we’ve seen this over and over again, a week before the release all predictions go up to make sure there is never a wall street surprise.

If Tesla doesn’t deliver 100,000+ the stock will tank next week to below $200, I’m on record for this prediction.

Well if a short seller is constantly changing their Predictions based on rapidly changing data based on false (made up) claims of production numbers and then they use that information for their investing clients then that’s a problem. But apparently the SEC doesn’t care because they’re enjoying the global warming. I bet their offices are Not coastal (fwiw and OT many naval bases are coastal based and will be directly impacted by climate change, rising sea levels, and hence by the SEC)

 

[Fact Checking]

#2 is entirely Tesla's discretion as to how to categorize features; e.g. they could classify numerous things toghether as "city driving"

Yeah, although they've been pretty conservative in recognizing FSD deferred revenue so far.

#3 - The US makes up most of FSD buys. And I can't imagine how a user's lack of opting in cannot can be counted as not delivering.

I don't think a good faith argument can be made that a feature depending on enabling "Advanced", which I suppose comes with warnings and is enabled only by a minority of owners, counts as a delivery.

That said, I did some checking, and it looks like the expected recognition over 12 months, as of last quarter is $462,3M. So perhaps a quarter of that would be more realistic. It will also mean that the % of current (this quarter) and future FSD sales that have to be deferred decreases. It should lead to a somewhat greater FSD take rate, including some post-sale purchases (probably little this quarter due to how little time is left however)

I'm quite sure Q3 deferred revenue recognition will be less than 25% of that, because their 12 months outlook was probably based on the assumption that FSD would get feature complete by the end of 2020 - which Elon promised by the end of 2019 IIRC.

So deferred revenue might be recognized, but only when all promised FSD features are feature complete - which will likely require HW3 activation and HW3 board upgrades for all HW2 FSD owners.

I think Tesla will target Q1'2020 with HW3 activation, to improve an otherwise lousy quarter.

That's also the quarter when Q1'19 with its -$700m GAAP loss is not included in the S&P 500 criteria anymore ... so if Q3-Q4 are otherwise good, a break even Q1'20 could finally bring S&P 500 inclusion and the long overdue short squeeze ...

 

[azaz]

GF3 starts production October 14-Electrek citing an article from Chinese media

 

[FreqFlyer]

Jalopnik had a review... and it started out very favourable in general... but then the reviewer got in a Model S Raven at the end and now they're not so sure:

https://jalopnik.com/the-electric-2020-porsche-taycan-what-we-learned-over-1838333674

Indeed, from the comments section, they're not sure even if money were not an issue:

View attachment 459179

This you can trust, you will not have to wait long for a thorough comparison. The first batch of Taycans will be hitting the dealerships at the end of the year. Every tech, auto or Finance blog or magazine will have Taycan/ Model S comparisons. Tesla will find themselves with an avalanche of requests from the press for Model S Performance vehicles.

 

[azaz]

A little worried about US sales for this quarter (based on local inventory) for the 3 and fully expecting a disaster from S/X.

 

[lascavarian]

Well obviously find out shortly but i dont think anyone has had the complete v10 installed until today. Just pieces on different cars

Remember that there are various HW levels out there. I would think this will gate some of the more advanced features getting widely distributed, just my opinion.

 

[AlMc]

GF3 starts production October 14-Electrek citing an article from Chinese media

I obtained additional info but refuse to direct you to the site. Summary: First BIW model 3 confirmed by Chinese source. Also, source indicated that Tesla will start production Oct 14th...confirmed also by the company making glass for the 3 that they will ramp with Tesla (their factory is in the same area as GF3) starting on Oct 14th.

 

[Remus]

This you can trust, you will not have to wait long for a thorough comparison. The first batch of Taycans will be hitting the dealerships at the end of the year. Every tech, auto or Finance blog or magazine will have Taycan/ Model S comparisons. Tesla will find themselves with an avalanche of requests from the press for Model S Performance vehicles.

When was the last time you see head to head comparison of two cars that one's half price of the other?

 

[Nocturnal]

I’ll take one for the team to help Tesla by opting in. The sacrifices I make...

How do you opt in? Do you mean to just to install the update?

 

[kbM3]

I'd guess less than $100m will be recognized in Q3:

• only a part of deferred revenue is FSD related,
• only a small part of the delivery milestones has been met via Smart Summon: there's still stop light recognition, traffic sign recognition, unprotected left turns, etc. - to make FSD feature complete.
• Only U.S. FSD owners are getting V10 for now, and only those who opted in.

I'd guess $50m deferred revenue recognized in Q3.

@EVNow might be able to give more accurate figures.

#1 - Agreed
#2 is entirely Tesla's discretion as to how to categorize features; e.g. they could classify numerous things toghether as "city driving"
#3 - The US makes up most of FSD buys. And I can't imagine how a user's lack of opting in cannot can be counted as not delivering.

That said, I did some checking, and it looks like the expected recognition over 12 months, as of last quarter is $462,3M. So perhaps a quarter of that would be more realistic. It will also mean that the % of current (this quarter) and future FSD sales that have to be deferred decreases. It should lead to a somewhat greater FSD take rate, including some post-sale purchases (probably little this quarter due to how little time is left however).

Won’t summon trigger some EAP revenue?

 

[FreqFlyer]

When was the last time you see head to head comparison of two cars that one's half price of the other?

All the time. Why out of the 20 video and print reviews on the Taycan , almost all of them mention the brand Tesla somewhere in the review. You know its coming.

 

[FreqFlyer]

A little worried about US sales for this quarter (based on local inventory) for the 3 and fully expecting a disaster from S/X.

Why are you expecting a disaster for S/X sales?