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

[K3jSe7Llp7]

Typical East-coast Ivy-league elitist attitude

My father was like this. On his death bed he constantly told the doctors, 'I don't think you know what you're talking about'...

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Yeah, on Monday Elon said Tesla Semi would be FIRST to ship with FSD, maybe in 2020 with 5 truck plattoons. Think of the 1 human driver as a 'safety officer' while the technology proves itself.

To be more accurate, somebody teed him up with a question about platooning of semis and he took the opportunity to claim something that would earn Tesla lots of money.

 

[Krugerrand]

View attachment 399962

Want one, especially if it comes with a not-a-flamethrower adapter.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

I am really torn by this FSD stuff. On one hand karpathy's presentation is enjoyable and confidence inducing. On the other hand why Elon has to concentrate on robotaxi every where. Why don't you remind people there are money to be made along the way. First is the obvious one, Semi platooning. Second one is fully autonomous expressway driving, even only on serval designated highways such as i80. That's much easier than robotaxi in NYC. And shipping company would pay big money for that. Heck they can even have driverless sleeper buses running between San Fransisco and LA, built on semi power train. Or sell semi based RVs where the owner can go to sleep after driving it onto the highway.

Because Elon Musk is the hyperbolic salesman. Tesla has just had an absolutely horrendous quarter, which they're going to report today and Tesla needs two things:
1) buyers to buy Teslas, especially with FSD because it has failed to lower its Model 3 production costs enough so desperately needs all the margin it can get
2) investors to believe in Tesla's long-term value so that share price doesn't collapse when the 2019Q1 is revealed, leading to suppliers, buyers, lenders and investors losing confidence and destroying the company.

Consumers aren't going to buy the semi, but they can buy a Model 3.

 

[SOULPEDL]

The most likely headline: "Tesla Q1 earnings miss estimates". The question is how the stock price will react. On one hand, the stock price is already quite low and expectations are low. On the other hand, the earnings number will most likely missed the consensus by a lot, and shorts are ready to strike.
The current non-GAAP consensus is ($0.69). while the whisper number is ($1.13). Luv estimated ($2.24) right after P&D report. It feels as if analysts intentionally keep the number high to make sure Tesla would miss.

Profit? I thought I read somewhere about $0.95/sare loss? Consistent with Elons expectations as a possible loss.

 

[mblakele]

Profit? I thought I read somewhere about $0.95/sare loss? Consistent with Elons expectations as a possible loss.

Loss. It's traditional in finance to represent losses in parenthesis, instead of using a minus sign. That post threw me for a moment because I expect to see "($0.69)" in a spreadsheet, but not in a prose sentence.

 

[K3jSe7Llp7]

Even though I'm like, 'obi wan elan you are our only hope' I fear for tomorrow.

 

[SOULPEDL]

Loss. It's traditional in finance to represent losses in parenthesis, instead of using a minus sign. That post threw me for a moment because I expect to see "($0.69)" in a spreadsheet, but not in a prose sentence.

Ya, same here. So $0.01 would do wonders on Thurs am, no? S&P step closer too.

 

[Krugerrand]

OK, that's an interesting argument.

I suppose you might be totally right.

I won't take Uber at all for numerous reasons including their poor-quality, uninsured, underpaid drivers, but I realize many people do.

Uber's availability is startlingly limited, too, by driver availability -- you can't get them at random times, you can't get them in random places, they'll refuse to take you to random places.
So even if Tesla Network was geofenced away from tough-to-handle areas *and* unable to operate in bad weather, it would probably be no worse than Uber.

So then I guess we get back to regulation. When an Uber crashes, everyone blames the driver and the Uber company usually skates. (Though occasionally Uber gets banned from town for not following regulations.) If something goes wrong with a Tesla robotaxi, Tesla gets sued for millions, the media has a frenzy, and regulators go wild with bans on "killer robots".

If Tesla can get sufficient insurance, I guess, go for it.

I managed to get an Uber and Uber Black in Romania. No issues. Your little corner of the world needs to move into the 21st century already.

 

[Singer3000]

Because Elon Musk is the hyperbolic salesman. Tesla has just had an absolutely horrendous quarter, which they're going to report today and Tesla needs two things:
1) buyers to buy Teslas, especially with FSD because it has failed to lower its Model 3 production costs enough so desperately needs all the margin it can get
2) investors to believe in Tesla's long-term value so that share price doesn't collapse when the 2019Q1 is revealed, leading to suppliers, buyers, lenders and investors losing confidence and destroying the company.

