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

[dc_h]

Interesting tale of two articles. Lora Koladny on CNBC shows up in my Stock time bar and Teslarati article about Tesla getting to 3000 weekly this year shows up nowhere. It got me wondering if both SEO (search engine optimization) and financial algo's use a lot of the same math and if Teslarati and other EV providers are missing some SEO knowledge. These seemingly stupid articles by Lora, which are exceedingly misleading, show up in google and the iphone stock app, while data driven articles like Tom Randall, or verified articles like Simon Alverez' article about Shanghai starting at 3000 a week, stated by the head of mfg at the site, gets no coverage. The negative articles show up in search, but they also seem to have a significant financial algo impact. Maybe Lora's inaccurate and misleading articles have some hidden cleverness that is missing from the honest articles from Teslarati.

I think SEO is basic to modern web publishing, but I assume some organizations are more sophisticated. There was also some whompy wheels type NHSTA fire request for information from Tesla announcement. I'd be surprised if the investigation is not 3rd party inspired and the 3rd party is likely some short person or group.

Anyhow, I'm interested if anyone out there is a SEO or works in big finance, is there some optimizing that the EV sites are not getting? Their articles almost never show up in my iphone stock ticket. This seems like a short coming of the publishing sites. You can blame the algo the stock apps use, but that's futile. It is up to publishers to get visibility.

 

[adiggs]

...

If Elon is correct in that FSD will be out around end Q4 and Robotaxi will get regulatory approval somewhere in 2020/2021 then Tesla would be stupid to give away any battery packs to anyone. What they should do is just crank out Model Ys in millions per year and buy them themselves.

This being an investing thread, is that scenario - FSD technology available and widely provided regulatory approval in '20 or '21 an important component of your Tesla valuation / investment thesis?

More generally, I'm wondering who else that posts in the thread has this as a serious or even critical component of their valuation (as in - Tesla's valuation is only going to go up bigly if it's true, and it's about right or overvalued if it's not true).


For me, with what I've personally experienced of Tesla's driver assist (omg - I love it), what I know about the world of data science / machine learning (it's my job, but I don't work in or have experience with vision systems), and what I think about how hard it's going to be to get cars driving themselves around unattended (technically, and regulatory approval), if my investment thesis / valuation was dependent on a 20/21 availability, then I'd exit my Tesla position approximately immediately.

The risk of failure of that outcome is too high - not commensurate with the reward.

My personal investment thesis doesn't have driverless vehicles running around to collect the next fare for 10 years, and results in a 10+ year buy and hold investment window (where 10+ is probably shorthand for "until I die"). If actual driverless cars happens sooner than 10 years, then that's a lot of gravy

 

[Curt Renz]

Interesting tale of two articles. Lora Koladny on CNBC shows up in my Stock time bar and Teslarati article about Tesla getting to 3000 weekly this year shows up nowhere. It got me wondering if both SEO (search engine optimization) and financial algo's use a lot of the same math and if Teslarati and other EV providers are missing some SEO knowledge. These seemingly stupid articles by Lora, which are exceedingly misleading, show up in google and the iphone stock app, while data driven articles like Tom Randall, or verified articles like Simon Alverez' article about Shanghai starting at 3000 a week, stated by the head of mfg at the site, gets no coverage. The negative articles show up in search, but they also seem to have a significant financial algo impact. Maybe Lora's inaccurate and misleading articles have some hidden cleverness that is missing from the honest articles from Teslarati.

I think SEO is basic to modern web publishing, but I assume some organizations are more sophisticated. There was also some whompy wheels type NHSTA fire request for information from Tesla announcement. I'd be surprised if the investigation is not 3rd party inspired and the 3rd party is likely some short person or group.

Anyhow, I'm interested if anyone out there is a SEO or works in big finance, is there some optimizing that the EV sites are not getting? Their articles almost never show up in my iphone stock ticket. This seems like a short coming of the publishing sites. You can blame the algo the stock apps use, but that's futile. It is up to publishers to get visibility.

Even if their coverage is often questionable, CNBC (a unit of NBC) has clout.

 

[Thekiwi]

Interesting tale of two articles. Lora Koladny on CNBC shows up in my Stock time bar and Teslarati article about Tesla getting to 3000 weekly this year shows up nowhere. It got me wondering if both SEO (search engine optimization) and financial algo's use a lot of the same math and if Teslarati and other EV providers are missing some SEO knowledge. These seemingly stupid articles by Lora, which are exceedingly misleading, show up in google and the iphone stock app, while data driven articles like Tom Randall, or verified articles like Simon Alverez' article about Shanghai starting at 3000 a week, stated by the head of mfg at the site, gets no coverage. The negative articles show up in search, but they also seem to have a significant financial algo impact. Maybe Lora's inaccurate and misleading articles have some hidden cleverness that is missing from the honest articles from Teslarati.

