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

[MP3Mike]

Kind of strange that he is attributing the lower sales to S&X - and insists there was guidance of 20k deliveries. I don't remember any 20k guidance for S&X - unless he is going by the (very) old 80k for the year and dividing by 4.

The most recent, not old, information from the 19Q3 update letter was 90k production rate for the S&X. So divided by 4 would be 22,500.

 

[Nocturnal]

Tesla is like a slow-rolling train traveling on a track that is sloping down just a bit. It is picking up speed slowly, but will be like a speeding bullet SOON. My prediction is that TSLA will hit $5,000 in the next 10 years.

Some are throwing around the escape velocity metaphor. We have already seen liftoff, but the rocket is going slowly up...soon though.

The battery decade: How energy storage could revolutionize industries in the next 10 years

Does anyone know what company builds more batteries than the rest of the world combined?​

 

[printf42]

Deliveries Of The Made-in-China Tesla Model 3 Start: Videos

Does anyone have a secondary source for this? Inside EVs reports that Model 3 MIC production is already at 280 a day or near 2000 per week.

Big ammunition if true, especially with most media still thinking the factory is making 15 per day or something ridiculously small.

In the event, the host said “Our factory is making cars at full capacity starting from today”, it’s unclear how many the “full capacity” means, but it’s clear the ramp up is almost done according to plans.

 

[kbM3]

Instead, it should INSPIRE competition to do better by showing the way—by making the best sustainable-energy vehicles and technology on the planet.

This is an all-hands-on-deck mission.​

The strategy you give for Tesla to inspire the competition, happens to be IDENTICAL to the strategy they would need to destroy the competition​

 

[LAEVFAN]

Since I accidentally killed the 2018 thread, here's a cross-post of that fateful missive.

Happy New Year, all! Here's to 2019, the year we see (my predictions...):

• The fabled $35k Tesla become reality
• The Model Y (give it to me now!)
• Gigafactory 1 next phase of build-out, and many more panels on top
• Gigafactory 3 begin production (of something)
• HW 3 and some minor FSD umbrella features (but definitely not FSD)
• Tesla getting customer communications under control (where 'control' indicates at least third-grader aptitude)
• Superchargers in North Dakota (see also: 2018, 2017, 2016)
• The production Semi specs
• Elon doing something amazing
• Elon doing something incredibly stupid

What are your predictions?

Enjoy!

My predictions (some of them may be called wishes):
1. Musk will restrict his tweets to Tesla announcements after the fact, not before.
2. Tesla will sell one million cars.
3. TSLA will hit $1,000.
4. We'll get a new date for Roadster rollout.
5. Gas stations will start to see declining sales.
6. Existing owners will moan and groan when they realize their prized possessions are relics of the past.

 

[Don TLR]

Deliveries Of The Made-in-China Tesla Model 3 Start: Videos

Does anyone have a secondary source for this? Inside EVs reports that Model 3 MIC production is already at 280 a day or near 2000 per week.

Big ammunition if true, especially with most media still thinking the factory is making 15 per day or something ridiculously small.

This local source has said the same at 280 per day

 

[MABMAB]

TSLA should have made the cars drive themselves through the China factory for that thing last night.

 

[jbcarioca]

The most recent, not old, information from the 19Q3 update letter was 90k production rate for the S&X. So divided by 4 would be 22,500.

You'll note from the header that that was for capacity, not production rate.

 

[VValleyEV]

Hi All...

I have been trying to keep up with this board, but only have time to skim posts. But I am serious investor of this stock (up 7 figures this year on equity and converts combined). Here are some thoughts:

