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

[AcesDealt]

What is the first actual serious Tesla competitor?

What vehicle first outsells Tesla in price and segment?

That matters more than the FC rationalization of the day. If competitors show up, Tesla is a bad investment. If they don't, it is at least average.

 

[Carl Raymond]

I'd nevertheless urge caution: that GF1 is at capacity is based on a single unverified, anonymous source, Carsonight. It's single-source, anonymous anecdotal evidence in essence. He has a good track record, he has been giving accurate GF1 information for a long time (including less bullish estimates last year when everyone assumed a 35 GWh/year capacity expansion), but past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Thanks. I’ve had Carsonight’s discus feed bookmarked for about a year. If a hundred shorts gave evidence suggesting it was time to sell and Carsonight gave evidence suggesting time to buy, I would buy. Good technical brain, compassionate, honest, good listener, well connected to the local grapevine, geographically close.

 

[EVMeister]

What is the first actual serious Tesla competitor?

What vehicle first outsells Tesla in price and segment?

That matters more than the FC rationalization of the day. If competitors show up, Tesla is a bad investment. If they don't, it is at least average.

What part of growing EV market segment and shrinking ICE market segment do you not understand? Tesla doesn't need a complete monopoly on the EV market to be successful.

 

[AcesDealt]

What part of growing EV market segment and shrinking ICE market segment do you not understand? Tesla doesn't need a complete monopoly on the EV market to be successful.

Funny summary. If Tesla is successful you will be a successful investor. Cheers.

 

[CorneliusXX]

What is the first actual serious Tesla competitor?

What vehicle first outsells Tesla in price and segment?

That matters more than the FC rationalization of the day. If competitors show up, Tesla is a bad investment. If they don't, it is at least average.

You could say the same about any product on earth.

If product good then investment good. Is it still April 1 where you are?

 

[Artful Dodger]

Here's a link to the article from Tom that shows S and X forecasted production adding up to 26.9k. You can see just under the table there is a note that this production data, which is broken out by vehicle, is from a set of only 4 analysts, while the data set for the delivery information is from 13 analysts. All of the data was sourced from Visible Alpha Insight (VAI).

Bloomberg Tesla Model 3 Tracker Suggests a Possible Surprise

Yeah, here's an extract from that page right now:

By Tom Randall
March 30, 2019, 7:00 AM EDT
Updated on April 1, 2019, 12:44 PM EDT
...
(Updates average analyst estimate of Tesla’s production in the second paragraph and replaces chart of production and delivery estimates. )​

This is a current scrnshot of the section labeled "The chart below shows analyst estimates for production and deliveries of each of the three vehicles Tesla sells."

In text format, that table reads:

.	Cars Built	Cars Delivered
Model 3	64,400	55,100
All Vehicles	84,700	74,900

Then to break out other Models, we are left to do our own math:

Model S+X: Cars Built: 20,300 Cars Delivered: 19,800​

This appears to be a correction of the original reported estimate of 26,900 Model S+X built in 2019Q1, per your tweet on Mar 30: (with no mention of a correction)

@tsrandall Confusion re your Bloomberg story today. Visible Alpha (VA) has consensus S/X production at 21K for Q1. Your report cited VA as data source but said avg S/X prod est 26.9k​

Note: per Bloomberg above, the source table in the article was "Updated on April 1, 2019, 12:44 PM EDT". Can you confirm what the table said prior to the update, but after your tweet?

Thanks!

 

[Fact Checking]

Macro news: EUR/USD is below 1.12 again today, near new 52-week lows, no doubt in reaction to the BRexit uncertainty.

I believe the U.K.'s no-deal crash-out on April 12 or a short time afterwards (after yet another short delay perhaps) looks the most probable outcome at the moment.

U.K. parliament is still chasing unicorns, and Ireland is in (mostly-) secret large scale preparations to at least symbolically secure the border to Northern Ireland to establish customs controls. The EU leadership is increasingly of the view that a UK crash-out is better for Europe than prolonging the uncertainty of BRexsh1t.

 

[uselesslogin]

Well the last two reports were out before market open on the 2nd. I'd almost take it as a bad sign if we don't get the report this morning. I really want to see it at this point. There is a lot more mystery surrounding this one than the last couple.

