I was not sure if we would have to wait for the FCA payments since the structure of the deal is proprietary. But the 10-K makes me think we will see the number in Q1, maybe not broken out but at least lumped in with all the other credits.
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable
- Thread starter AudubonB
- Start date
I was not sure if we would have to wait for the FCA payments since the structure of the deal is proprietary. But the 10-K makes me think we will see the number in Q1, maybe not broken out but at least lumped in with all the other credits.
Are 1880c still cheap?Elon is evil I tell ya. He is going to force me to upgrade my 2017 Model S to the longer range one.
390 miles!!
I don't need it...( Never felt range anxiety with current car)...but boy do I want it!
That's his evil plan...make the product so compelling you have no choice but buy.
What a wonderful world we live in.
To the future
Don't play big enough with options...but the sweet sweet irony of have Short's pay for a new Tesla is sooo tempting.Are 1880c still cheap?
Can I just say how much I love this forum and all the (non-ignored) people on it? Thanks so much, and of course I won’t be using any of your non-advice or blaming either of you if anything goes wrong while I am not applying any of your non-advice. This really [doesn't] helps and gives me a lot to [not] think and [not] spreadsheet about this weekend.
Cheers!
EDIT: And thank you too, steak&chicken! These are some nice problems to have.
I’m in the same situation. My 2016 90D seems so old fashioned now. It is really itching to upgrade to the latest 100D. Not that I need the extra range.Elon is evil I tell ya. He is going to force me to upgrade my 2017 Model S to the longer range one.
390 miles!!
I don't need it...( Never felt range anxiety with current car)...but boy do I want it!
That's his evil plan...make the product so compelling you have no choice but buy.
What a wonderful world we live in.
To the future
Edit....And free unlimited super charging
I do not have data, but the OEM part prices are insanely high, so obviously very profitable. As a rule of thumb for old legacy cars that if you have a popular model you can buy aftermarket parts comparable to OEM parts at a quarter of a price.
Related: IIRC dealers use around 9% markup on new car sales, but their profit comes from service.
Tesla does not separate the cost of selling, delivery, but we can be certain that it is much, much less than 9%.
I add that it will be interesting how cell technology bifurcates between auto and storage. Storage cells can be somewhat heavier and have a somewhat lower C rate compared to auto. But the cells would ideally be able to do more cycles. So in the longer term will Tesla have an advantage here, or will storage be more of a commodity business?
Will the semi be more similar to storage tech or car?
Yes, the legacy OEMs are falling further behind, simply because the pace of innovation at Tesla is higher than that of the fossils. Which is why comments like "this and that large auto manufacturer will catch up with Tesla in x years" make me smile. Because what they actually mean (without realising) is that it will take a legacy OEM x years to catch up to the current offering from Tesla, if they reaaaaally push themselves. By which point Tesla's offering will be that much more advanced and more difficult to match. This will eventually plateau. But by that point we will all be enjoying life on our respective islands and it won't be that relevant, as Tesla will be the default auto manufacturer and the other guys will be struggling to stay afloat. - later edit: @Prunesquallor made a similar argument here, I only saw the post after submitting mine.
However, when comparing the Model S -- or even the Model 3, for that matter -- to the Taycan lineup, range seems like the wrong parameter. People who consider buying the Taycan do it for one main reason, and one secondary reason. The main reason is the perception of performance (since a large proportion of the people who have the financial means to afford one don't possess the driving skills to actually push the car to its limits safely, but they probably like to claim they do); the secondary reason (for a small minority) is the actual performance. And then a second significant parameter in that comparison is the price: some people are simply priced out of the Taycan. Others, who can afford it, don't see the need for it and understand that a Model S, X or 3 fits their actual needs better without really sacrificing on performance. Storage space and/or number of seats, anyone? And then of course there are the Porsche lovers, who buy it because it's a Porsche, and for them it's irrelevant what Tesla offers. Of course, many Porsche lovers are in fact Porsche ICE lovers who don't care about the Taycan lineup and may actually grow resentful towards the company if they see a clear shift towards electrification.