I think SEO is basic to modern web publishing, but I assume some organizations are more sophisticated. There was also some whompy wheels type NHSTA fire request for information from Tesla announcement. I'd be surprised if the investigation is not 3rd party inspired and the 3rd party is likely some short person or group.

Anyhow, I'm interested if anyone out there is a SEO or works in big finance, is there some optimizing that the EV sites are not getting? Their articles almost never show up in my iphone stock ticket. This seems like a short coming of the publishing sites. You can blame the algo the stock apps use, but that's futile. It is up to publishers to get visibility.

You are probably right about better SEO optimization from the clickbait networks (CNBC). The iPhone stocks app is just using Yahoo news finance feed for each stock, so you would have to look at yahoo (Verizon) partnerships there with respect to what shows up in the content feed.

 

[winfield100]

Not 100 square miles, a square that is 100x100 miles, so 10,000 miles^2

@GregRF
<blush> what a noob mistake on my part, 7,600twh is > 4,500twh. (i needed to 76twh * 100)

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

I don't think it is harder for GM or VW to make a profit on EVs than for Tesla. Lord knows Tesla is having a hard time with it. The major auto makers have only dipped their toes because they understand the economics and see the market is not quite there yet. They also know the real market is China. That's why the first of GM's new EVs will be made and sold there. The US will be the second batch.

Don't you get tired of spouting the same drivel that has long been proven wrong? You're obviously on many people's ignore list, since many of the veterans haven't taken the time to respond to your rehashing of short talking points.

If you're interested in being brought up to speed on the current short talking points, then PM me. Otherwise you're wasting your time ... or are you just trolling?

 

[j6Lpi429@3j]

I don't think it is harder for GM or VW to make a profit on EVs than for Tesla. Lord knows Tesla is having a hard time with it. The major auto makers have only dipped their toes because they understand the economics and see the market is not quite there yet. They also know the real market is China. That's why the first of GM's new EVs will be made and sold there. The US will be the second batch.

Where are their factories that are currently producing EVs in china? The time to compete with tesla in China was >1 year ago. I don't see any factories run by GM or VW in China mass-producing electric cars. Have I missed some news? Or are these companies who 'understand the economics' deliberately giving the best-known EV brand a one-year head-start in china just for laughs?

GM 'dipped their toes' in EVs decades ago, then sat on their ass (oh also went bankrupt and needed bailing out...such awesome economics) and watched tesla do the roadster, then the S, then the X, then the 3, and are waiting for the upcoming Y,Pickup,Semi and Roadster 2020 before they reckon the market is 'quite there yet'?

This sounds *unlikely*.

 

[M3Rider]

Don't you get tired of spouting the same drivel that has long been proven wrong? You're obviously on many people's ignore list, since many of the veterans haven't taken the time to respond to your rehashing of short talking points.

If you're interested in being brought up to speed on the current short talking points, then PM me. Otherwise you're wasting your time ... or are you just trolling?

S/He's got an assignment to troll here. If banned, will prob pop up with another nickname.
Not sure what can be done.
FB/GOOG/TWTR etc are developing in-house automation to detect and ban such accts since the election meddling, but IDK if anybody is up to the task on this forum.

 

[Curt Renz]

TSLAQ. And you're likely on the TSLAQ block list(I am, as well).

It would seem that such long-term intense coordination (including the blockage of contrary information) has not likely been organized by a rabble of retail Tesla short sellers. Who is behind this?

 

[winfield100]

I’ve come to find out that not only did Top Gear have the Model S in range mode, multiple rumors are swirling that they did the entire run with the Model S in 1st gear!

 

[pyromatter]

 

[dc_h]

Even if their coverage is often questionable, CNBC (a unit of NBC) has clout.

Agreed, but lots of other financial articles get listed over factual articles.

I also think the Lora article will setup a big bear October theme about dropping sales. November will bounce back as ships start arriving in Europe and China, but December will be amazing. Today probably was probably a good day to buy puts or covered calls for next week.
The truck reveal with semi news on November 19th will be good for a bounce back(guess based on 50th anniversary of Apollo 12 landing, which would be a nice PR touch.
I’d expect 300 to be tested next week on October delivery numbers. Good time for dry powder on Friday.