 

[Artful Dodger]

To be fair to Buffett, I later discovered I'd actually tweeted to a fake account posing as Buffett.

Ah, so that's how Jimmy Buffet can afford to live in Margaritaville. Interesting...

 

[Thekiwi]

What is the first actual serious Tesla competitor?

What vehicle first outsells Tesla in price and segment?

That matters more than the FC rationalization of the day. If competitors show up, Tesla is a bad investment. If they don't, it is at least average.

This is nonsense. Every car sold (99.99% at least) will eventually be an EV - only question is when - so every vendor will be a competitor to Tesla. The existence of other EVs is meaningless to whether Tesla is a good investment or not, and anyone basing their investment decisions on that flawed idea isn’t going to have to worry about making investment decisions for very long.

In the long run all that matters is how many cars Tesla can sell, and at how high a profit.

In a market where each single % point is worth $30 billion in annual revenue, a company doesn’t even need to reach double digit market share to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars if they are operating at a decent profit margin. And if they manage to creep into double digit market share with healthy above average margins, then we can start using the word “Trillion” instead of “Billion”.

 

[Fact Checking]

Updated Tesla analyst rating out, Macquarie reiterates "Outperform":

"Macquarie analyst Maynard Um reiterated an Outperform rating and $400 price target on Tesla:

• Believes sentiment remains mostly negative.
• Stays positive noting concerns over Q1 demand appear priced into the valuation.
• Says EU/China demand is ramping while softness in the US should be expected."

Fair points. Obviously today's (or tomorrow's) "Tesla Q1 2019 Vehicle Production & Deliveries" report will be a big help in assessing Q1 performance.

 

[Singer3000]

Well the last two reports were out before market open on the 2nd. I'd almost take it as a bad sign if we don't get the report this morning. I really want to see it at this point. There is a lot more mystery surrounding this one than the last couple.

The poll on the other page seems to have coalesced somewhere between 60-70k Model 3s delivered. Which presumably means 70-80k produced (5.8k - 6.7k per week). It's going to be hard for Tesla to beat this forum's expectations this quarter. He who expects nothing is never disappointed and all that.

 

[Fact Checking]

Today Elon is "Elrond Duck" on Twitter:

Elrond Duck on Twitter​

"Elrond", Lord of Rivendell, is one of the LoTR characters:

 

[KarenRei]

Quick question: does Tesla ever release deliveries figures during trading hours? Or has it always been either before or after?

 

[AlexS]

Quick question: does Tesla ever release deliveries figures during trading hours? Or has it always been either before or after?

don't remember exactly, but I think there have been few cases

 

[lascavarian]

Today Elon is "Elrond Duck" on Twitter:

Hummmm, I wonder if Scrooge McDuck is visiting next.

 

[bhtooefr]

It looks like my Maxwell shares are being converted. They have disappeared from my TD Ameritrade account

Note that the tender period was scheduled to end today, but was extended to the 10th. (Robinhood wasn't aware of the change when I requested to tender my shares last week.) So, you could be seeing residual effects from that.

More than 96% of the peak Robinhood holders of TSLA are still holding TSLA today.

One important thing to note with that methodology: it doesn't consider number of shares held, it considers number of users holding shares. If I sell all but one share of my holdings, there's no change in that as a result of my sale.

It also apparently doesn't consider options plays at all (which is probably fair, because you'd have to calculate whether an options play is net bearish or net bullish for the popularity counter, or bear plays would count towards popularity).

 

[Fact Checking]

Quick question: does Tesla ever release deliveries figures during trading hours? Or has it always been either before or after?

There was one such case, years ago. It would be very unusual IMO.

 

[j6Lpi429@3j]

any reason other than macro for the down pre-market?

FWIW living here in the UK I still think no-deal will not happen. There are (thankfully) a few people with brain cells left in UK politics, and even if it means revoking A50, serious effort will go into preventing a crash-out.

 

[Cartegena]

any reason other than macro for the down pre-market?

Possibly, 'bots reacting to an announcement that Tesla agreed to pay a $31,000 fine to settle EPA's claim regarding solid waste at Fremont and to buy the local firefighters $55,000 in new emergency response equipment. Tesla to pay $31,000 fine to settle case with EPA