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

[M3Rider]

I guess now we can begin to have ''traditional'' advertising :

Nathan on Twitter

I'm not so sure this is a good idea. There's a lot of pent up demand. In U.S., SR+ mostly starts deliveries this quarter, in Europe/China likely some LR pent up demand left, plus the whole SR+. RHD countries will likely see deliveries in Q3. Therefore, there's likely enough demand for 2 quarters. Anybody who sees ads now and wants to buy, may see increased wait times, which is not a good experience. It feels like these ads should start towards Q4, otherwise they may be a disservice to Tesla and customers.

On the other hand, just NY will prob. not make much difference overall, but could be evaluated on the effectiveness.

 

[wipster]

I guess now we can begin to have ''traditional'' advertising :

Nathan on Twitter

We recently had an "electric car" day in our community where a serious amount of electric car owners (over 50% Teslas, all types) at a local park to show off their cars, answer questions, and give test drives. While I didn't have a chance to check it out, I understand it was a big success and probably sold a few Teslas (it helps that we have a Supercharger location in town too).

I bring this up as I think it would be excellent marketing for as many locations as possible do something like this just for Teslas, making sure that they get as much press coverage of the event as possible, beforehand and during, and possibly arrange to have a Tesla representative available. I don't know of any Tesla owners that aren't proud of their vehicle and are probably the best folks to get the real information out to curious folks, correcting all the FUD that's being spread.

Possibly this is already being done, but a monthly coordinated nation (and perhaps world) wide Tesla show could do nothing but help spread the real word of just how good Teslas are and correct the misinformation being spread about them.

Make it so Number One!

 

[PANN]

Tesla absolutely booked less Ys than last time. We should expect this to be the case because

1. It's now 2.5k vs a 1k amount
2. People find that it's a bad idea to pre-order a car that might get delayed. It's impossible to time these things with your lease ending
3. Pre-orders didn't get you the car that much sooner
4. The model 3 exist today

The Y will sell like hot cakes however and I'm not worried.

Plus it's so obvious Tesla is anti-selling Y in all fronts because of cannibalization of near-term M3 sales.

 

[brian45011]

looking back, In a way trying to get Fed tax credits to max US buyers helped the buyers, but hurt the company big time. ...
If 10K were on ships to EU at end of 4Q, things might have been smoother for Q1 ..

The need to fill the international delivery channels was readily foreseeable early in 4Q18: TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

 

[capster]

So any old timer still in TSLA? How many did we lose on this round?

Started buying in the 140's with mostly increasing buys up and down with maximums in the 350's.

Planning not to sell for a very long time.

I'm actually hoping for dividends.

Yeah, I know they say they won't have them, but I think they'll be making so much money at some point they won't know what else to do with it.

Seriously.

Tesla may share markets with other companies, but no one else is in the same business. In the future, people will be comparing Tesla in this century to Standard Oil in its day.

As for following the bouncing ball, it's simply not worth digesting sufficient bile to attempt to make accurate short term predictions. Also, my vanity is that I'm a big picture synthesist by nature and experience, so small optimizations tend not to interest me. Last but not least, I happen to think contributing to the volatility is wrong: Think about it from the point of view of the people who are slaving away at Tesla...

I would, however, like to be able to wrap my head around the knock-on effects of Tesla's success in other corners. There will a lot of low hanging fruit there.

 

[defc0n]

Plus it's so obvious Tesla is anti-selling Y in all fronts because of cannibalization of near-term M3 sales.

That was my interpretation of the model y reveal. And what I believe to be lower specs revealed than what the Y will end up having.

 

[Nocturnal]

Started buying in May 2013 at $101, continued buying right up to $375 (ouch) and still buying on the way down. Haven't sold a single share and don't plan to until we hit ARKK's forecast of $4,000 share price in 5 yrs...

I bought my first TSLA back in 2014 for somewhere between 150 and 180 a share. Sold at around 270 to buy a house in 2016/17. Would have stayed long but just did not have the funds for the home upgrade.

Took delivery of my Model 3 this past august. The next day I bought back in at 330, (this car is amazing, people will buy these like crazy!) Bought a few as high as 350 but mostly just kept buying every dip all the way down to 270. Now I'm in the red but I'm not terribly worried. My average SP is about 290 now so I'm positive I'll at least get back to mentally satisfying territory of not having lost money in the next few months.

