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

[Fact Checking]

Over 200k TSLA shares traded in the premarket so far, which is significantly higher than the average premarket volume.

 

[jbcarioca]

BTW, say hello to Tesla's first Supercharger in Kazakhstan (and indeed, central Asia in general)

View attachment 476475

Can't wait to see that turn into a route from the European Supercharger network, through Ukraine into Russia, to Chelyabinsk (WNW of Nur Sultan), through Kazakhstan, into China, and via Urumqi to the established Supercharger network in the east.

Handy that it is at the Ritz-Carlton too. If I'm ever there at least I'll get my points or redeem a few!

 

[nativewolf]

So Germany’s unions “welcome” Tesla while UAW does all in its power to destroy Tesla and choke production of EV’s in the U.S.. (see my earlier post, set up for long term Euro auto win)

Fire Away!

Don't accept the german auto union at face value. First, Tesla's plant in Germany will be Unionized, fully. Workers Council will have lots of power in the plant, much more than the UAW has in the US. Until recently labor had been steady in the auto sector, closings are only just starting, the workers councils have some deep thinking to do but they are not the fragmented short term thinkers of the US. They are nationalistic long term thinkers. They are not Tesla's friend. Don't think for a moment that they want EVs. They want high paying jobs and that is all, most of all they want the high paying jobs to be provided by German companies....they joke..sort of ...that they plan to win the 3rd war. Not really funny if you see the car industry in England or France or Italy.

 

[ZeApelido]

Well, there may be slight bumps as the shorts throw themselves bodily in front of the production line to try and stop cars from rolling off the line.

I am visualizing Mark Speigal's Tiennamen Square moment.

 

[replicant]

Dana Hull has published another tour de force hit piece against Tesla/Elon about Solarcity if anyone’s interested.
Lora and Dana doing their best as ever.

Dana takes her "bad cop" role too seriously -- with Tom Randall being as her accomplice.

I can't believe she (or Bloomberg, her employee) can still consider this to be journalism.

 

[nativewolf]

They are at least smart enough to let the hook get in before yanking it to set it.
UAW not even throwin a cast

Fire Away!

UAW's net is sitting rotting on a dock in Detroit. They can't even remember who to knot patch's. Couldn't catch a dying narwhale.

 

[ReflexFunds]

Dana Hull has published another tour de force hit piece against Tesla/Elon about Solarcity if anyone’s interested.
Lora and Dana doing their best as ever.

Dana claims "Elon Musk’s Solar Deal Has Become the Top Threat to Tesla’s Future".
It is quite clear that Solar has become the focal point of shorts and the FUD media now that they have lost everything else. Kind of ironic given everyone still values it as zero. But i do think it will continue to create negative noise, together with the other spurious lawsuits Tesla/Elon are fighting.

It was always clear that Tesla's acquisition was bailing out a company in temporary liquidity trouble, however this does not mean it was not good value. Solarcity had liquidity trouble because shorts led by Chanos played an effective Confidence Crisis Short & Distort strategy to misinform people about SolarCity's very complicated business model and to cut off its access to the capital markets which it needed to continue building its lease portfolio. SolarCity's heavy reliance on leasing and external financing wasn't the most sensible model, but this doesn't mean they were not creating long term value. Part of the reason for the extreme and irrational hatred of Elon from shorts like Chanos is that they were like a pack of wolves that had wounded their prey and they were going in for the kill. Elon stepped in and took this prey away from them after they had already smelt blood and they have never given up the chase again since.

Just a reminder of what Tesla actually bought with the Solarcity acquisition which was approved by 85% of shareholders:

• A portfolio of solar leases generating c.$400m annual revenue with very limited cash cost (mostly maintenance) and 25 year term and likely renewal post lease. This is well over $10bn of undiscounted cash flow.
• A $1bn custom built factory
• Solar staff with experience of solar admin and installation.
• Solar engineers who also have expertise that can be used for Electric Vehicles, Battery and Charger installation.
• Sales/word of mouth synergies with environmentally conscious customers.
• Experience in operating as a utility that can be used for Tesla’s Virtual Grid strategy.
• A call option on solar R&D expertise with Silveo (which later expired worthless but had option value at the time).
• Early work on the solar roof product and lots of expertise to take it further.
• By saving Solar City, Tesla also protected Elon’s brand which has huge value for Tesla. They also reduced the risk of fear contagion to Tesla from a Solarcity bankruptcy.
• A full Solar + Storage + EV offer to help fight the FUD that EVs are still powered by dirty energy.

For this, Tesla paid:

• $3.2bn debt (more than half of this was non recourse project financing).
• $1bn of minority equity interests in the solar lease portfolio (can be thought of as amortising subordinated non recourse debt)
• $2.1bn Equity.

Things haven't gone smoothly at Solar City and the solar roof took longer than planned, but i think in the long term it will still prove to be a great acquisition.

 

[LN1_Casey]

Wondering how well Autopilot handles Russian bridges:

Or Russian river crossings:

Note the traffic scenario at 1:20 - can HW3 handle that?

I think Russian driving should just be flat out declared an extreme sport.

And since Tesla's are largely water poof for a little while, I think it'd fare better than that ICE did.

 

[KarenRei]

Think many people in the west are pretty clueless to the level of development is some parts of Kazakhstan, for example Nur Sultan.