 

[Dwdnjck]

I agree on selling battery packs. If Tesla can retain anything close to 50% of the battery pack market (by KWh), it will give them market power over input pricing and allow them to drive down COGS faster than anyone. If it helps partners save billions and move forward on EV deployment, that's ok. It will make them better faster and increase the long term margin/pricing advantage of EV versus ICE.
It is likely Tesla will hit 30% margin on autos this quarter. Long term, continuing to double battery production in the fastest incremental amount of time, is the best thing to drive EV cost benefit over ICE. This could also help fund, or encourage partners to fund more mining and feedstock production.
I doubt margins on packs sold to PGA/FCA would be as high as autos, but if it helps increase margins on the cars they do sell, and the margins are sufficient to fund more cell and pack production, it will speed up the end of the ICE age.

Apparently Tesla caught the rest of the auto industry with “their pants down” with the Grohman purchase.

 

[JRP3]

It would seem that such long-term intense coordination (including the blockage of contrary information) has not likely been organized by a rabble of retail Tesla short sellers. Who is behind this?

Unhinged lunatics intent on living their fantasy devoid of outside input.

 

[uselesslogin]

Man I’m a Twitter lurker and I now look at who is being blocked by TSLAQ with quiet fascination. The bar is very low. And they seem so proud of themselves.

 

[Antares Nebula]

I don't really get the objections to Tesla selling Powertrains, particularly if you support the Tesla Energy division.

Tesla could easily make as high gross profit per KWh selling Powertrains + Batteries to FCA as it makes on selling Megapacks.
Tesla quite clearly has huge scale battery plans to ensure batteries do not prevent Tesla ramping up its solution to global warming in the future.

Imagine if Tesla stripped out all of its other tech leads from its cars - 1) Autonomous features. 2) Safety 3) Durability, 4) Entertainment & OS, 5) Non EV Powertrain car innovation, 6) Agile development for continuous product improvement.

This would leave a Tesla car with equivalent specs to the FCA car built on the Tesla platform. But Tesla's car would still be significantly cheaper at the same time as making significantly higher gross profit due to 1) No EV Powertrain gross profit cost. 2) More vertical integration in the rest of the manufacturing process and 3) Online sales model, no marketing and vertical integration of the dealership network.

I don't have an objection to it in and of itself, especially as far as furthering Tesla's mission. But I do question whether Tesla will have sufficient spare capacity to provide EV powertrains to other OEMs.

But even more importantly, there is the question of design philosophy. Like Apple, Tesla products gain their strength from the tight integration of hardware and software, as well as tight hardware to hardware integration. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Even the Megapacks and Powerpacks you refer to come complete with Tesla designed software: the battery mgmt system/software (BMS). It's a complete package.

But an EV powertrain on its own is not a complete product, just like a Powerpack without the Tesla BMS is not a complete product. If Tesla supplies EV powertrains to other OEMs, who supplies the BMS (and the motor control software)? The OEM or Tesla? If the OEM, will the OEM do a good of a job as Tesla? Are there things they will miss that could lead to less than optimal performance or, worse, compromise or malfunction? If Tesla instead provides the BMS, can they be certain it will work optimaly within the larger software layer of the OEMs car control systems? Will they have to tweak or rewrite code for different CPUs that the OEM may be using? All this requires additional resources.

But this is not the way Tesla (or Apple) approach design. They try to create the singular best product by having full design control over both hardware and software, and over ALL the hardware and software (witness both Tesla and Apple's desire to even make their own CPUs; this is total vertical integration). Making EV powertrains or other components for other OEMs are simply not consistent with this design principle. This to me is the crux of the problem for those advocating that Tesla sell components to other OEMs. And I believe, Musk, like Steve Jobs with Apple, sees this.

See also my earlier message:

Another point re selling skateboards to other OEMs. Tesla components (like Apple) are designed to work together. Hardware and software in harmony (as well as other hardware to hardware harmony). What happens if there is some malfunction or issue with an OEM skateboard Tesla? Who's fault is it? Tesla's, the OEMs?

This is exactly the kind of problems that occur in the Wintel and Android world. The hardware maker blames the software company (Windows or Android), and the software company blames the hardware maker. This is why I (and many others) buy Apple. If there is a problem, we go straight to Apple. If there is an issue, Apple will issue a software update or recall (hardware update).