 

[Fred42]

We recently had an "electric car" day in our community where a serious amount of electric car owners (over 50% Teslas, all types) at a local park to show off their cars, answer questions, and give test drives. While I didn't have a chance to check it out, I understand it was a big success and probably sold a few Teslas (it helps that we have a Supercharger location in town too).

I bring this up as I think it would be excellent marketing for as many locations as possible do something like this just for Teslas, making sure that they get as much press coverage of the event as possible, beforehand and during, and possibly arrange to have a Tesla representative available. I don't know of any Tesla owners that aren't proud of their vehicle and are probably the best folks to get the real information out to curious folks, correcting all the FUD that's being spread.

Possibly this is already being done, but a monthly coordinated nation (and perhaps world) wide Tesla show could do nothing but help spread the real word of just how good Teslas are and correct the misinformation being spread about them.

Make it so Number One!

If there's an all-EV's event, a lot of the cars will be Teslas. I went to one last weekend; mostly 3's showed up. But it was mostly the EV people talking with each other. Other people looked over but went in and out of the nearby store and didn't walk over. Maybe a welcoming sign was needed. And I agree prior publicity is important.

 

[neroden]

Sobering thought of the day for those who still think that the SolarCity buy was a smart financial move : second quarter in a row that the solar VIEs tap income from Tesla instead of taking away losses.

That's an accounting artifact.

Oh. And they've been bleeding net cash too for a bit longer.

No they haven't. The accounting on these things is baroque in the extreme, but, well, no they haven't.

 

[TheMrX]

I'm not so sure this is a good idea. There's a lot of pent up demand. In U.S., SR+ mostly starts deliveries this quarter, in Europe/China likely some LR pent up demand left, plus the whole SR+. RHD countries will likely see deliveries in Q3. Therefore, there's likely enough demand for 2 quarters. Anybody who sees ads now and wants to buy, may see increased wait times, which is not a good experience. It feels like these ads should start towards Q4, otherwise they may be a disservice to Tesla and customers.

On the other hand, just NY will prob. not make much difference overall, but could be evaluated on the effectiveness.

Every person that I talked to and said that I ordered a model 3 2 weeks ago and that I would have it next week thought that it would take waaayyyyy more time than this (years in some cases). Even if it would be 2 months it would not be that bad IMHO.

 

[PANN]

IMHO even if Tesla achieved FSD in just 80-90% of major locations & routes (those well marked roads and not very chaotic) by end of 2019, we will likely see a repeat of SP movement in 2013-2014 (when it go from $30 to $200 in 6 months).

Mass production of M3 is not such a powerful catalyst to SP because in general public eyes, EV were just been playing catch-up game with ICE (range, price...) for past 10+ years, and Tesla merely just matched ICE range and price with M3. But FSD is totally different, it's magic, to quote Apple CEO Tim Cook "Automomous cars are the mother of all AIs".

 

[Dr. K]

Long time lurker here, and small, timorous, retail investor. Just thought I'd leave a message during these trying times.

The first time I ever bought shares in my life was in 2013. My girlfriend had shown me the documentary 'Revenge of the Electric Car'. After some research, the prospect of buying TSLA shares didn't feel like a gamble, which put me off buying shares in the past. It just seemed that there was a greater than 50% chance that i'd at least double my investment. Thinking back to that time the things that convinced my laymans' brain into biting the bullet were:

-Elon's track history of success.
-The advantage the company would have with its super chargers.
-The fact that electric cars had so many fewer moving parts would reduce the cost of maintenance.
-Back then Tesla felt like the only company that made electric cars look beautiful, and not quirky.
-A lot of people in America (and therefore probably Wall Street) seemed to have strong sentiments against green tech which didn't seem to be based on reason or economics, but instead ideology.

Obviously since then, there are so many more reasons that point to TSLA executing and succeeding in the long term with their mission.

Today I got that same feeling I got in 2013 and bough 55 more shares.

Keep fighting the good fight!

 

[brian45011]

... Musk really wants people to buy his cars more than he cares about profits...

