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

[StarFoxisDown!]

I think they're gunshy about giving specific guidance -- they get nailed to the wall if they miss. Better to leave wiggle room.

They got nailed to the wall despite not giving guidance for Q4. They got nailed for "missing" delivery/production numbers and for EPS even though they never gave numbers or a range. By not giving any guidance, they allow someone else to control the narrative. if they're a bit worried about delivery number....low ball it.

But again, they should have a very good idea of how many Model 3 and S/X's they will produce this quarter....we're already a month in. They should know that information to at least give a range.

 

[Zaxxon]

I'd just ask again: why not go out and recruit a really amazing CFO? Someone that had great relationships with tons of banks?

I'll respond to you once, despite my better judgement: because they did that last time and it blew up in their faces.

 

[reddit_tl]

A few facts:
Zach Kirkhorn has been with Tesla for about 9 years. Deepak has 11 years.
Zach is 20 years younger.
Zach's husband is also a finance guy from a growth company and also from Harvard.
Zach has went through nearly everything except the 2008 crisis. He is deeply motivated by Tesla's mission.

I say: this guy FUCHs and I am pretty happy that they have a young and relatively experienced CFO.

 

[Intl Professor]

Because being CFO of a 50B+ public company requires experience and expertise. It's a job that's equal to the CEO.

This guy was promoted to VP of Finance two months ago.

He has less than 10 years of work experience.

He's 31 years-old.

He doesn't have any advanced finance certifications beyond an MBA (ex: not a CPA).

Contrast that with Deepak, who had 15+ years of VP of Finance or CFO experience in industrial and automotive manufacturing.

Wouldn't a better CFO be someone with great relationships with Chinese banks, to help them close the factory financing?

Tesla could recruit any CFO in the world. Why did they choose this guy?

Because he's that good.

 

[winfield100]

At most companies, "qualifications" for the CFO role is connections, network, and management.

I'd just ask again: why not go out and recruit a really amazing CFO? Someone that had great relationships with tons of banks?

Anton? Anton Wahl...? from Sleeze Kinky? Izzat you?
beeg smootch to ya

 

[sundaymorning]

He’s tired of waking up early, putting on a tie, and instead wants to spend his sh*tload of cash?

I wouldn’t wait until 65 for that either.

Deepak came back as a favor. He’s been in the industry for decades, serving as Ford’s vice CFO, and believes Tesla is now on “solid footing”. A job well done and I wish him luck. Zach has a lot of hours of hard work ahead of him, the company is about to turn into a cash cow.

Anyone of us here would retire if we “could”. We’re all here bc we’re trying to get on Deepak’s level.

 

[RobStark]

Two things here:
1. The Shanghai GF is to only produce for the Greater China market
2. The guidance for $35k Model 3 is late Q2 / early Q3. Please apply Elon-time factor, YMMV, etc.

Elon changed that wording about 48 hrs later from Greater China to Asia Region.

 

[sundaymorning]

How old was Elon when he started Tesla ?

9 Years in Tesla looks like good experience.

The new CFO is from Harvard, how many CFO come from Harvard?

 

[mikevbf]

I trust Elon Musk and board knowing who is good for CFO more than any of us. Known quantity is definitely a good thing. As for Zach Kirkhorn's age, maybe we should remind ourselves that he is much closer to the prime age in terms of mathematical genius:
https://www.quora.com/Do-mathematicians-achieve-their-best-by-age-of-30
But more important is if you do not trust Tesla to hire the right person when they have worked with him for 9 years, then you should not be invested in TSLA.

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

At most companies, "qualifications" for the CFO role is connections, network, and management.

I'd just ask again: why not go out and recruit a really amazing CFO? Someone that had great relationships with tons of banks?

Doesn't your qualifier answer your question? If Tesla doesn't need to go back for more funding, why pay for that hotshot CFO with all the connections?

 

[Sudre]

You guys ready for another quarter of the Model 3 production(and production rate) and delivery guessing game?

No matter what Tesla gives as guidance we end up with the same guessing game throughout the quarter. It's completely pointless. It just goes right back to the "parking lots are empty production has stopped" to "parking lots are full demand is gone".

I heard what I need to know. Tesla will continue to make cars and sell them for a profit, use those profits to build more factories to make more cars to produce even more profit.

 

[anthonyj]

Price action reminds me of January 2nd when Model 3 “missed” deliveries. BS fear so they can steal people’s shares. Price jumped back up in one week. Don’t see how it could drop sub 280 on CFO news

 

[Ulmo]

Mystery of slow repair parts problem solved: they were warehousing parts regionally and not in service centers, with an apparently slow transit from warehouse to service centers. I assumed they had a mix of that already, but I presume this announcement that they're going to now stock in service centers means that logistics on that is improving. I bet there was a saboteur who took control of that position for a long time; Tesla finally excising that error will be a windfall in repair satisfaction.

