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

[EVNow]

And that dock slopes towards the ocean so we know what happens in the night when no one is watching...

That's why all those big vehicles are blocking the suicidal cars.

Ofcourse, summon was to save money on driving the cars into the ocean.

 

[printf42]

The same thing they have been doing for the past 6 to 7 years. Rehash the same old topics with a small new twists and when that doesn't work.....
MOVE THE GOAL POST.

I see in our near future the fear setting in because of bears dire warnings that Tesla is going to raise more funds through stock delusion to pay for bringing the CT time line forward. They will push the narrative that it will be just like the Model 3 except THIS TIME it will actually cause the end of Tesla because no one actually wants a CT.

I can also see the message being pushed for massive losses this quarter because of the record number of cars created (and dumped in the ocean). Just like last year where Tesla had a positive Q3 then Q4 was lacking. This Q4 will be a disaster because of all the money sunk into making cars that are not profitable.... and just wait for all those warranty claims to catch up to them.

If cars do not come out of GF3 within a week or so it will be pushed that either the Government is blocking Tesla from selling them because they do not pass some inspection and/or there is a problem with the line just like there was at Fremont when Model 3 started there and Tesla is going to have huge struggles getting the lines running in China. This will cause huge financial set backs and Tesla will go bankwupt. If they do start selling them then there will be massive amount of warranty claims because of the bad work and panel gaps. All these China set backs while Tesla is scrambling to find money (more debt) to build GF4 which the German Unions will drive up overrun costs.

When that doesn't work they will move the goal posts and say Elon promised 500K cars for 2019 and failed, hence another lie and everything is a lie. 2020 Should be at the promised 1M car for the year and guidance is going to be below that. If guidance is above that it will be stated that it's not enough because guidance was supposed to be 1M Model 3 alone not including Model S, X and Y hence Tesla won't be able to keep up cash flow and they will fail to pay some bond then........ wait for it.... bankwutcy.

and lets just not get started on the lack of demand for Tesla products and the HUGE non-stop inrush of all the massively superior (yet more expensive) other competing EVs that are flooding the market everyday. I mean they cost as much as a Model S and have the same specs as a (2013) Model S (yet smaller). You know, cars like the......(crickets).... Ford MOCK 3!! I mean Moch E. no that's Mach E.. got it. Does anyone know what that ... uh.... thing sticking out of the bottom of the screen does that the scroll wheel on the steering wheel can not do? Well except make me take my hand off the wheel to touch and fondle it while I am driving.

And please don't yell at me. I am just giving you the heads up.
As you can imagine since most of us have been following this for years, I can probably go one for pages worth of "what will they do."

Sometime I got the feeling shorts actually got their ideas from here, I don’t think they are smart enough to come up with those ideals.

If someday TMC collectively decide to short a company, oh good luck to them...

 

[Krugerrand]

Tesla sold only 16565 in Oct? How come...

Demand issue. Duh.

 

[Electroman]

Cramer is TSLAQ's new love
View attachment 483162

I really liked him on the other dark side. He is a cheat, and I would never trust anything he says.

 

[Krugerrand]

I don't want to raise expectations, but I'm starting to see a very realistic possibility that Tesla posts Q4 deliveries far above my base case of 110k, possibly as high as 103k Model 3s and 20k S&X. Without any contribution from GF3.

There are now many separate data points suggesting Model 3 production has increased towards 100k per quarter at Fremont vs 79.8k in Q3.

83,000 for Q4. Finally answer. Trust me on that and spread the word.

 

[EVNow]

He was substantially wrong about 6k/week in Q1 - in reality they were at 4k/week.

Actually 5k/wk. They produced 63k, but only sold 51k.

 

[Krugerrand]

Cramer is TSLAQ's new love
View attachment 483162

Meh. He’s like a Chicago wind — wait a minute and it’ll be different. Dude talks out of both sides of his mouth. Gets zero trust or respect from me.

 

[dhrivnak]

Zeebrugge:

Jurjen Kers on Twitter

Oh my goodness acres and acres of unsold cars. Demand has dropped off the cliff.

 

[TradingInvest]

Shorts are working very hard to get Autopilot banned.
We should write to the senators, so at least they could hear from both sides.

 

[Darkfox021]

Actually 5k/wk. They produced 63k, but only sold 51k.

Delivered 51k, but your point stands.

