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Was their any guidance on when standard range Model 3 will be available? Haven't got around to listening to the call yet.

Seems like that's the real benchmark for growth in 2019.
Just a hand wavy, "middle of the year," statement. Doesn't say that it will be $35k (that is, could be premium required -- all that was addressed was "standard range").

edit to add the quote:
Well, you could call it the standard range, but it's maybe short by Tesla's standards, but it's long range by other manufacturers' standards. So - but yes, we expect to introduce the standard range Model 3 sometime - probably the middle of this year is a rough, rough guess.
 
Truly honest question here. Does Tesla even need to care about what the stock is doing any more?

Don't get me wrong, I fully understand that many many people have many many dollars invested in what the stock is doing. I get it, but, does Tesla the company really need the stock market anymore? Yes, certainly the market allows them access to needed funding that they normally wouldn't have and they can grow and expand faster than without but if they are now profitable, can pay off their debt in cash, can create continued demand, go as fast or as slow as they want in regards to R&D and expansion, have Chinese banks frothing at the mouth to lend them money, and probably will never have to rely on the markets for cash, why sweat it at all?

Just seems like Tesla truly controls its own destiny at this point...markets, analysts, and journalists be damned.

Dan
We all need to. Yes I am willing to hold for a long time BUT musk has already expressed interest in taking private and the longer the price drops the more likely he explores that. The prior considered price had 20% premium, do calculation now and even more attractive with declining debt and positive cash flow
 
From this:

Monthly Plug-In EV Sales Scorecard

It sounds like Tesla's InsideEVs number for January will be reported on Monday. This will be our first solid look at how US sales were affected by the end of the tax credit. Hopefully people will remember that Tesla's January sales are always low.

The promising thing is that expectations are low, but the AlphaHat data suggests that the drop since December hasn't been that great. I guess we'll find out.

Does it actually? Elon said all of production is going to EU/China so I would expect a huge drop in US sales and you have no way to know if that is because of demand or supply.
 
Welcome to China and the weirdness of not technically being able to own land.

I may be completely wrong, but this is also true in the UK :)

In a written response to a question by Andrew George MP in February 2009, Bridget Prentice, a parliamentary undersecretary at the Ministry of Justice, replied, "The Crown is the ultimate owner of all land in England and Wales (including the Isles of Scilly): all other owners hold an estate in land. Although there is some land that the Crown has never granted away, most land is held of the Crown as freehold or leasehold."

Source: The great property swindle: why do so few people in Britain own so much of our land?
 
  • Informative
Reactions: lklundin
Jerome Guillen

"But the first units will be - this is Jerome. Well, first units will be for our own usage. So depends how many trucks we'll use for our own usage to move the parts and the vehicle in different location, and then we'll start delivering to outside customers."

Elon Musk

"Yes, that's good. And then the Tesla pickup truck, we might be ready to unveil that this summer. It will be something quite unique, unlike anything else."​

So they are keeping to their Model Y and Tesla Semi timetable outlined in 2018.

While I'm totally behind this plan, this is gonna be another FUD story - no demand for Semi, Tesla can't sell any, so they just build it for themselves and lose money on it.
 
BTW., let's run a quick cash flow based valuation model of Tesla again, with the updated Q4 results.
Basic observations and assumptions:
  • True cash flow from operations (if we exclude the China land purchase artifact) was $1,124m+$141m = $1,265m in Q4, only slightly down from $1,391m in Q3 - especially that accounts payable drew about $200m of cash - so the real Q4 cash flow from operations, assuming stable payables levels was probably around $1,465m....
  • Let's conservatively ignore possible 2019 upsides like 2x-3x storage and higher solar sales, or FSD generated income.
  • Let's assume ~173m non-diluted shares as the average common shares for 2019: this won't increase significantly as the $920m are paid back fully in cash, not shares - so March 1 will effectively be the first step of a stock buyback program.
  • So I believe $1.5b effective cash generated per quarter is a pretty conservative figure, minus $150m of maintenance capex (this is a static, no-growth valuation model): $1.35b per quarter, $5.40b annual.
  • That's cash per share of $31 per share, which with a 15x 'static' multiplier of established zero-growth firms gives a static valuation of $465 per $TSLA share.
  • But it gets better: in a zero growth model there's effectively no R&D expense required - and in 2018 alone Tesla invested about $1.4b into R&D. Adding this back improves the static valuation to $590/share.
(@ReflexFunds and @brian45011 might want to correct me if I'm wrong.)

Of course Tesla is not a zero-growth company and they don't intend to stop growth capex and growth R&D investments - but the growth premium is much harder to estimate and requires big assumptions about future.

Still trying to catch up on pre-dawn posts; apologies if elsewhere addressed -
  1. Thanks. Good static analysis/suggestions
  2. Re: accts. payable - for a fully fair comparison, don't we also have to re-calc the Q3 # as well, adding back in its accts. payable? This is an aside; it doesn't detract from the flow of your analysis.
  3. Re: FSD income - isn't THIS the source of some of that weird-terminologied "redeemable non-controlling interests" (cf also post #9519), in that the moneys we paid for our cars' FSD stays sloshing around in the balance sheet until such time as FSD exists? Does anyone remember how much that line is....or is it not specifically broken out?
You're calling me a fool for calling you a short, except I didn't call you a short. :confused:
Oh! And here I was thinking he was calling you a fool for having become a Moderator.
 
I love this opportunity for discretionary FCF. Capex in 2017 was $3.4B and in 2018 $2.1B. So after the $2.5B capex Tesla has committed to in 2019, I think there is a range of $2.4B to $3.6B discretionary coming.

Some of this will pay off debt, some will go into working capital, some will go into building a Tesla Semi fleet for internal use, some may go into auto leasing, and so on. Perhaps we can crowd source an estimate of how much of this discretionary will flow into various buckets.

At any rate, it looks like Tesla will not need to do capital raises unless their growth appetite is substantially increased. Thus, a capital raise would be extremely bullish.

@jhm if Tesla generates $5-6B in operating cash flow in 2019, which I think is in the cards, I hope they use all of the excess to build cash reserves, pay down debt and shore up their balance sheet.

This sounds boring, but since they are extremely capital efficient, they can already fund their ambitious 2019 Model Y, Semi, storage, solar roof and GF3 production plans with a modest amount of capital. A stronger balance sheet will not only attract investors and improve lending terms but make for a more resilient company that is better positioned to weather black swan events. Also, as Elon alluded to on the call, forced capital discipline has been very beneficial -- requiring Tesla to find capital-efficient ways to grow very quickly.

If that happens in 2019, then in 2020 Tesla would be in a strong position to accelerate GF3 expansion and Model Y, Semi, Truck, storage and solar roof production in a capital efficient manner, and also potentially increase R&D spending for long-term growth.
 
Back for another Semester ;)

So how are all the cars going to Europe/China? If it's just based on Pier 80 and at this cadence, I don't think goals are gonna be met. I think anything shipped after Feb 20th, will not reach customer in 1st quarter.

So looks like S&P addition pushed out by at least one quarter,maybe 2

Glovis Captain left San Francisco on Jan 12th. Buyers in the Netherlands are reporting getting text messages from Tesla last week to prepare for deliveries starting on Feb 11th. So it looks like it will be roughly 1 month from Pier 80 to customer in Europe (I suppose it will also depend on which country, Spain or Italy might be longer due to distance from port). Accounting for delivery push / hell (however you want to call it), there's a good chance for cars put on the ship on March 1st might still make it.