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

[shlokavica22]

Sooo, question for you experts.
If you had $45000 to spend, which option would you chose:

1) Buy a Model 3 (with FSD) and use it as part of the Tesla Network to generate money for the next 5 years.
or
2) Buy TSLA stock and sell in 5 years.

If you plan to buy a car either way - 1.
Else - 2.

 

[scaesare]

Tesla probably expected SP to be higher and pay off the $920m bond in stock. Paying in cash probably hurt Tesla especially right when they had to stock up inventory to be transported on ships.

I think a cap raise would produce the biggest green monthly candle TSLA has ever seen. $3-5b would do it. Tutes want to buy a healthy Tesla, not one that makes weird desperate looking moves to save pennies.

Tesla said several times well prior to the bond payoff date they were gonna do cash. It was the plan all along.

 

[scaesare]

Sorry, but that cat meme cracks me up every time. Look at his back toes in mid-air. That's an "OH SH**!" moment if there ever was one. lol!

Dan

I think you are just trying to deliberately tweak @Krugerrand

 

[Tslynk67]

Yep, and use proceeds for lottery ticket.

Chicken and egg, I guess.

I bought 282.5, which is now up 25%, so in theory now I could sell a 287.5 for the same price...

 

[TradingInvest]

Carl Raymond said: ↑
"In a nutshell, either @neroden is wrong, or Musk is wrong. Akin to an unstoppable force hitting an immovable object.

I have great respect for both, but Musk is in a position to know more. On the flip side, Musk gains, albeit only temporarily, by underestimating the timeline to FSD. Neroden did calculate that Tesla can safely take back those full term lease cars and still sell them at a profit even without FSD capability".

Carl: Based on my personal experience, don't rely on Tesla taking back full lease cars and selling for a profit. I leased my P90D and it had a residual buy out of $70,000. At the end of my lease I got with a long time friend who deals in high end cars to talk about me buying out the lease and having him then sell the car and we split the difference. He went on-line to see current prices and told me "I could buy your car all day long at $50 - $55,000".

So, when Tesla took back my car at a cost of $70,000, has to put money into it to prep it for sale and then make a profit, how are they going to do that when the wholesale market is $15 - $20k less? Don't lose sight -- as in my case -- a 3 year old Tesla is like last week's newspaper as it doesn't have any of the new technology that's been introduced over the life of the lease with people wanting the latest and greatest.

If FSD is available down the road, Model 3 becomes a money making asset, the value will be determined by it's P/E ratio. Not comparable with your P90D case.

 

[Krugerrand]

In a nutshell, either @neroden is wrong, or Musk is wrong. Akin to an unstoppable force hitting an immovable object.

I have great respect for both, but Musk is in a position to know more. On the flip side, Musk gains, albeit only temporarily, by underestimating the timeline to FSD. Neroden did calculate that Tesla can safely take back those full term lease cars and still sell them at a profit even without FSD capability. It costs Tesla nothing dollar wise to run this gambit, only reputation damage should FSD remain ‘one year out’.

Looking forward to the 22nd.

I’ll take a moment to remind everyone that the main reason FSD is behind original Elon predictions most certainly has to do with the MobileEye breakup that caused Tesla to have to turn to itself (more vertical integration) and start from scratch.

That’s really what’s been happening all this time; Tesla building its own. And what a fine job it appears to have done. In the meantime, they’ve discovered other stuffs.

So while the remaining time line to FSD may still be too optimistic, I’m getting tired of people forgetting why the two year delay happened in the first place. I’m also tired of people not realizing that the delay has likely (I’m thinking - certainly) been a good thing in terms of discovery and efficiencies and aha moments.

 

[TradingInvest]

Sooo, question for you experts.
If you had $45000 to spend, which option would you chose:

1) Buy a Model 3 (with FSD) and use it as part of the Tesla Network to generate money for the next 5 years.
or
2) Buy TSLA stock and sell in 5 years.

Not an expert, just my opinion: if 5 years down the road Tesla Network is the only game in town, the stock probably can gain 10 fold, you gain $400k. The car probably can appreciate 20%, you gain $10k, plus the value you get by driving 5 years for free.

 

[ruralectric]

I’ll take a moment to remind everyone that the main reason FSD is behind original Elon predictions most certainly has to do with the MobileEye breakup that caused Tesla to have to turn to itself (more vertical integration) and start from scratch.

That’s really what’s been happening all this time; Tesla building its own. And what a fine job it appears to have done. In the meantime, they’ve discovered other stuffs.

So while the remaining time line to FSD may still be too optimistic, I’m getting tired of people forgetting why the two year delay happened in the first place. I’m also tired of people not realizing that the delay has likely (I’m thinking - certainly) been a good thing in terms of discovery and efficiencies and aha moments.

Perhaps. But when the Nvidia hardware started to ship the rhetoric was very clearly stated as "every car comes equipped with HW needed for FSD". They were waaaay overconfident on that.

