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

[Remus]

So here's my rub with what you're saying. I don't argue the fact that the driving environment will continue to evolve and change. The human eye has been able to adapt and change over the last 100 years or so. Cruising speeds have increased with safer road surfaces and better drive trains. We have adapted. Granted, you could make an argument that we don't all do it very well but none the less, we manage ok. If we can do it then there is no reason a neural net can't do it, and do it exponentially faster. I think we are living in incredibly exciting times and I think things are going to happen faster than any of us could dream possibe.

Dan

If NN have only half of the adapt speed as human mind, we had an AI overlord ruling the world already.

 

[Spacemanspliff]

Honestly Musk should raise capital now. I really don’t see the stock going over $300 until their cash on hand is a lot higher. Nothing he says or tweets does much to the SP. He lost his magic pump touch. Doubt many institutions believe his guidance at this point. The money can be used for growth, they need to build the Semi, Roadster, and Y next year. Stock would get upgrades and shorts would cover

I think Musk, Ellison, and Saudi’s can raise $3b by themselves

I don’t think he will raise capital till after improved Q2 numbers showing demand has returned and an improved share price at the earliest. Only way I see it prior to that is some catastrophic financial event, recession, or collapsed demand. None of the 3 I expect to happen before Q2 delivery report.

He will wait till he gets better terms or until he absolutely has to at this point.

 

[jerry33]

I've laid out elsewhere (autonomy day thread IIRC) why this is not sufficient for public acceptance of driverless cars

It will be similar to electric cars. Once people start having cars that drive themselves with supervision and they talk it up as to how great it is, acceptance will come. Power brakes, automatic transmissions, power steering, all had periods of doubt before they gained acceptance. I can clearly recall people saying they would never purchase a car with power brakes. (Note: The moon's orbit was about 14,000 miles from the earth at that time, so it was a while ago.)

 

[green48]

When a consumer apply for a loan to buy a Tesla, the bank pays tesla in cash up front.

I think you are confusing leasing vs car loan (purchase to own).

I see no bank affiliation on Tesla's website. In the car design studio, there's an option to pay via loan or cash or lease. I'm specifically concerned about the loan. Do you know off-hand which bank Tesla uses for this process?

 

[JRP3]

Wait, haven't you been saying that Tesla shouldn't be making any vehicles with large batteries because it is a waste of battery resources, and now you want them to make a wagon version that would be less efficient and require even more battery capacity to maintain the same range?

Don't expect logical consistency if you insist on engaging with him.

 

[LytHka]

A $2B equity raise at $200/share would dilute current SP by about $2.67. It would be nice if they just did that instead of watching the SP slide on its own.

 

[tinm]

David Reid. Technically he’s right based on gas car thinking. But even when I look at the latest gas vehicle I think,
“Why would I want more noise, maintenance, fumes, buttons all with less tech, performance and no OTA updates for enhancements?”

He probably loves the Predator-alien-face look of Lexus, which did a refresh and ruined their whole look imho.

 

[Scuttlebutt]

All nice and good, but there's the issue of the stationary fire trucks, while fully focused all the time.
I am talking about soft target, pedestrians and cyclists. How are Tesla going to sort interaction with those?

Perhaps Level 5 will be homologated, but only for a cherry picked set of streets within an area, making RoboTaxi more of a city bus than a personal car. Then there are unexpected road closures. I sometimes get to consult a road worker or street sweeper. Oh well, people here are planning their robotaxi drives for Christmas already

We normally try to refrain from rambling-off topic posts during trading hours..or haven't you noticed?

 

[TNEVol]

Curious if people think we’ll see another extension request tomorrow from SEC vs Musk. @TNEVol Thoughts?

I don't think so without a discussion of the efforts made and a demonstration of real progress

 

[ReflexFunds]

End of quarter cash was $2.2B, but Tesla delivered nearly half of the cars this quarter in the last 10 days, representing over $2B revenue only coming in quite late in the quarter. It might have been that the inter-quarter cash as I calculated it halfway through here was even an overestimation...

Interestingly, interest income rose slightly between Q4 and Q1, more or less in line with a slight increase in returns on safe short term investments. That implies that inter-quarter cash for Q4 and Q1 were very comparable. Yet end-of-quarter cash reported is dramatically different ($3.7B versus $2.2B). Any thoughts on how to square these two facts?