Also, Audi e-Tron and Jaguar i-Pace (awful names! I'm guessing the next car is going to be the a-Yam or something) have interior ride quality (comfort of seats, materials, sound insulation, softer ride) which some of the market will prefer, which I'm hoping will spur Tesla into not staying in the rough and uncomfortable niche during redesigns for Model S & X, which should have a positive effect in several years.

I'm disappointed by the Energy division not developing streamlined high profit margin high volume sales much more than they have. I've known of ways to improve some aspects of that for years, yet I don't even see them doing that yet. Anyway, they are plodding along in that business, improving it as they go.

 

[Sudre]

As far as retiring CFOs or any members...
When did GM's CFO retire? Why am I only hearing crickets?

It was announced in June of 2018 I do believe and the stock tumbled like 15 points..... scratch that. I don't even think anyone noticed.

 

[Carl Raymond]

News flash: shorts make a field day out of everything. They’re stupid.

They’re <strike>stupid</strike> self interested.

 

[Thekiwi]

Editted my post, but just remember: they're competing with Google. Waymo is a Google company.

Who gives AF?

Google have failed at almost every attempt to enter a market outside of their core competencies. (They couldn’t even create a social network despite having billions of google users.)

 

[AlMc]

Tough to lose Deepak but Zach has had Deepak's protege AND been able to handle the demands of EM for 9 years. Not worried.

 

[Singuy]

This is really bizarre. 80% of buyers lease an EV. Tesla just said S and X leases only account for low 20%. That's a huge difference, especially on such a high priced car where leases are more desirable. I guess the residue value of the S and X holds so strong that it makes them terrible lease cars?

Most EV Drivers Choose To Lease Instead Of Buy | CleanTechnica

 

[andrewt3000]

The big difference in profit seems to be "Net income (loss) attributable to noncontrolling interests and redeemable noncontrolling interests"

What is that?

 

[tinm]

My thoughts on Elon's response to the first "retail investor/owner" question about Tesla Service.

• I was hoping he was gonna nail it. He did not nail it. I fear he still doesn't get it.
  
• At least, what he announced reflects a continued lack of understanding about service issues.
• As I said last time, it's all about customer/company communication (CCC).
  
• Today Elon simply focused on optimizing the ability to request a service appointment.
  
• This is what tech startups call "low hanging fruit" -- in my opinion, in this case, fruit that's already on the ground.
  
• This is a baby step. Not even touching the core problems.
• And to reiterate, the core problems are managing expectations and full accountability.
• You don't achieve superb CCC without those two ingredients in the company culture.

If Elon had announced the following:

• The app tracks every step of your service experience, showing where car is now, status of it, who your point of contact is now, how to reach them with a tap of screen, when car will be ready, etc, then that would be something. I hope that's coming.
• The app lets you contact Tesla, track your communications, lets you know when you're supposed to hear back, updates you with notifications if there are delays, etc.
• On the back-end (within the corporation): system tracks all inbound and outbound communications with customer, every issue tracked, all due dates highlighted, name of employee highlighted (who owns this customer at every step of the process), who the supervisor is if things start slipping, supervisor gets alerted the second stuff slips, etc. In other words, tools to help staff manage expectations and accountability.
• Until I see that kind of thing, Tesla is not nailing it.
• In fact, what they're introducing now with the "tap a button in the app, schedule service appointment" may wind up increasing in-flow of service requests to the service centers. This risks new bottlenecks and more problems not less. They're potentially opening floodgates for inbound requests but Elon offered no information on how systems (and management!) are being improved in-house so that they can handle a larger influx of service requests.
• I still don't think Elon gets it.
• I still don't see superb CCC being in the company DNA or culture.
• I am still hoping, but I am still waiting.

The Fast Food Analogy
You know when you go into a fast food restaurant? They all have the same systems: you see these touchscreen computer monitors with pending orders. As the orders get "stale" as the seconds tick by, the background color goes from green to RED. That means the customer is waiting a long time. This is a simple way of managing customer expectations that the food really is fast, and that they can pump through many orders without a hitch. Employees and management constantly seeing the status of all pending customer orders and they can act accordingly.

Tesla needs something like that in-house, on huge scale, and then simple UI/UX reflected in the app (and mirrored in My Tesla part of website) and if they did all that, and Elon hired/fired based on management nailing new objectives for CCC success, we'd be somewhere.

Like always, Tesla, I'm happy to help. Ping me.