The only cases in which the range of the Taycan becomes a critical issue is when driven in particularly cold climates, or particularly fast in areas with an insufficient distribution of rapid chargers, but we know that the number of rapid chargers will grow rapidly (heh!) in the next few years. But recent reviews of the Taycan seem to indicate that the official 201 mile range is seriously sandbagged. Anyway, the next few quarters of delivery reports should be edifying.
Last edited:
I am also interested and ignorant, so asking questions for a friend:
Would selling a higher priced, say 520 calls with same expiration would postpone USA tax obligation for year 2021?
In the unlikely case the answer is yes, would it remain long term gain or it would turn into short term?
What are the relevant tax laws?
I just wanted to plug Papafox's Daily TSLA Trading Charts thread in case others (like me until recently) were basically unaware of it. Even if you’re not a fan of technical analysis, there’s a ton of great regular analysis about WTH happened during today’s trading.
MODERATOR NOTE:
ALL in the Investor Forum should regularly go to the top of this or any other such page and click on the "TSLA Investor Discussions" tab to peruse the various different threads generally related to the investment world. Moderators have placed the small number that we consider most germane and productive in the "Sticky" section so that these remain at the top of the list. @Papafox's excellent thread most definitely is in that estimable category.
Other threads that can be of the moment are ones that deal with subject matters Moderators deem not appropriate for this General thread, although the vast majority of them began here and then were carved out. Of course, the ones currently being added to are at the top of the pile, as demonstrated by the "most recent post" notification on the right-hand side of each entry.
MODERATOR NOTE:
ALL in the Investor Forum should regularly go to the top of this or any other such page and click on the "TSLA Investor Discussions" tab to peruse the various different threads generally related to the investment world. Moderators have placed the small number that we consider most germane and productive in the "Sticky" section so that these remain at the top of the list. @Papafox's excellent thread most definitely is in that estimable category.
Other threads that can be of the moment are ones that deal with subject matters Moderators deem not appropriate for this General thread, although the vast majority of them began here and then were carved out. Of course, the ones currently being added to are at the top of the pile, as demonstrated by the "most recent post" notification on the right-hand side of each entry.
Last edited by a moderator:
So the problem with the 2021/01/15 $500 calls is that they are very illiquid with high spreads: they were trading at $334/$350 yesterday. Yes, round numbers to the dollar - liquidity is that bad and the spread is 5% wide (!), which is robbery - MM's preying on unsuspecting lottery call winners and extracting a 2.5% tax.
My experience is that MMS indeed prey on unsuspecting amateurs, but the real spread is much smaller.
My limit orders between the range are very often exercised instantaneously i.e. by MMs algorithms, so there is a much better, hidden bid/ask.
There is some cost of trading illiquid options to be paid to MMs, but it is not nearly as high as the visible bid/ask price indicate. It is probably not a significant issue unless you are frequent traders and these costs compound.
The epa range is not sandbagged because EPA doesn't just test hwy range running at Porsche sweet spot. Reduced Regen breaking and among other things make the Taycan extremely inefficient during city driving cycles hence the massive reduced epa range.
In fact Porsche complained that the Epa was testing their car at too low of speed.
I'm just glad that we don't have to go through that annoying thing again here where a couple weeks ago people were adamantly insisting that Plaid was going to have 500-600 miles range :Þ
Tesla fans are so amazingly good at Osbourning themselves.
Yes, because time passes, and we don't live in a static universe. The fact is that it's been end-of-quarter deliveries all quarter - meaning that they've had no surplus capacity for domestic production. The span is also shrinking it; last I checked (several weeks ago), it was a 4-week span.
The pattern is the same sort of pattern we saw last quarter, yet for some reason, you want to interpret it as a sign of weakness.
In both directions, yes. You can be lucky and they find a car for you early. You can also be unlucky and get yours late.
Today Elon also announced a major Q1 S/X demand boost: a +5% range upgrade. He also announced that the Plaid will have the same range, I.e. countering any Osbourning by the Plaid.
Are you suggesting that Elon should have waited until Q2 with these announcements, because Q1 orders are fine?
Are you suggesting that updating the website to reflect actual ranges, something he already discussed on the earnings call and was extensively reported on, is some out-of-the-blue pump attempt? Are you suggesting that Elon should wait until Q2 to announce changes that are already in production? Why? Are you saying that you expect Q2 to be weak and that Tesla should "hide" in-production changes until then?
