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

[Alexander Grea]

Have you read the biography of Tim Cook. He seems to care more about the environment and workers right rather than making profit for the shareholders.
https://www.amazon.com/Tim-Cook-Genius-Apple-Level/dp/0525537600

I have not and I don't doubt his personal views. However, as an employee of Apple he looks definitely extremely focused on margins and squeezing out the most of what Steve Jobs created before him.

He has been CEO since 2011 and I think we are better off basing our analysis on his actions as a CEO for 8 years and not on his words in the book.

As I said AAPL would be such a good fit to acquire but it will never ever happen with Tim Cook. It might happen when Tim Cook gets booted and they need a new growth driver but it won't be soon as AAPL is near ATH.

 

[Boomer19]

This post has 10 disagrees and 3 ironic funnies. The arrogance of this forum is astounding. You are losing against a 5 year market index. I didn't make the mistake neroden did thinking SolarCity was a good idea or what FC did thinking a hardware chip is an important advantage or what almost everybody did not doing the simple math about the implications of a model 3 that cost 38k to build after the dreadnought idea was proven bullshit.

After 15 years of investing in the market the truth remains that all online message boards have negative value.

they screwed and continue to screw battery production, thus production of cars - storage

thankfully, they have a lead when it comes to batteries. other car mf that depend on lg etc are experiencing same issues. they can’t get enough batteries. lg is in legal battles with another battery mf over proprietary (someone cited days ago)

it’s a war for batteries. MS media doesn’t understand this yet. bc they’re puppets. that’s why wapner and cnbc repeatedly say it’s a fundamentals thing with the way the business is run..meaning financials an other tv boilerplate bs

no, it isn’t. it’s batteries. it’s always been batteries, even when they temporarily couldn’t figure out how to finally assemble a model 3, the battery scarcity was still a bigger concern. they will continue to see consumer product hurdles as they roll out, but the battery production is the underlying driver of everything. solar has potential to take some of the heat off that, and maybe some other product rollouts in the future that we don’t even know about yet. but the pipeline that we know about is mostly battery centric.

 

[InDaClub]

Tesla (TSLA) will hold its 2019 Annual Shareholder Meeting on June 11

 

[Boomer19]

Who is going to be the strategic investor in TSLA? Considering how much insitutional selling has been happening then it is essential for the medium term prospects to think of the possible strategic investors. The strategic investor should take 5-10% stake

Here are the ones that come to my mind and the probability of each:
AAPL: Would be perfect fit strategically but will never happen as long as Tim Cook is in charge. He is a numbers guy and focusing on the growth of high margin services business.
GOOG: All in with Waymo and Android Auto.
MSFT: Focus on high margin cloud business and providing cross platform services for cars.
GM: Most likely candidate considering they held talks with Rivian very recently that broke down.
F: Tied down with Rivian.
AMZN: Tied down with Rivian.
VW: Likely considering they were rumored to be one of the investors lined up for the 420 buyout.
TM & Daimler: Have already made their profits with TSLA and haven't showed intent to get back there.
FCA: Likely as they already have a partnership with the credits scheme.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

All together it looks like the dream investment by a tech giant into TSLA is not going to happen. This means also that a full buyout of TSLA is unlikely because only Tech companies have the kind of cash that is required to finance those deals.

However a deal similar to Rivian where TSLA will provide the drivetrain and against it will get an investment might be doable. What is worrying is how Rivian got the deal in the first place considering that TSLA's know how and engineering should be clearly way ahead of Rivian's at that stage. Hopefully it is not Elon's ego that prevents the partnerships with F or GM.

they don’t need one, yet
hopefully they won’t.
they’ve been up against the wall before. i don’t think this is as dire a situation as last year, despite the www’s implication

 

[renim]

Walter Huang's wife suing Tesla for wrongful death. Shorts have seized upon the opportunity to suddenly care so much again, posting pictures of his family all over Twitter and tagging whomever they think will help damage the stock price most. Very sad situation all around. Not going to link any of the tweets, article is easy enough to find with a quick search.

Each death by each 'autonomous' driving system will be looked at very closely, this begats one of NN greatest weakness, how to audit and validate a neural network's decision making.

 

[AlMc]

This may have already been posted/rumored But there are too many pages to read every day:

Seems Tesla CTO is back at work after a 6 month LOA.