Well I'll be making a modest increase to my long position today. And I have plenty of dry powder lined up for the rest of the week too. If the results bomb, the shares will be even cheaper. If there's some upside surprise, then I'll be buying with some upside momentum and hopefully a bit more certainty on the battery production conundrum and guidance on SR+ margins. That's the good thing about having a super long term outlook.

 

[Fact Checking]

I am working with Tesla to hopefully release a definitive statement about it tomorrow.

Thank you so much for approaching this so constructively and not spoiling the surprise!

Even the biggest spy agencies are making disclosure mistakes, while it's their sole job to be paranoid AF...

That Tesla, who is internally an openly communicating meritocracy with a flat hierarchy, is leaking project details via their complex firmware structure, is not surprising.

It's difficult to keep confidential project details segregated in a large code base if you are not compartmentalizing the teams with Apple's dedication to secrecy (which Tesla isn't doing), especially if most of their effort is invested into creating that new functionality, not into trying to hide it from curious firmware hackers like yourself!

 

[nursebee]

Y'all B CRZY hypothesizing

B bound to b let down

I wuz wrong.

I wonder if t Rowe price can admit the same?

 

[Fact Checking]

The current non-GAAP consensus is ($0.69). while the whisper number is ($1.13). Luv estimated ($2.24) right after P&D report. It feels as if analysts intentionally keep the number high to make sure Tesla would miss.

I agree, and I'm afraid that @luvb2b's -$2 EPS, -$600m GAAP loss and significant cash burn rate to below $2b EoQ cash levels is probably closer to the truth than the easily gamed "Wall Street Q1 expectations" figure. Shorts also have a lot of dry powder now at these SP levels, and Implied Volatility expectations are around -$20.

While Tesla could in principle counter some of that Q1 loss via discretionary measures, if they consider Q1 a goner why would they waste any piggy bank funds like the FCA income or deferred revenue, if they can use them to improve Q2 results instead and secure S&P 500 inclusion in ~August?

Recent moves of releasing good news just before the ER are also consistent with a big Q1 miss. Releasing long term FSD plans and the S/X refresh just after bad Q1 results might have been portrayed as a "desperate", reactionary move - so it might be better to release them first.

The Tesla board down-sizing is also consistent with Q1 losses and taking responsibility, while the institutionals friendly governance moves would increase any buy-out interest and institutional dip-buying strength.

Most of the media is also likely to exaggerate and amplify the worst aspects of Q1 earnings - and this will be played on repeat non-stop with a gloom-and-doom narrative for another 2-3 months until Q2 results...

The only puzzling signal is why they moved the Q1 ER ahead by a week - the bearish reading is that maybe they wanted to get out the bad news ASAP and want to combine it with more layoffs...

While I could be wrong, I'd urge everyone with leverage to be super careful this week. Not advice.

 

[K3jSe7Llp7]

Deepak...is that you?

Edit for spelling

Thanks, Deepak's so cool.

 

[nursebee]

Model s,x news is great!

 

[MarcusMaximus]

I am not understanding the Model S SR:

View attachment 400031

Add a cabin/storage capacity row to that table. Also, Bioweapon Defense Mode and better suspension.

 

[Krugerrand]

Damn it ...back to grumpy cat?!?

Yes. But a different grumpy cat. (Look at his cute fists; he be ready to fight UFC style.)Can you blame me? With all these negativities percolating. I feel we need to burn some sage or perhaps something a bit stronger...

 

[Artful Dodger]

With this update, it seems like the interior refresh and any possible battery changes are not going to happen until Q3 at the earliest(like the interior leak said a long time ago)

Lol, get this: Tesla is BATTERY CONSTRAINED.

Any ill-informed switch from Japanese-sourced 18650s to GF1-sourced 2170s would have the net effect of reducing Tesla's access to batteries by about 10 GWh per year. That's 40% of GF1's current annual output.

Telsa WILL NOT switch the S/X over to 2170 cells ANY TIME SOON. That means after the Semi, Model Y, Roadster, Pickup, and possibly the Model 2 are in full production.

So "NOT SOON" means at least 5 years, IF things go well. Otherwise longer.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Autonomy investor day and now a S/X refresh just before the Q1 earnings. This timing is interesting.

And on Thursday if we get a SEC settlement, then THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO!

 

[Krugerrand]

Here we have the pot calling the kettle black. You were just talking down to people about how Service Centers being 250 miles away isn’t a problem for future customers

Won’t be a problem when Tesla finishes deploying their planned mobile services et al...

Not sure what that has to do with neorden going on about how he’s smarter than everyone else on the planet, and that those of us who don’t agree with him are idiots, who don’t want to learn.

Now, I wasn’t holding any grudge against you based on our past exchanges; water, duck’s back, bridge etc... But if you want to sling mud, just let me know and I’ll go put my rubber boots on.