 

[HG Wells]

To: Boss Short
Subject RETURNS

Boss, remember that report that said Tesla shipped some cars to Europe with the wrong headlights ?
Headlights made for the US market but unusable in the EU ?

Well, I found them !

They are in Zeebrugge waiting to be shipped back to the US.

Sincerely
Chief Editor
Shortsville Times

 

[Krugerrand]

I am drifting a bit into pop psychology here a bit, but he is instructive.

He explored Tesla after being REALLY pissed off with BMW (I think) who would not let him roll his lease into a different vehicle due to high mileage and high fuel costs. He bought the Model 3 and let the other lease car sit for the last 6 months of the lease.

He liked the model 3 performance and bought it quickly then it arrived sooner than expected (delivered with half a charge) and he had no home charger yet resulting in extreme range anxiety the second day he had it (funny after the fact but not at the time). He got it for the low cost in use due to the miles he drives. He is not a mechanical type and expects his cars to do their job with no drama. He does like the car.

There are a lot of similar customers out there and he probably needed more hand holding at delivery (hindsight, of course). He just learned there is a rear trunk latch release button for example. I have no idea why "Track Mode" has not appeared for him.

I think his beef with Tesla is that he just wants to call the local delivery center and get similar results as when he called his local Bimmer dealer. He wants the superior vehicle without any change to the dealership experience if I am reading him correctly.

So he was willing to spend more for state of the art technology but not willing to spend any extra time if I am reading him correctly.

I’d enjoy talking to him about other topics to see if he’s consistently inflexible in other areas of life.

You make out of life what you put in comes to mind. I get his position about wanting to talk on the phone to a live person — that’s his history and habits. I often feel as strongly about talking to people face to face (so I can judge their honesty, read their body language, look them in the eye, and not easily allow them to duck direct conversation).

But that is not the world today. I’ve had to ‘adjust’ to little face thingabobs and pictures of avocados and cucumbers...er... hearts and tacos to reduce my frustration with today’s changes in communication with other humans.

Man I love my cat.

 

[HG Wells]

SUBJECT: Zeebrugge photo.

I may be wrong but the cars in the back sections dont look like Tesla's.
Only the first section seem to be model 3's.

 

[elasalle]

Meh. He’s like a Chicago wind — wait a minute and it’ll be different. Dude talks out of both sides of his mouth. Gets zero trust or respect from me.

Wall Street God - Janus.

 

[Yodi]

Thanksgiving Report:

It turns out that at our table was a family friend who is an executive for an autogroup dealer network of modest size (not Auto Nation by any means). Tesla came up and I thought it might be informative to others as to his thinking. Median age was probably mid sixties.

1. He expressed several times that Tesla is only popular on the coasts and that the middle of the country has much less interest. He seemed to see this as a substantial problem for Tesla but never volunteered any details.

2. He expressed that Tesla has a problem with their charging network since they are so far apart whereas he sees his dealerships averaging about 30 miles apart and they are building out chargers and of course already have great service.

3. He did like the stock as a trading vehicle since it tends to trade in nice wide range. When it gets toward the top of it's range it is time to sell and when it gets toward the bottom of it's range it is time to buy.

4. He stated repeatedly that the Ford Mach E was popular that it was already sold out and the same with Daimler's EV products.

5. He said that autonomous driving will not be realized in his life time. I took this as mostly dismissive since he is in his later 60s.

6. He seems to view Tesla in an mildly appreciative manner for popularizing what will be that next step for the automobile industry in the future but merely an annoyance now.

7. Never mentioned UBER/ride sharing one way or another. He has never been in a Tesla and arrived in an Cadillac Escalade.

Also at the table was another Model 3 Performance owner with 20K miles traveled mostly for business.

He said he would never buy another gas car but that his Tesla experience had been frustrating. He considered selling it twice and openly says he hates the company but loves the car. In 11 months he had 6 flat tires, damaged rims, broke the display (he paid) and scrapped a fender when parking. He has had a frustrating experience with communications with Tesla but likes the Tesla ranger when the Tesla phone communications system finally delivers.

He tends to drive longer distances at high speeds. He is spending a fair chunk of money to get 19" wheels hoping to get better reliability. He has never been contacted by Tesla to install his (missing) spoiler and his SW updates have never provided "track mode" which he did pay for as part of his performance package and this is a piss-off for him. He has FSD and uses autopilot on long drives and likes it. He had no idea there was a HW board swap coming to him related to the FSD he purchased. He says his next car will be an S.