 

[ReflexFunds]

Who is going to be the strategic investor in TSLA? Considering how much insitutional selling has been happening then it is essential for the medium term prospects to think of the possible strategic investors. The strategic investor should take 5-10% stake

Here are the ones that come to my mind and the probability of each:
AAPL: Would be perfect fit strategically but will never happen as long as Tim Cook is in charge. He is a numbers guy and focusing on the growth of high margin services business.
GOOG: All in with Waymo and Android Auto.
MSFT: Focus on high margin cloud business and providing cross platform services for cars.
GM: Most likely candidate considering they held talks with Rivian very recently that broke down.
F: Tied down with Rivian.
AMZN: Tied down with Rivian.
VW: Likely considering they were rumored to be one of the investors lined up for the 420 buyout.
TM & Daimler: Have already made their profits with TSLA and haven't showed intent to get back there.
FCA: Likely as they already have a partnership with the credits scheme.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

All together it looks like the dream investment by a tech giant into TSLA is not going to happen. This means also that a full buyout of TSLA is unlikely because only Tech companies have the kind of cash that is required to finance those deals.

However a deal similar to Rivian where TSLA will provide the drivetrain and against it will get an investment might be doable. What is worrying is how Rivian got the deal in the first place considering that TSLA's know how and engineering should be clearly way ahead of Rivian's at that stage. Hopefully it is not Elon's ego that prevents the partnerships with F or GM.

I agree at this stage I would prefer a strategic investor to a public capital raise. It's possible Tesla could sell a stake in Tesla Network - it's hard to separate this from the rest of the business, but perhaps this could just hold the exclusive right to using Tesla vehicles for robotaxis, and not include any of the IP (because this is also used for AP/FSD software revenue).

I don't think Tesla would want to take investment directly from a robotaxi competitor.

I'd say Softbank, Silver Lake and Tencent would be the most likely companies to buy up to a 10% stake in Tesla Network.
GM could potentially take a strategic stake in Tesla in return for a JV for GM's EV pickup (but Cruise competition would be a problem), also possible with FCA.
Larry Ellision could also invest $1-2bn in Tesla via new shares. Microsoft also possible.

 

[JBRR]

This may have already been posted/rumored But there are too many pages to read every day:

Seems Tesla CTO is back at work after a 6 month LOA.

source?

 

[Alexander Grea]

they don’t need one, yet
hopefully they won’t.
they’ve been up against the wall before. i don’t think this is as dire a situation as last year, despite the www’s implication

They might not need it but it does not really have any real downsides to have a partnership with another carmaker.

Pros
- Low risk low margin cash flow
- More confidence for TSLA's suppliers
- More confidence for customers. Also if TSLAs powertrain would running some GM electric cars then it would be a brand boost for TSLA in less progressive areas.
- Extra capital. The strategic investment can be partly into newly issued shares.

Cons
- If they are really production constrained then they are stuck with lower margin subontracting taking a part of their higher margin own branded cars.

 

[lklundin]

This copy has good audio quality (Palihapitiya's speech on CNBC)
Gofile - File sharing platform, anonymous and free

As for why CNBC took down the video of their interview with Palihapitiya, I hope to shame CNBC for that:

Lars Kr. Lundin on Twitter

PS. Changed the tweet...

 

[AlMc]

source?

. Can't say. you may just have to take my word for it. Or not. Your choice. But good enough source for me.

 

[AlMc]

 

[JBRR]

. Can't say. you may just have to take my word for it. Or not. Your choice. But good enough source for me.

Was it ever announced that he was on a LOA?

 

[Swampgator]

Was it ever announced that he was on a LOA?

If he was on LOA he jumped back in to participate in the Q4 earnings call in Jan

 

[AlMc]

Was it ever announced that he was on a LOA?

Not to my knowledge. I suspect (opinion...I have not corroborated) that he wanted some time with family/perhaps build a recycling business while much of his work was on hold as battery production went to the model 3 and Maxwell acquisition ongoing. Take some money out now for the family and business as he did systematically over the last few months.

 

[NakedLong]

After the Investor Autonomy Day someone at TMC (maybe @neroden) said that Elon Musk should completely stop making any kind of temporal prediction.

Just present the (amazing) things when they are ready for that.

So this is not my idea, but I think it would help Tesla.

Also, Elon Musk should accept that he is maybe not the world's best presenter and use every opportunity to let his exceedingly skilled people explain things, just like Bannon and especially Karparthy.