Where are the price cuts? No, seriously. By early February of last year we'd already had two price cuts. It's mid-February.... where are they? We had price increases late last year, and they've not even undone those. In what sort of "demand problem" scenario would there be no change in pricing whatsoever? Margins are superb and could easily support it.
And essentially the only thing this quarter shares in common with it is the name "Q1".
"The first 9 ships" does not reflect the current steady-state; nobody is disputing that this quarter's shipping had a slow start (for very obvious reasons); analyzing that slow start was the very premise of my post, using the slow start to assess inventory buildup. One might add in ship loading times to adjust the inventory-buildup estimates and determine that the initial lag time and corresponding inventory build should be treated as being greater (I'd consider this a reasonable adjustment), but this should not be used to adjust steady-state shipping rate estimates.
The past, say, 20 days of shipping (same number of ships, 6) has 15,67 loading days, vs 16,95 for the same period last quarter. A 7,6% difference, not a 15% difference, and it's exclusively due to a single ship (Viking Bravery). Asian King is currently loading and looks to be a long load-time ship (only 0,69 days idle at the pier before arrival, doesn't leave for 4 days after arrival), which will lower the difference. Q3 only had 4 ships during this timeperiod because shipping was slower. But if we want to give Q3 more time, and add an extra ship in each direction (Glovis Cosmos and Glovis Tengfei), its total would be 15,86 loading days
There are also other metrics that can be used apart from load times (an imperfect metric - as loading delays actually make the metric look better) to estimate the number of vehicles - for example, ship sizes (another imperfect metric, since you never know how full they're loading a ship, or whether the ship was contracted more out of convenience than need). Of the six matching ships this quarter, they're all ~200m long, 4 are 32m wide, one is 36m wide, and one an unusually large 38m wide (one of the largest ships Tesla has ever contracted). We have no gross tonnage figures from either of the larger ships and one of the midsize (~200m x ~32m) ships; the other 3 midsize ships were 50,3kt, 58,3kt, and 59,4kt.
For the corresponding ships in Q4, there was one unusually small ship (184m x 30,6m, 44,9kt); three midsize ~200m x ~32m ships (55,7t, 59,2t, 59,8t); and two moderately large (~200m x 35m) ships (65,7t each). Overall, I'd say that ship sizes are roughly a wash.
One must reiterate that RO-ROs aren't the only type of vehicle shipping that Tesla does; see my comments in the original post re: container shipping. As a random example, Iceland is a new market (the market size of Spain / Portugal) which is expected to get its vehicles entirely by container. Or that shipping to AU and NZ by container looks to be quite strong. Container shipping is not as well tracked as well as the RO-ROs, but I see no signs of decline in it, and a potential increase - and indeed, an increase in the fraction of shipping conducted by container vs. RO-RO should be logically expected over time as Tesla expands into smaller markets discontiguous from existing RO-RO markets, and decreases RO-RO shipping to China (indeed, there's only been 1 RO-RO to China this quarter, and it was a short-loading one right at the start; increasingly, Teslas shipped from Fremont to China - S, X, and (for now) higher-end 3s - will be in containers; at this point last quarter, every other RO-RO was to China).
Last edited:
sundaymorning
Active Member
I didn't make any claims about Q1 S/X rates, I only observed, based on a single unreliable data point, that the S/X Q1 order book might be fine:
Btw, 5-7 weeks has dropped to 4-6 weeks since I wrote that comment.
We also know that the delivery estimates on their webpage are unreliable: @Cherry Wine is getting his custom configured Model X today, only 12 days after ordering. It might be a lucky inventory match or a batch match, and it would be nice to know what the production date is once he takes delivery. But they clearly didn't make him wait until the end of the quarter with a California delivery to be able to ship more cars farther away, right?
Today Elon also announced a major Q1 S/X demand boost: a +5% range upgrade. He also announced that the Plaid will have the same range, I.e. countering any Osbourning by the Plaid.
Are you suggesting that Elon should have waited until Q2 with these announcements, because Q1 orders are fine?
Q1 last year was bad, really bad, and 95k Q1'2020 deliveries is where I draw the line right now, which is still 25% better than last year and almost as good as the (profitable) Q3.