How many times have we also seen this with Tesla? And there are bound to be issues. Is Tesla then also to issue software fixes to other OEMs? And will it work properly if all the OEM hardware and software are not identical to Tesla's? No. Like Apple, Tesla has the right idea with a closed proprietary system. You trade an open platform (like Wintel or Android) for a closed one, but gain significant increase in quality and reliability (also compare Waymo vs Tesla in this regard).

This is why Steve Jobs shut down the nascent Apple clone program in his second coming to Apple. Any clone malfunctions or issues would just give Apple a bad rap. Moreover, Apple would have to constantly work with third party hardware companies to tweak their software -- a headache that distracts from making a best of class unified system. Same thing will happen with Tesla. Rather, Jobs (like Musk) believes in best of class engineering to create the best hardware and software combo to work in near perfect harmony, rather than make second rate components for others to mish mash together to give a less than optimal user experience.

 

[printf42]

Read the title is enough, Tesla is already sunsetting GF3, told you there is no demand, GF is a fake product, all smoke and mirrors, fraud!
/s

 

[Mike Smith]

Wall Street analysts say they don't think Tesla's earnings are sustainable, yet they've cranked up their earnings estimates for next year to $6.78. That would give Tesla a forward PE of 46 at today's price.

The average price target is $261.72, with earnings of $6.78, giving Tesla a forward PE of 38.6. For a company with a long term growth rate of around 65%. Interesting.

 

[heltok]

This being an investing thread, is that scenario - FSD technology available and widely provided regulatory approval in '20 or '21 an important component of your Tesla valuation / investment thesis?

More generally, I'm wondering who else that posts in the thread has this as a serious or even critical component of their valuation (as in - Tesla's valuation is only going to go up bigly if it's true, and it's about right or overvalued if it's not true).


For me, with what I've personally experienced of Tesla's driver assist (omg - I love it), what I know about the world of data science / machine learning (it's my job, but I don't work in or have experience with vision systems), and what I think about how hard it's going to be to get cars driving themselves around unattended (technically, and regulatory approval), if my investment thesis / valuation was dependent on a 20/21 availability, then I'd exit my Tesla position approximately immediately.

The risk of failure of that outcome is too high - not commensurate with the reward.

My personal investment thesis doesn't have driverless vehicles running around to collect the next fare for 10 years, and results in a 10+ year buy and hold investment window (where 10+ is probably shorthand for "until I die"). If actual driverless cars happens sooner than 10 years, then that's a lot of gravy

I think TSLA is undervalued even if robotaxi is 10years away. As it is today with just GF3, Y and Pickup, Tesla is imo undervalued. Robotaxi is huge, like a $4T market according to ARK:
White Paper: Why Self-Driving Cars Could Change Everything
If there is a 10% chance that Tesla takes 10% of that market, it implies a $40B value. Which is about what I dare to hope for.

However I do think people here really underestimates the probability of Tesla solving FSD soon. Elon, who we should give some credit to having a history of mostly being right eventually seems pretty confident. And his times have been converging on end Q4 for a long while now.

Some history. 3 years ago Tesla had some beta version working around Freemont:

Almost 1year ago they showed it to hundreds of investors in a live demo. They have had hundreds of employees, including Elon, beta testing it daily.

1 year ago Green discovered AKNET_V9, their new HW3 specific gigantic network.
Neural Networks
This summer Karpathy presented it:
Andrej Karpathy | Multi-Task Learning in the Wilderness

Karpathy has said that with HW3 networks will be a step change improvement.

Elon has tweeted that the new network only waits regulatory approval which should be ready in Q4.

In cars we see HW2 networks. In demos we have seen HW3 networks. HW3 network seems much more capable given the higher resolution, multiple frames, all cameras being used, camera agnostic layers(learn to see cars from all angles). They had it working in beta 3 years ago. They dared to do public demo with hundred of rides 1 year ago. They have had a fleet of 100-200k cars with HW3 gathering data in shadow mode for a year.

In conclusion: It seems pretty likely that HW3 networks will perform significantly better than HW2 networks, enough that FSD and Robotaxi might actually be viable 2020. Demos and Elon indicates this. Current HW2 performance might not give the full picture.

My likelihood estimation of this? 10%? 50%? 90%? It’s really hard... Just by Elon I would say 75%. By share price 0%. By wisdom of crowds 5%. From demos 50%. I will weight these together into my own estimate which is 20%. Yes that is high. But imo I don’t think most people have really grasped the magnitude of what I wrote above...

 

[Chunky Jr.]

The obvious, rhetorical response is 'Parking lots filling up with MIC Model 3's! No demand for MIC Model 3's!'

To paraphrase Yogi Berra - no one buys Teslas anymore. They're too popular.