• the shorts are often morally bankrupt or are being paid to do their dirty work...who knows. We should be better than them. Wishing them to die is not proper or decent. They need to learn decency...maybe they never will...but we should be better.
• So gloating over and over about shorts burning when the price rockets like it has, is their MO...we can be better. We need to save the planet you know, but we also need to save humanity from the horribleness we often see on the net. If we can't set such an example who will? Up to you, but beware karma.
• I surely don't want the shorts to succeed and have zero respect for many of them and their bevavior. So like many of you of course i get some level of satisfaction when I see Tesla succeed and that their efforts to lie/cheat/bully...etc etc...to make TSLA fail are not working. But I keep this feeling/satisfaction within me.
• I drive a Tesla Model X. i paid nearly 120K for it. Thats a lot of Cheddar. I have HW3. I got latest update. We are long way from FSD. Sorry for those who think otherwise and I dont want to argue bout it. It's simply a huge problem and not going to be solved any time soon. The way I look at it is Tesla is better than all other carmakers, and their self driving is way ahead of all the others, so this helps them sell cars and this is good for the environment, the world and investors. They will get better and better over time.
• People asking for city driving? I want it first to do a lot better on highway driving! It's quite good and reduces my driving burden by a huge amount...but i MUST pay close attention. Solve that first before worrying about much harder city driving. If Telsa could just get geofenced true self driving on major highways in good weather, that would be great.
• These forums are great and full of so many smart people, but it is 95% or more bulls, so we need to always be careful of groupthink. We should be glad TSLA has done well, but also be asking "what can go wrong?" This is just the prudent thing to do.
• I wish people would stop posting that they are "not selling till Tesla reaches a $ga-jillion!!!". This adds nothing to the discussion here.
• I gets tiresome when people defend every single thing Musk does when he obviously does some stupid sheet sometimes. The guy is incredible, OK? But he is not infallible and does amazingly stupid things sometimes for a super smart guy. Having these two traits (being incredibly amazing at getting world changing things done and being at the same time really dumb about obvious things...and sometimes a little full of it too) are not necessarily mutually exclusive, OK? Let the guy be a human being with his failings and successes, but defending obvious flaws makes us look cultish. You have to know with him how to parse the sometimes BS with reality. I give him slack too because of the amazing things he has done, but i am not blind either.
• What I would really like to do is a deep analysis of the revenues going forward. There are people here who are much better at that than I am. I have attached an image of a spreadsheet (TMC wont let me load actual sheet) that is perhaps something we can start with. I hope you all agree that as investors in TSLA we should try to model the revs, margins, etc going out several years. Of course its a guessing game, but we have enough history and informed people that I think we can take a good shot at it. I note that the 2020 numbers I put in there are only made up numbers and not meant to be real. I am hoping people here like fact checking, karen etc can make this more accurate.
• Since this is an investors forum, I think this type of analysis is what we should be doing so we can get some handle on what the stock price fair value is given future returns.

I wish you all a great new year of peace and joy. I hope Tesla and the transition to sustainable energy take off in this new decade...we really have no choice but for that to happen.

View attachment 494407

Great post, thanks.

Comments on this bit:

People asking for city driving? I want it first to do a lot better on highway driving! It's quite good and reduces my driving burden by a huge amount...but i MUST pay close attention. Solve that first before worrying about much harder city driving. If Telsa could just get geofenced true self driving on major highways in good weather, that would be great.

1. As an investor, I want to see some city driving features rolled out soon, to recognize some of the FSD revenue. I believe this can be done in an iterative way that increases safety AND increases value of FSD to a purchasing decision. Consider for example (just a hypothetical, the point is that it can be iterative) that it could start as an extension to adaptive cruise control. The ability to stop for traffic lights and stop signs while on cruise control could be added without engaging AP navigation, which I would love. As it stands I can use cruise on city streets and it will stop and go as long as there is a car in front of me that stops for the traffic signal. If you have seen the new visualization features in the latest software release (my wife has it in her model 3), it really makes you want the car to start using some of that stuff. So it will help with demand and competitiveness, and I maintain with an iterative feature release it can immediately increase fleet safety, not reduce it.

2. A lot of folks here will argue with you about geofencing, and I think for good reason. GPS data is never going to be up-to-date enough to trust over eyeballs, whether on highways or city streets. So the argument goes that it just is a bad idea to go down that path at all, period.

 

[Driver Dave]

Success = coin flip.

Don't be the guy that trades based on this guy.

 

[Singer3000]

More on Cowen report.

Shares of Tesla Inc.(TSLA) sank 4.2% in active morning trading Monday, after Cowen analyst Jeffrey Osborne said he expects the electric vehicle maker's full-year delivery total to be below the low end of guidance, amid disappointing Model S/X results. Although Osborne raised his fourth-quarter delivery estimate to 101,000 from 95,000, to reflect strength in the Netherlands and China ahead of subsidy reductions, he said he believes the 2019 delivery total will be about 356,000 vehicles, "slightly missing" the guidance range of 360,000 to 400,000 vehicles. For the fourth quarter, Osborne expects 15,000 Model S/X deliveries, below guidance of 20,000, while his estimate of 85,300 Model 3 estimate is in line with expectations of 85,500. Excluding the Netherlands and China, Osborne projects fourth-quarter Model 3 deliveries to be down 7% from a year ago, "which highlights the demand saturation we are seeing across most mature markets as we shift from pent-up demand to steady flow demand," Osborne wrote in a note to clients. He reiterated his underperform rating but raised his price target to $210, which is 49% below current levels, from $190. The stock has run up 24% year to date, while the S&P 500 has climbed 28%.
​

Kind of strange that he is attributing the lower sales to S&X - and insists there was guidance of 20k deliveries. I don't remember any 20k guidance for S&X - unless he is going by the (very) old 80k for the year and dividing by 4.