Check out some images of that place, it is not just like it’s was portrayed in Borat:
https://www.google.se/search?q=nur+sultan

Pretty futuristic city imo

Absolutely. And while the average per-capita GDP is rather low, this does not apply to everyone in the country, and there's surprisingly strong EV incentives there. They can justify a small Tesla presence in the east and north.

I'm not so sure there are even such roads there.. I've gone with train from moscow to irkutsk and there really isn't much that you couod call a road.

Here's the E30 / M5 en route to Chelyabinsk:

Road from Nur-Sultan to China (not as good, but definitely a road):

China, en route to Urumqi:

From Urumqi:

 

[Krugerrand]

Anyone have any real insight?

In the scheme of things, he’s a nobody just like me. He’s inconsequential, has been behaving in a most despicable manner. He’s had more than his 15 minutes of fame and he’s reaped what he sowed. That’s all the thought he’s worth.

Nobody blink (or sell). We’re good.

 

[tschmidty]

Good gracious I can't wait to see Mark Spiegel's next financial update. I have no idea how diversified his fund is, but I get the feeling that he let his emotions get the best of him and went deeper and deeper into his Tesla short position (especially a few months ago when the SP was down and he was feeling like a genius). When a professional money manager makes personal, degrading statements about a CEO, and that is the basis of their investment position, you know they aren't thinking rationally. I can't believe the people who have money invested with him didn't pull out immediately. His hatred of all things Elon Musk has destroyed any ability he ever had to invest with a sound mind.

If he has gone off the deep end with his Tesla short position, there's a good chance he has wiped out every penny his fund has ever made. Granted, he was already lagging the market in every single metric. And he WAS betting his entire fund on the economy collapsing, but I get a feeling that he has such a large short position in Tesla that only the collapse of Tesla would save him now. If so, the SEC really needs to keep an eye on him.

Anyone have any real insight? I'm just going off intuition and observation. I have no idea what his position in Tesla is.

Yeah, I don't see how anyone could read that September letter and invest with that guy. That whole section on Tesla is a peek into an unhinged mind. And there is a reason there is no October letter since he has to be getting ready to move to a country with no extradition treaty after his losses that month.

 

[Lessmog]

I feel like the Truck is over engineered and would have trouble hitting volume production like the Model X. Desire and demand will be there, deliveries will suffer is my guess for a good while.

But I do know Elon always ask himself the question of "can this be mass produced easily?". He even said this about neurolink needing to be a simple installation like Lasik. But my little brain can't wrap around a "futuristic APC that will blow my mind" while being also simple enough to mass produce easily.

Haha, I see what you did there!

 

[Mike Smith]

There have to be a lot of price target upgrades coming soon. Even Ben Kallo's current target is below the current price, at $355.

 

[Krugerrand]

Elon lands somewhere and people speculate that gigafactory announcement imminent.

That was NOT speculation. That was straight up tracking his plane, a fortuitous sighting of Elon AND Jerome in Berlin, known information about the awards show and past logical location calculations of where in Europe a Gigafactory could be placed; Poland, Germany, Spain, etc...

If you couldn’t put those pieces all together yesterday and come to a high probability of GF4’s location (at least six 9’s), then you just simply aren’t that informed about Tesla/Elon or the lights are on and nobody’s home.

 

[SteveG3]

Dana takes her "bad cop" role too seriously -- with Tom Randall being as her accomplice.

I can't believe she (or Bloomberg, her employee) can still consider this to be journalism.

As far as I’m aware, employees at for profit programming companies have taken no more of a journalistic oath than the person taking orders at the McDonalds drive thru has taken a nutritionist’s oath.

While I do think there is such a thing as journalism, I think the notion that giant for profit companies simply referring to themselves as “news” implies anything about the presence of journalism in their programming has decayed to the point of largely being a myth. The old USSR had the word “Republic” in its name, and the current Chinese government still does. North Korea one ups them both with “People’s Democratic Republic...”

 

[Unpilot]

From a CNBC article.

The big question is whether Tesla can hold onto its lead in electric-car manufacturing once Volkswagen and other established carmakers really get into the game. The old guard have several advantages: they possess huge expertise in manufacturing and deep pockets that can fund new technology.

How many times will they trot out the line about the "big boy's are coming" line?

 

[powertoold]

How many times will they trot out the line about the "big boy's are coming" line?

Until either the big boys or Tesla goes bankrupt

 

[Krugerrand]

So much good news lately, getting tired of winning ; )

Can I get a moderator here; clean up in aisle 4! This poster needs permanent banning. Nobody in their right mind gets tired of winning. Ever. Especially after being beaten down repeatedly, for extended periods of time, by liars, crooks, thieves, bandits and dog lovers.

 

[Dan Detweiler]

Well...here we go!
Let's see what the day has in store.

Dan

 

[SteveG3]

From a CNBC article.

The big question is whether Tesla can hold onto its lead in electric-car manufacturing once Volkswagen and other established carmakers really get into the game. The old guard have several advantages: they possess huge expertise in manufacturing and deep pockets that can fund new technology.

How many times will they trot out the line about the "big boy's are coming" line?

pretty much, as long as,

ShamWow!

appears to be a profitable investment for the people behind it (most likely this is about extending the lifespan of the fossil fuel economy), the infomercials will air.

just realize the people presenting/writing for these organizations, and many of the most vocal shorts are acting as infomercial pitchmen/women and there’s not much confusing or surprising in it.