I'll update my views as we are getting closer to the end of the quarter:
- more shipping data,
- whether they'll pull any further demand levers,
- plus GF3 production leaks.
Troy’s data still shows 97k for Q1 so 95k is quite reasonable.
Troy's early-to-mid quarter estimates are usually hilariously wrong.
He does a pretty good job late quarter, though.
I imagine there are not many SEK SEK jokes in Sweden; that would be quite dry humour. (SEC SEC even worse of course)
The Accountant
Active Member
Debunking another TSLAQ conspiracy......
Prior to the 10K release, some in the TSLAQ crowd smelled fraud.
The evidence? If Tesla sold more cars than it produced (112k vs 105k), why did the inventory balance at Q4 remain flat to Q3?
Aha ! Tesla is cooking the books again.
Well Inventory did stay flat with $3,581m (Q3) vs $3,552m (Q4).
However, Finished Goods dropped 227m as deliveries exceeded production (see chart below).
This was offset by increases in Raw Materials, Work-in-Progress and Service Parts keeping total inventoris flat to Q3..
The increase in RM and WIP was definitely attributable to GF Shanghai coming on line and likley Raw Materials for Model Y at Fremont.
Energy products may have also contributed to the increase in RM.
While we are looking at Inventory, I have also performed a high level caluclation of "weeks on hand" for finished goods.
See the last line of the chart below. Tesla sits with about 2.7 weeks of FG inventory at year end.
Finished goods inventory includes (as per the 10K) vehicles in transit to fulfill customer orders, new vehicles available for sale, used vehicles and energy storage products.
Weeks on Hand of 2.7 weeks is very low in light of the fact that Tesla has no Dealer network. Expect an inventory build of about 1 week to get back up to 3.7 weeks on hand.
Prior to the 10K release, some in the TSLAQ crowd smelled fraud.
The evidence? If Tesla sold more cars than it produced (112k vs 105k), why did the inventory balance at Q4 remain flat to Q3?
Aha ! Tesla is cooking the books again.
Well Inventory did stay flat with $3,581m (Q3) vs $3,552m (Q4).
However, Finished Goods dropped 227m as deliveries exceeded production (see chart below).
This was offset by increases in Raw Materials, Work-in-Progress and Service Parts keeping total inventoris flat to Q3..
The increase in RM and WIP was definitely attributable to GF Shanghai coming on line and likley Raw Materials for Model Y at Fremont.
Energy products may have also contributed to the increase in RM.
While we are looking at Inventory, I have also performed a high level caluclation of "weeks on hand" for finished goods.
See the last line of the chart below. Tesla sits with about 2.7 weeks of FG inventory at year end.
Finished goods inventory includes (as per the 10K) vehicles in transit to fulfill customer orders, new vehicles available for sale, used vehicles and energy storage products.
Weeks on Hand of 2.7 weeks is very low in light of the fact that Tesla has no Dealer network. Expect an inventory build of about 1 week to get back up to 3.7 weeks on hand.
I have the same experience with DITM calls, a sell or buy limit in the middle of the spread is practically always executed really soon. The exception is if the stock price is moving fast in the wrong direction so that your limit is not in the middle of the spread anymore.
I don’t have real time option bid/ask prices, so I always have to guess what the real bid/ask is anyway. Which is why I wait for a stock price that has been relatively stable for half an hour before I place the order.
Or Freemont when talking Tesla.
On the notion of auto OEM could “catch up” in “two years”.
The wrist watch analogy is getting better and better:
The wrist watch analogy is getting better and better:
- They are making mechanical watches, huge investments in the automatic movements they are proud of.
- Quartz watch came along, they think it’s a gimmick, “who would want a watch that you have to change batteries every so often?”
- Quartz watches started to sell, they are not worried, “sure, if we want, we can make quartz watches too in two years, easy job, Japanese are selling movements for pennies”.
- Then there comes Apple Watch, and Apple is making it cheaper than how much it cost them to make a quartz.
- “No worries, people just want a time piece on their wrists, a quartz is as good as Apple Watch for the job, and our offerings in two years will be so much more stylish.”
- After a few years, there’s no catch up to do, only a handful of niche mechanical watch manufacturers would remain and their watches are being sold as art pieces.
Similar threads
- Locked
- Locked
