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

[ZeApelido]

BTW from an investor standpoint, we should not be looking at FSD as only some binary event. The continual improvement of FSD features will allow take rate / FSD price to both increase, even if it is not good enough for robotaxis.

I am not a financial modeler, but I can try some WAGs. Say Tesla has point to point FSD (Level 2) by the end of the year. Will require human intervention at times just like Autopilot on highways. At that time, what percent of purchases will pay for FSD at what price?

I would guess Tesla could sell it for $10,000 with a 50% take rate. Maybe that's conservative? As Tesla nears 1 million cars / year production rate early next year, that's around 1 billion in additional profit per quarter (just from FSD).

In another or so, again there are no robotaxis but the FSD has gotten so good that many people are Youtubing their autonomous commutes, and some jurisdictions even allow autonomous driving as long as there is a driver. At this point, the demand for the software is much bigger, Tesla could probably sell it for $20k at 50% take rate. Vehicle production rate is probably 1.5 million, so now it's ~ $3 billion additional profit per quarter.

Any better educated guesses on how much Tesla can earn from Not-Yet-Robotaxi FSD?

 

[Krugerrand]

Apparently money doesn't buy happiness because there is a linear relationship between SP and amount of bickering on this forum.

I would contend that you are correct, as well the more money people have in general the more anxious they get about it, the more they want to protect it etc...

 

[Unpilot]

Need to increase scrolling speed by 2X

 

[jerry33]

Need to increase scrolling speed by 2X

Paper Sisters' reading mode: Engage.

 

[kalefranz]

Interesting article about a potential reservoir of untapped revenue...

Tesla [TSLA] Has A Warranty Accounting Mystery

One of these days, Tesla is going to realize it has hundreds of millions of idle excess funds in its warranty reserve, and when it converts some of it into net income, the shorts are gonna scream: Managing Earnings! Manipulating Accruals! Or maybe the fear of provoking that outcry is preventing them from doing it? Either way, the bottom line is that Tesla’s accruals are far in excess of its claims, and its claims are quite low while its accruals are quite high, compared to other automakers.

I'm hopeful that @The Accountant, @FrankSG, and others sharing might have some thoughts to share on this?

Also any thoughts on the top comment below the story, specifically

the TSLAQ argument is that TSLA is calling warranty work goodwill...

 

[Drax7]

Friday’s new highs are very bullish, expect 50 higher today

 

[smorgasbord]

That's fair enough - it could be a 10% chance as it's all just a WAG. No one that doesn't have inside information from the index committee can provide any more accuracy than a WAG. If you based it on past statistics I think it would be pretty close to 0% but there are certain unique factors here that should maybe be accounted for.

That said, I take exception to essentially all of the reasons you provided:

4) The SEC has nothing to do with it.
5) It's not the committee's job to value the company so they will not be using "overvaluation" as an excuse to not include it.
6) Obviously, the vote could happen without risking the health of the committee so they won't be using that as an excuse.

This article gives some insight on the former head of the committee, David Blitzer, and what his goals were:

“I think the place it makes the most difference is clients saving money or investing for retirement, kids college, a house, a vacation, all those things,” he told Yahoo Finance in a call Tuesday. “If we can provide what an ETF issuer turns into a reasonably good investment at a very nice price, I think we’ve done our job.”

Philip Murphy is now the head of the committee. This article is sort of an update on the prior one I linked, but omits some things Blitzer said.

Reading both articles gives some insight into what the committee likes and doesn't like in companies it's considering adding. For instance, I believe they won't want to add a company they consider a current momentum play that will force large changes in ETFs (Blitzer loved that Buffett recommended everyone just buy an S&P500 ETF), only to have that stock be so volatile that the index is all over the map, not to mention that a decline in that newly added stock would look bad for S&P. In their eyes, anyway.

And when you add what they did to SNAP, the odds are not tiny that they'll find some corporate governance, SEC investigation (either ongoing or concluded with penalties), or other new criteria to change the rules to omit or at least delay the addition of TSLA.

 

[Tim S]

Apparently money doesn't buy happiness because there is a linear relationship between SP and amount of bickering on this forum.

I don't know, I'm happier now than I was 15 minutes ago

 

[dominic_decoco]

View media item 121560

 

[tinm]

LOL, did I time a TSLA buy correctly? I mean that never happens.

Wanted to accumulate some additional core shares. Took a chance and bought at low 1380s this morning.

Now TSLA is at 1430.90.... This never happens! LOL

 

[EcoBruin]

LOL, did I time a TSLA buy correctly? I mean that never happens.

Wanted to accumulate some additional core shares. Took a chance and bought at low 1380s this morning.

Now TSLA is at 1430.90.... This never happens! LOL

Same here. Now I need my wife to change my TDAmeritrade password so I don’t do anything stupid

 

[SOULPEDL]

I am pricing into my stock considerations Elon's FSD predictions. I bought shares yesterday instead of waiting.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil observed that humans tend to think of change as linear, not exponential. His favorite example is the legend of The Inventor of Chess and the Emperor of China. Another example is your post.

I know little about neural nets, but I know that supercomputers work fast. Once the self-driving neural nets are set up and the driving data is loaded up, I suspect it will not take long for the nets to learn from the data. Maybe days? Maybe hours? Supercomputers don't learn at human speed.

So I disagree that "it's pretty clear" Tesla will miss Elon's latest deadline, since "technically" 2020 is quite far from over.

Another mistake of linear thinking is assuming that because Elon misjudged the FSD timeline in the past, he will continue to do so. Every day of his team's progress brings him more information on which to base his predictions. And unlike some people, Elon learns from his mistakes. Model S, X and 3 all appeared later than he predicted. Model Y was six months early.

Adding that Tesla was EARLY on Model Y. Combined with GF openings that are amazing by any PMP metric, the trend indicates that Tesla is getting better at predicting timing, not worse. And that's probably because he's got the right executives to keep it 100% real... or else risk another serious financial attack. The whole twitter problems have also subsided. This is maturity in the making.

As they say, and for good reason, "Don't bet against Elon."

 

[H Mak]

Oh wow look at that share price! My portfolio spreadsheet has just acquired another comma

 

[Big Time]

Fire up the ol’ spanking machine

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Edit: I'm quite pleased with this share price appreciation.

 

[ninpb]

As they say, and for good reason, "Don't bet against Elon."

They do provide really good discounts for us though. For example, CT reveal/bulletproof glass shattering.

 

[Singuy]

Did earnings come out?

 

[CyberDutchie]

Bull attack

 

[elasalle]

Dare Sep 18 2600 - 45$ premium. 3 days after Battery Day. (Favourable Odds I think)

 

[Tim S]

Note to self... stop selling covered calls.

Edit: I expect at least a Like from @StealthP3D