Tesla likely had around $1bn of undrawn credit lines at Q1 end, but drawings on this line were likely higher during the quarter. In Q4 it is more likely that much of the revolving credit line was repaid for most of the quarter to reduce interest expense, but drawn at the end of Q4 to increase cash balance.

 

[bdy0627]

I heard exactly that:
1. A large number of deliveries were pushed into Q2 because of shipping delays.
2. Going forward, they are going to avoid the end-of-quarter push, which will smooth out deliveries. An EOQ push can mean a big quarterly miss if something unexpected comes up causing a delay in deliveries, so smoothing things out will even out quarterly numbers, but more importantly, I think everyone realizes that a boom/bust cycle of deliveries is really hard on employees and quality also suffers as a result.

I do think that there's one big unanswered question:
Given that Q2 was earlier projected to be profitable, why is this no longer the case despite a significant number of Q1 deliveries slipping to Q2?

I think their answer on that is it has to do with the shift in delivery strategy to go worldwide throughout the quarter. There will be a much higher percentage of produced but not delivered inventory on the books, probably 25k+.

 

[JRP3]

Regarding Panasonic building 2170 capacity in Japan, this concerns me because it means they don't see a clear route to optimizing the already installed capacity at GF1. One issue may be finding enough quality workers in Nevada. GF expansion must have soaked up a large portion of the work force already.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Can someone help me understand the cash-flow from every marginal vehicle sold?

I get that if customers buy a car with cash, Tesla gets the entire fee upfront, but how about with loans?

If I take out a loan through the Tesla website, how much cash does Tesla receive and when?

I see there's a $7500 down payment on model 3 vehicles, so I assume they get that entire sum upon delivery.

How about the remainder? Is Tesla on the hook if someone fails to make a car payment?

Or does Tesla trade that risk right away to some financial institution in exchange for upfront cash?

On loans, I believe Tesla just receives the full amount, up front, from the bank. Tesla doesn’t service the loan. Even through their website, my loan(I paid it off before the first payment was due, but still had a loan temporarily) on my S was through US Bank.

 

[Anstandswauwau]

Come on, -4.20% for shits and giggles!

Edit: WE DID IT, YAY!

 

[ZeApelido]

They’ve ordered all tooling and equipment to manufacture model y

When did they order all tooling and equipment for the Model 3?

 

[MarcusMaximus]

He probably loves the Predator-alien-face look of Lexus, which did a refresh and ruined their whole look imho.

They did that somewhat on purpose: to get everyone used to how hydrogen fuel cell cars would look(this is also why Toyota has the same styling).

 

[CorneliusXX]

I see no bank affiliation on Tesla's website. In the car design studio, there's an option to pay via loan or cash or lease. I'm specifically concerned about the loan. Do you know off-hand which bank Tesla uses for this process?

They use multiple banks in each geography.

 

[jerry33]

I understand the thought, but that is a standard drivers who are not riders will not allow. Good luck getting anywhere in (non-metro) Michigan with that level of conservativeness. (night time phantom breaking). Plus, deer will jump/ run full speed into the side of your car.

Yes, that why they need to track the movements and anticipate. In some cases the response would be to accelerate rapidly (if there is no other car is in front). If they also flash a "deer evasion" on the screen, I don't think there will be an issue. It's not phantom breaking if there is a reason. Even in Michigan, no one wants to be hit by a deer What people (or at least I) don't like is a deer road sign when most of the time there are no deer.

 

[Singuy]

I don’t think he will raise capital till after improved Q2 numbers showing demand has returned and an improved share price at the earliest. Only way I see it prior to that is some catastrophic financial event, recession, or collapsed demand. None of the 3 I expect to happen before Q2 delivery report.

He will wait till he gets better terms or until he absolutely has to at this point.

Didn't he say that raising capital is too much of a clutch that leads them into wasting money vs strategically spend every dollar currently when free money is not falling out of the sky? That's what I gathered from the call about his thoughts on capital raises.

 

[anthonyj]

New 52wk low. Whole market is in an uptrend and TSLA is one of the only in a downtrend with no signs of relief