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

[Beltsbear]

Just keep the cash, or pay down debt IMO.....

Reducing debt, or investing the cash in expanded capacity, creates value for shareholders...

When debt is zero and they have no plans for significant Capex, that may be the time to buy back shares.

Tesla is so far from buying shares back. They could invest in targeted grid scale energy projects that could have a five year payback. Not as fast as the payback on a gigafactory, but far better then most stock repurchases.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Random thought. Tesla spent only $1.3bil on CAPEX in 2019 but is enough to fuel 50% growth in 2020.

Elon says Tesla is spending as much as they need. With $6.3bil in the bank and spending less than half of their operating cash flows on CAPEX, wouldn't it be a good idea to dump the rest of the cash to buy back its own stock?

Especially if TSLA doubles in a year or two. It'd be a good investment for them just to buy now at $640 and then sell it back as a capital raise for $1500.

Seems like a good idea but am I thinking about this in a wrong way?

Companies need cash for many reasons. Say this virus outbreak gets a lot worse, Tesla may have to hunker down with a lot less sales. Cash provides a bridge. An auto recession could hit. A war could erupt in the Congo cutting off Cobalt supply resulting in less cars being manufactured. Or, just within Tesla itself, they could run into more operational challenges, OR they could all of a sudden see a great opportunity that requires a $1B in cash.

So, yeah, you don't want to go all Apple and bank $700B, but Tesla is far from that. They could use a bit more cushion for the size of the company.

 

[Singuy]

H



In 1 week, we'll see how it spreads outside China.

On the flight back I transited through Korea. Several ppl from China were on board and many other nationals. Almost 1 out of 4 ppl were sneezing and coughing.

Looks like foreigners had a big panic and everyone who has cold like symptons were trying to get out before all of asia gets quarantined.

When I landed, there was no screening at all. The west seems to treat this like a joke.

The rest of this post are just my own opinion on how this will eventually play out. When the dust settles, the ones that will come out relatively unscathed are the ones who took a hard stance right away. Countries afraid to block all flights from china in fear of affecting tourism will suffer. So far, the one surprising fact is that the virus spread to Germany first and UK has no case.

Because the virus is a joke. Coronavirus is not new and have been infecting people for years. This is just a new strand and has a mortality rate less than influenza. But hey for those who bought loads of N95 masks before the hysteria, you probably just did better than buying TSLA by turning a profit on those on Ebay.

 

[Krugerrand]

Yep, Elon's Carnegie, Rockefeller and Ford rolled into one. Here's how you make an empire:
1) Huge potential market (replacement of every ICE vehicle on the planet)
2) Excellent product that people want
3) Emphasis on continuous, rapid growth and innovation
4) Utter lack of competition

Yeah, it’s hard to place a value on this because the number is impossibly large.

Meh. I can quantify it, easy peasy. It’s 7 private islands with full scale @Unpilot repellant @Lycanthrope built walls (roll with it, Buddy), robotic sentinel run turrets, tigers, lions and border collies, oh, my!, 1/4 mile drag strips, Supercharger Network, Cybertruck, Roadster 2.0, 2 yachts...

Yeah, I can quantify it all day long, every day. Booyah!

 

[EinSV]

It would be insane to buy back stock. Pretty bad to retire debt early (unless to refinance at lower rate).

Tesla needs all the money they have (and more).
- Auto business is capital heavy - the working capital needs are themselves really big.
- Euro giga won't be as cheap as GF3 - no cheap loans there (though FCA cash will help).
- A macro downturn can happen anytime.
- They need money to expand battery production from 35GWh to 2,000 GWh.

Infact, it might be a good idea to raise money through capital or debt - when they see signs of a macro downturn.

I agree with you about buybacks but Tesla spent only $1.3B in capex in 2019 while building GF3 and getting Model Y into production.

With the drastic reductions in capex per unit production for GF3 and Model Y I don't think Tesla is "capital heavy" like a traditional auto business.

Tesla's ability to scale using significantly reduced capital is a big deal that for some reason is overlooked by almost everyone.

 

[MC3OZ]

Meh. I can quantify it, easy peasy. It’s 7 private islands with full scale @Unpilot repellant @Lycanthrope built walls (roll with it, Buddy), robotic sentinel run turrets, tigers, lions and border collies, oh, my!, 1/4 mile drag strips, Supercharger Network, Cybertruck, Roadster 2.0, 2 yachts...

Yeah, I can quantify it all day long, every day. Booyah!

We are still waiting for you to post a Wine List for these Islands, so we can be sure not to visit... lack of information can spark curiosity.
I don't need to tell you about curiosity...

 

[heltok]

New page on tesla.com
Autopilot AI

Fellow retail investors, lets do our given assignment and extract every piece of useful information from these pictures/videos!

 

[EVNow]

Elon's comments on Autopilot in the second Third Row Podcast are extremely exciting.
This is probably the most important information we have got this week. It sounds like Tesla is almost done with the complicated pathway to Autonomy.
This could well be the game changer that dramatically reduces disengagement rates and makes people finally start to believe the Robotaxi story.

Elon Musk: "There’s quite a significant foundational re-write in the Tesla Autopilot system that’s almost complete.
Instead of having planning, perception, image recognition all being separate, they are all being combined.
Effectively the neural net is absorbing more and more of the problem.
Beyond if you see an image, is this a car or not, its what do you do from that information.
3D labelling is the next thing when a car can go through a scene with 8 cameras and paint a path and label the path in 3D.
This is probably a 2-3 orders of magnitude improvement in labelling efficiency and labelling accuracy. "

Is there a new podcast or did I miss this in the first one ?