He really wants to just use the phone to talk to Tesla and this has been problematical for him. He lives on the phone and is insanely busy.

My take.

It was like two sides of the same coin. Both positions were expressive of their world view. Auto dealer exec dismissive of disruption coming toward him from the future and new Model 3 owner expecting the benefits of disruption but struggling and frustrated with the time investments early adopters may need to make in those first steps into the future. Zero mention of the CT.

Both were fun at the table and I kept a pretty low profile just enjoying the company and warm spirits and avoiding religion, politics and Tesla. When I got home I remeasured the garage to be sure the CT will fit. Next year should be interesting.

I like how most of the thanksgiving tables have Tesla soldier undercover guiding the Tesla conversation and perception. Kudos

 

[Doggydogworld]

The "7,000 battery packs" story that was leaked to CleanTechnica is only about Q3 battery pack production for GF3:

Tesla Gigafactory 3 Has ~7,000 Battery Packs In Stock For Chinese Model 3 Production, Will Use LG Chem Cells In 2020 | CleanTechnica​

Thanks for the link. I'd seen mention of the 7000, but not the original story. His source was very specific on timeline and, IMHO, wrong. It doesn't line up with Work in Progress Inventory or Panasonic's chart which showed 80k packs at most in Q3. But yeah, I agree there's no basis to assume 7k Q4 packs went to Shanghai.

In Q3 Tesla actually increased inventory, they didn't "liquidate".

Right. They grew inventory dramatically in Q1 and liquidated much of that excess in Q2. Not much action in Q3, new car inventory down a bit and raw materials up. I expect similar in Q4.

At the end of Q3 Tesla had $5,338m in cash equivalents. If we assume just pure Q3 cash flow then Q4 cash flow will be $5,338m+$947m-$566m-$170m = $5,549m - an increase over Q3.

But all other things are not equal:

• If Tesla increases Model 3 production and deliveries from ~80k to ~90k, with mostly flat inventory and flat S&X, to meet the guidance of 360k, then they'll gain disproportionately more cash income, because the incremental cash income at the margin is around 30% because fixed costs are paid already. I.e. at $50k ASP that's +$15m of income for every +1,000 units, or +$150m for +10k units delivered.
• But S&X is probably not flat either: Q4 is seasonally the strongest.
• Capex outflows might have increased due to GF3 and Model Y construction - it's unclear to what extent. In Q3 capital expenditures already ticked up from the Q2 level or $250m to $385m, which Tesla characterized this way in their Q3 update letter: "Capex increased sequentially due to investments in Gigafactory Shanghai and Model Y preparations in Fremont."

Anyway, the net of these factors seems to suggest a further increase in cash levels over Q3.

Well, Q3 cash flow grew cash by 380m, but that was without 700m+ of debt paydown (in fact debt grew). Shanghai capex doesn't require cash, but Model Y capex might tick up. Anyway, I'll keep my baseline at 5b on 12/31.

Mid-quarter cash consumption depends on production levels, but they are also frequently working capital loan facility financed.

Tesla more or less maxes out their Credit Line at the end of the quarter to show the largest possible cash balance. They pay it down as soon as the new quarter starts. They then finance their intra-quarter inventory build by drawing on the line, so if everything goes as planned their cash balance holds fairly steady at this lower level until the final weeks of the quarter when it shoots back up. If something goes wrong, well....

They started 2019 with 3.6b of cash, but due to slow Q1 deliveries and the convertible maturity they were out of cash in early March. They quickly negotiated an increase to the Credit Line to tide them over until they got deliveries cranked up. I'm confident they don't want a repeat and will keep a bigger buffer going forward.

 

[Freder Reeve]

Shorts are working very hard to get Autopilot banned.
We should write to the senators, so at least they could hear from both sides.

They only respond to large sums of cash or blackmail.

 

[Prunesquallor]

Zeebrugge:

Jurjen Kers on Twitter

PhotoShop

/s

 

[EVNow]

Dramatically longer lifespans: 30% ("million mile battery")

I think the chance of this is pretty high - if not already achieved, they will say they are going to get there in x months.

 

[RobStark]

@SpaceCash

tesla cybertruck Long Sleeve T-Shirt