That's been the story since 2Q13:

"...While profits {non-GAAP} were still modest in absolute terms and not our primary mission.."​

https://ir.teslamotors.com/static-files/a175a6d9-4a89-4866-b611-52e9fe3988ed

 

[neroden]

View attachment 400849

I'd like to ask where you're getting your numbers. The problem with the VIE accounting is -- it's mostly consolidated into the general accounting. All you can see is the flow to the noncontrolling interests, which tells you *nothing*; you don't actually get a breakdown of the cashflow from the VIE itself. They do a sort of assets/liabilities breakdown in Note 18, but they literally never show a cashflow breakdown.

I did a deep dive back during the merger. These things are cashflow positive for the sponsor, without exception, except if there's a high default rate (didn't happen), a high warranty claim rate (didn't happen) or a major adverse-interest-rate refinancing (and they're generally designed to have a maturity match and therefore avoid those; the refinancing problem for SolarCity came from the things not yet stuffed in VIEs).

 

[PANN]

Just how ridiculous the current SP is, to put it plainly, if tomorrow Tesla just spin off the FSD/Robotaxi unit into sth like Waymo, should it be valued at least the same as Waymo? which is ~4 times of current Tesla market cap.

 

[neroden]

Negative article on GF2, but it's not FUD: from what I know,
it's very much spot on.
Unfortunately Tesla is quite f**king up with TE (both solar and storage, although Powerpack and Powerwalls seem to be ramping up).
David Robinson: Tesla's solar business takes an ugly turn

FWIW, one of the amendments to Tesla's deal with NY means that the employment requirements for the deal don't have to be at the factory at all, they just have to be in the right part of NY.

Service Centers in Buffalo and Syracuse please

 

[neroden]

reg sho is technically outdated

google rule 204 for (for cns fails) and b2b / stock loan buy-in rules

Basically, the market maker exception has been reduced to 3 days, which is still long enough to cause mischief.

 

[Fred42]

Just how ridiculous the current SP is, to put it plainly, if tomorrow Tesla just spin off the FSD/Robotaxi unit into sth like Waymo, should it be valued at least the same as Waymo? which is ~4 times of current Tesla market cap.

A problem with that is that the current Wall Street perception that FSD is fiction. Also it might benefit TSLA in the future if Tesla is valued as a tech company rather than a car company, and FSD is key to that.

 

[Singer3000]

I'd like to ask where you're getting your numbers. The problem with the VIE accounting is -- it's mostly consolidated into the general accounting. All you can see is the flow to the noncontrolling interests, which tells you *nothing*; you don't actually get a breakdown of the cashflow from the VIE itself. They do a sort of assets/liabilities breakdown in Note 18, but they literally never show a cashflow breakdown.

I did a deep dive back during the merger. These things are cashflow positive for the sponsor, without exception, except if there's a high default rate (didn't happen), a high warranty claim rate (didn't happen) or a major adverse-interest-rate refinancing (and they're generally designed to have a maturity match and therefore avoid those; the refinancing problem for SolarCity came from the things not yet stuffed in VIEs).

This is just the net cashflow to/from non controlling interests for solar. Shown in the cashflow summary in the quarterly update letters break out the net cashflow effect from solar vs auto VIEs. For some reason the audited report and 10-Qs do not show this info.

As you say, this is a baroque area of accounting but I’m not aware of a superior disclosed number.

 

[Zaxxon]

Gotta applaud Musk tho, he checked his ego and did what’s best for the company and investors.

Thank you Elon.

Agreed. We all lost by having this hanging over our heads. I'm glad it's settled, and hope that Musk can abide by it.

Onward and upward.

Regarding the refreshed S/X powertrains: as I've previously mentioned, we're considering am X and have been on the edge of putting an order in for a few months. One reason we hadn't is that the 295-mile X is iffy for certain road trips, including one that we have planned for this summer through non-interstate Utah.

I had the route set in ABRP and the site added support for the new vehicles today. This trip went from a few legs with reduced speeds and a Supercharger backtrack to make it, to no issues whatsoever and multiple hours cut off the drive/charge time. Before even including the 150 kW charge bump.

For those that view this as a minor or negligible upgrade--it's not, at least not for road-trippers.