E2E deep learning is ofcourse the ultimate objective. Ofcourse this statement by Musk raises more questions.
- When did they start the re-write ? Is it the rumored/infamous AK-9 ?
- Is this what DoJo was supposed to do ? Musk also talked about video labeling in ER ...
- If paint the path & label in 3D is the next part, what exactly is the "planning" that is almost complete ?

 

[mblakele]

At 40-50% annual growth, recycling will be important (eventually), but will only be a small part of the equation. JB might have that covered. I believe that's what his startup is focusing on.

You're right about JB and Redwood Materials, but Tesla's already working on this — both directly and with third parties.

https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/tesla-impact-report-2019.pdf (p26)

Today, we work with third-party recyclers around the world to process all scrap and end-of-life batteries to recover valuable metals. Our recycling partners work with us to ensure that non-valuable or non-recoverable materials from the batteries are disposed of responsibly. At Gigafactory 1, Tesla is developing a unique battery recycling system that will process both battery manufacturing scrap and end-of-life batteries. Through this system, the recovery of critical minerals such as lithium and cobalt will be maximized along with the recovery of all metals used in the battery cell, such as copper, aluminum and steel. All of these materials will be recovered in forms optimized for new battery material production.

The closed-loop battery recycling process at Gigafactory 1 presents a compelling solution to move energy supply away from the fossil-fuel based practice of take, make and burn, to a more circular model of recycling end-of-life batteries for reuse over and over again. From an economic perspective, we expect to recognize significant savings over the long term, as the costs associated with large-scale battery material recovery and recycling will be far lower than purchasing and transporting new materials.​

 

[SpaceCash]

I spent the first trading hour this morning trying to leverage down and diversify my portfolio a bit and somehow I manage to go from being 115% in TSLA to 120%.

I can big-time relate.

However I sold my Feb 7 575 call today for 7.5K (bought for 1.4K) and now I am about off margin and only ~111% invested in TSLA

This is very conservative for me. I have a new pad new gf and a music studio to provide for

 

[Zaxxon]

Is Gordon Johnson insane? After watching a couple of clips he seems very ...um...insane.
Classic spewing of "fact's" and stringing together many statistics in a oddly confrontational manner.

I think he needs help.

Well that's just factually incorrect!

 

[Krugerrand]

I spent the first trading hour this morning trying to leverage down and diversify my portfolio a bit and somehow I manage to go from being 115% in TSLA to 120%.

Nailed it! Good job!

 

[Green Pete]

Forgive me if this has already been covered, there rate of posts these days makes holding a job and keeping up near impossible. Was there some explanation as to how the stock was so uncharacteristically stable today.

I realize this is so unlikely that it's absurd but it looks like those two big buys yesterday was some institutional buyer all that upcleaned out the weak longs and that nobody wants to sell anymore.

Stock price looks like when JAB bought Keurig in contrast to it normally looking like a Nordic coastline.

 

[ggr]

Usually 2.

Or do you mean 616? Or 666? As in Number of the Beast?

There are a number of Heinlein references recently. Among others, he also wrote "the Number of the Beast", but sci-fi fans at the time widely referred to it as ... well, you get it. Anyway, as the stock price is so close to that biblical number, I thought I'd issue the pre-emptive warning.

 

[Prunesquallor]

Meh. I can quantify it, easy peasy. It’s 7 private islands with full scale @Unpilot repellant @Lycanthrope built walls (roll with it, Buddy), robotic sentinel run turrets, tigers, lions and border collies, oh, my!, 1/4 mile drag strips, Supercharger Network, Cybertruck, Roadster 2.0, 2 yachts...

Yeah, I can quantify it all day long, every day. Booyah!

...Starlink ground stations, 5 MW solar/PowerWalls, secure Boring subterranean access to the mainland (caviar, Krystal and Fancy Feast resupply), etc. You NEED me, pal. Logistics coordination. My island footprint will be small.

 

[woof]

Meh. I can quantify it, easy peasy. It’s 7 private islands with full scale @Unpilot repellant @Lycanthrope built walls (roll with it, Buddy), robotic sentinel run turrets, tigers, lions and border collies, oh, my!, 1/4 mile drag strips, Supercharger Network, Cybertruck, Roadster 2.0, 2 yachts...

Yeah, I can quantify it all day long, every day. Booyah!

Now, you talk a good game...but there's one obvious teeny tiny flaw in this plan.

You'll have to sell some of those TSLA shares to pay for all this. Weak.

 

[sundaymorning]

[

[/QUOTE]

Anchor: What is Battery Day, Jim?
Cramer: A day to celebrate batteries, man...

Ok I’m switching camps. Cramer is a genius, all hail Cramer.

 

[EinSV]

[

Ok I’m switching camps. Cramer is a genius, all hail Cramer.[/QUOTE]

Better 10 years late than never.

 

[StealthP3D]

OK in that case it is probably only a good option for 5G in sparsely populated remote areas, those areas would also correspond to long fibre runs,,,, 100s of miles in some cases.. so they probably already use wireless or satellite internet.

Most rural backhaul is currently line-of-sight microwave repeaters.

 

[RobStark]

Good lord it has been over two hours since this info was released and none of you slackers posted it!

Tesla Reveals Model 3 Deliveries By Region