I think people should just stfu and let the guy continue to change the world for the better than nitpicking about a few month delay or cherrypicking the predictions that were out, rather than the ones which were accurate. And there have been some really significant predictions which are accurate, like mass-producing model 3 by 2019 (prediction made in 2015). If someone cares so much about quarter to quarter results, or short term profits, or Elon not being a smooth presenter, or whether he delivers 6 months later than he promised on something, then they are just missing the big picture when it comes to how Tesla is going to change the world. They are getting caught up in window dressing. And it's quite easy to get caught up in the rollercoaster of the stock price and all the drama and news put out around the company and Elon. But at this stage, it's hard to imagine a world where Tesla doesn't succeed in joining the likes of Amazon/Apple as a tech/manufacturing giant, yet people still complain about Elon - the man who is making it happen. If they think he is doing a bad job, why don't they go build their own multibillion dollar companies?

 

[NakedLong]

After the Investor Autonomy Day someone at TMC (maybe @neroden) said that Elon Musk should completely stop making any kind of temporal prediction.

Just present the (amazing) things when they are ready for that.

So this is not my idea, but I think it would help Tesla.

Also, Elon Musk should accept that he is maybe not the world's best presenter and use every opportunity to let his exceedingly skilled people explain things, just like Bannon and especially Karparthy.

I think people should just shut up and let the guy continue to change the world for the better than nitpicking about a few month delay or cherrypicking the predictions that were out, rather than the ones which were accurate. And there have been some really significant predictions which are accurate, like mass-producing model 3 by 2019 (prediction made in 2015). If someone cares so much about quarter to quarter results, or short term profits, or Elon not being a smooth presenter, or whether he delivers 6 months later than he promised on something, then they are just missing the big picture when it comes to how Tesla is going to change the world. They are getting caught up in window dressing. And it's quite easy to get caught up in the rollercoaster of the stock price and all the drama and news put out around the company and Elon. But at this stage, it's hard to imagine a world where Tesla doesn't succeed in joining the likes of Amazon/Apple as a tech/manufacturing giant, yet people still complain about Elon - the man who is making it happen. If they think he is doing a bad job, why don't they go build their own multibillion dollar companies?

 

[Krugerrand]

I reluctantly have to agree. What Elon has achieved is amazing, but he's cried wolf too many times. The only way forward from here is actual results, as someone stated a few days "show me don't tell me" or even better, "Show Don't Tell", which happens to be a Rush song

I think you’re just parroting the people on the other side of hall now. I’ve never actually heard him cry wolf. Or fire.

I have heard him admit his mistakes. I have heard him express truths about himself. I have heard him say he’s working on improving himself.

Sugar happens, that’s just a fact. He’s aggressive with timelines. His teams miss those timelines a good part of the time. No biggie because the tasks still get done.

His outlook is almost always optimistic. So what? I’m optimistic every night before I close my eyes thinking not only will I wake but I’ll also be able to drag my broke arse out of bed. So far I’ve woken every morning but there are days the body says, ‘Not to today!’

There’s a lot of ways forward. The fact you want him to cater to the thieves and bandits of the world, is well...interesting at best. I’d naturally prefer he kick them in the face and just keep on keepin’ on.

 

[Krugerrand]

I reluctantly have to agree. What Elon has achieved is amazing, but he's cried wolf too many times. The only way forward from here is actual results, as someone stated a few days "show me don't tell me" or even better, "Show Don't Tell", which happens to be a Rush song

I think you’re just parroting the people on the other side of hall now. I’ve never actually heard him cry wolf. Or fire.

I have heard him admit his mistakes. I have heard him express truths about himself. I have heard him say he’s working on improving himself.

Sugar happens, that’s just a fact. He’s aggressive with timelines. His teams miss those timelines a good part of the time. No biggie because the tasks still get done.

His outlook is almost always optimistic. So what? I’m optimistic every night before I close my eyes thinking not only will I wake but I’ll also be able to drag my broke arse out of bed. So far I’ve woken every morning but there are days the body says, ‘Not to today!’

There’s a lot of ways forward. The fact you want him to cater to the thieves and bandits of the world, is well...interesting at best. I’d naturally prefer he kick them in the face and then

 

[ggr]

OoooKaaaay. Here's one of my favorites from MY road. Good luck automating? Hah! Good luck HUMANS figuring out this one:

View attachment 402698

It's obvious.