Even more weird is noting that "Excluding the Netherlands and China, Osborne projects fourth-quarter Model 3 deliveries to be down 7% from a year ago which highlights the demand saturation we are seeing across most mature markets as we shift from pent-up demand to steady flow demand" - without even mentioning production limit Tesla has.

Where is he getting Model 3 numbers from - that too down to a precision of 100 (85,300) ?

At the close of Q3 Osborne said: “margins are likely to consider to be under pressure and we don’t see sustainable profitability in the short to medium term”.

After the Q2 capital raise he said: “We update our model to reflect the up to $2.7bn capital raise, which was badly needed but do not see this as sufficient to fund capex, pay off debt, and offset the cash burn that is playing out with lower than planned volume and margins on the Model 3”

After the Model Y launch he said “the reveal underwhelmed us”.

Most relevant of all, one week before the Q1 production and deliveries report he cut his estimates for Model 3 deliveries to 47,500. The achieved number was 50,900,

He’s the most perma of perma bears. It seems he did pick up on noise that Q1 was going to a bit of a cluster but I’m not sure we need fall into the trap of saying this dude is some sort of truth speaker.

Personally wouldn’t be surprised if X&S sales are dross. Cannibalised by 3&Y and deferred purchases due to the premature plaid bragging. But I’m not much worried about the 360k guidance.

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

Nio back up to a 4.25 billion market cap, on revenues of 257 million, a loss that exceeds their revenue, and negative margins on their cars. But still, wall st wants to value the company at almost 17x quarterly revenue. If you apply that same logic to Tesla, it should have a 108 billion market cap...so of course Tesla is down today lol

 

[Tslynk67]

That's a serious WTF, right there:

 

[The Accountant]

Success = coin flip.

Don't be the guy that trades based on this guy.

View attachment 494430

Wait? He only gets 46 out of 100 ratings correct; he has a 3.2% annual return....and still sits in the top 28% of investors ranked?
Wow - why would anyone listen to these analysts?

 

[M3Rider]

This local source has said the same at 280 per dayView attachment 494427

Interesting. So they'll do 10x2 instead of 8x3.
28/h is like 3920/w, assuming maintenance is done in remaining 4 hours.
3920x4x12=188,160 with planned capacity 150,000.
So, that means GF3 is pretty much 100% ramped minus batteries.

 

[sparcs]

Deliveries Of The Made-in-China Tesla Model 3 Start: Videos

Does anyone have a secondary source for this? Inside EVs reports that Model 3 MIC production is already at 280 a day or near 2000 per week.

Big ammunition if true, especially with most media still thinking the factory is making 15 per day or something ridiculously small.

We have been pretty much almost always disappointed when trying to extrapolate production rates. In this case, we don't have an audio clip from whomever made the original statement. So it could be someone else's interpretation or misunderstanding of what someone else said in a foreign language.

They could have made 28 cars in one hour and are extrapolating for all we know.

 

[azaz]

given the fact there seem to be no incentives being offered to buyers currently, I'm fairly confidant we will hit 360+ for the year.

 

[MP3Mike]

Interesting. So they'll do 10x2 instead of 8x3.
28/h is like 3920/w, assuming maintenance is done in remaining 4 hours.
3920x4x12=188,160 with planned capacity 150,000.
So, that means GF3 is pretty much 100% ramped minus batteries.

They are only working 5 days a week right now, but should be moving to 6 days a week in the future. (At least from my understanding.)

So once two shifts starts that will be at 2,800/week and moving toward 3,360.

And if they hold at 3,360/week that means they plan on having the factory working ~45 weeks out of the year. (Almost 2 weeks of scheduled downtime per quarter, which I think lines up with what happens at Fremont.)

 

[EVNow]

Most relevant of all, one week before the Q1 production and deliveries report he cut his estimates for Model 3 deliveries to 47,500. The achieved number was 50,900,

This is useful. So, my guess is he uses some 3rd parties who give him some raw numbers (of registrations) and he derives his own delivery estimate. I wonder what his estimates for Q2, Q3 were. Is he consistently on the lower side ?

 

[M3Rider]

They are only working 5 days a week right now, but should be moving to 6 days a week in the future. (At least from my understanding.)

So once two shifts starts that will be at 2,800/week and moving toward 3,360.

And if they hold at 3,360/week that means they plan on having the factory working ~45 weeks out of the year. (Almost 2 weeks of scheduled downtime per quarter, which I think lines up with what happens at Fremont.)

Ok. 5-6 days/w knocks the numbers down to approx. planned capacity. But the interesting part is that HW seems to be ramped 100%.
Still need to hire/train 2nd shift and finish that battery production facility. The latter might be the bottleneck for now.