 

[pnungesser]

Rhetorical. It says right in the report: CNC, machining and castings. All the speculation and guessing can now stop, thus reducing final page count of this thread at years end by at least 271 pages. That’ll make a lot of people happy.

Machining and casting what??

 

[Doggydogworld]

Stop it. It’s a castings factory, end of story. It had to expand for the sake of adding Model 3 castings and soon to be Model Y castings.

From the horses mouth.

2016 10-K: 702k sq ft of manufacturing and 92k sq ft of warehouse (794k sq ft total).
"We machine various aluminum components at our facility in Lathrop, California and are nearing completion of a site expansion to include an aluminum castings operation."

2017 10-K: 768k sq ft of manufacturing and 615k sq ft of "manufacturing and warehouse" (1383k sq ft total).
"We manufacture our vehicles, and certain parts and components that are critical to our intellectual property and quality standards, at the Tesla Factory and our manufacturing facility in Lathrop, CA."

2018 10-K: 497k sqft of manufacturing and 886 sq ft of "manufacturing and warehouse" (1383k sq ft total).
Same language as 2017, but also says:
"We will begin leasing …. a 0.9 million square feet warehouse and manufacturing facility in Lathrop, California for an initial term of 11.5 years upon construction completion of the facilities.

So, 800k sqft of aluminum machining plus warehouse with 600k sq ft added for aluminum casting and warehouse in 2017 and another 900k sq ft about to be added for...… Tesla Semi and Roadster Manufacturing!!!

 

[Tenable]

Sooo, question for you experts.
If you had $45000 to spend, which option would you chose:

1) Buy a Model 3 (with FSD) and use it as part of the Tesla Network to generate money for the next 5 years.
or
2) Buy TSLA stock and sell in 5 years.

All of the hopeful talk aside, clearly buying stock and holding for 5 years is a better play.

 

[anthonyj]

2) buy now at depressed prices and see investment jump to afford multiple M3s...

btw: any thoughts on why stock has jumped up this morning?

Yesterday we had a bullish hammer candle which shows strength at $258-265. Brings in a lot of technical traders and algos recognize it too. Helps build positive momentum. Of course a silly tweet or fake article can nuke the SP $10 within minutes >.>

 

[TradingInvest]

Perhaps. But when the Nvidia hardware started to ship the rhetoric was very clearly stated as "every car comes eqipped with HW needed for FSD". They were waaaay overconfident on that.

From car owner's point of view, as long as they can upgrade my HW for free, bring my car to FSD, then there is no difference to me.

 

[Creekstalker]

Big battle around $370 today.

Does anybody else feel any unease about all the autonomy talk when Tesla isn't even consistently turning a profit by manufacturing electric cars yet?

It's like we're focusing on B when we haven't done A yet, and A is really a prerequisite for B.

 

[Tslynk67]

Big battle around $370 today.

Does anybody else feel any unease about all the autonomy talk when Tesla isn't even consistently turning a profit by manufacturing electric cars yet?

It's like we're focusing on B when we haven't done A yet, and A is really a prerequisite for B.

Sure hope so!

 

[KarenRei]

Big battle around $370 today.

Does anybody else feel any unease about all the autonomy talk when Tesla isn't even consistently turning a profit by manufacturing electric cars yet?

It's like we're focusing on B when we haven't done A yet, and A is really a prerequisite for B.

If this was a battle, $270 was slaughtered and its corpse paraded through the streets.

Hard to believe we were in the $250s yesterday.

 

[mekberg]

Big battle around $370 today.

Does anybody else feel any unease about all the autonomy talk when Tesla isn't even consistently turning a profit by manufacturing electric cars yet?

It's like we're focusing on B when we haven't done A yet, and A is really a prerequisite for B.

This is myopic.

I don't care about profit - I care about the mission. Tesla could be profitable right now if they decided to only sell high margin variants and forgo CapEx on new factories, etc.

Tesla is a growth company at present and will be for the foreseeable future.

 

[dmvevguy]

I have a feeling the April 22 investor day reveal will be huge. It would AWESOME if they proved the coast to coast demo with 0 human input from Fremont to NYC (outside of supercharging, of course). If they don't show that, they def need to commit when they could do a demo. Either way, Elon is acting super hyper and silly on Twitter, which I suspect means he's super excited to showcase something amazing!

 

[ls7corvete]

This is myopic.

I don't care about profit - I care about the mission. Tesla could be profitable right now if they decided to only sell high margin variants and forgo CapEx on new factories, etc.

Tesla is a growth company at present and will be for the foreseeable future.

Tesla is big enough to do two things....

 

[KarenRei]

I have a feeling the April 22 investor day reveal will be huge. It would AWESOME if they proved the coast to coast demo with 0 human input from Fremont to NYC (outside of supercharging, of course). If they don't show that, they def need to commit when they could do a demo. Either way, Elon is acting super hyper and silly on Twitter, which I suspect means he's super excited to showcase something amazing!

He was also acting silly before the deliveries report :Þ Not a totally reliable indicator.

The indicator is usually pretty good, but sometimes fails spectacularly.