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

[Wooloomooloo]

Ok I'll bite.

Great! What use is a forum without some back and forth eh?

1) 3dfx simply was dead the moment true 3d geometry acceleration became available. I remember the day I bought my first GeForce 256 and switched our engine to OpenGL to take advantage of Hardware T&L. It was day and night. 3dfx continued with completely unneccessary products that were the equivalent of a flip-phone in the smartphone era, i.e. the Voodoo 4. By the time the Voodoo 5 was able to somewhat compete with the GeForce 256, the GeForce 2 GTS was already on the market and wiped the floor with that 2D card. Because that's what the 3dfx cards really were: 2D accelerators. They had no notion of 3D, you had to do every step (Rotate, Translate, Project) yourself on the CPU.

All true - although back in 1996 the difference between a Voodoo board and a TNT2 board on Quake was also night and day. The point is, a company can be fixated on something, thinking it's all important (like z-buffering, SST1, alpha-blending, leave the triangles to the CPU) and suddenly someone else invents T&L and then pixel shading. Oops.

2) I'm driving the Model 3. A car that everyone said would never exist, and certainly not in Europe. Is it perfect? No. But I have to nitpick to find faults. It's a joy to drive, it's insanely performant, it has amazing range, amazing charge rate, the infotainment is second to none. Tell me again how Tesla doesn't deliver. Or how there's "no demand". Mistakes? Absolutely. On time? Not really, no. But my point stands.

I'm also driving a Model 3 - but I don't remember "everyone" saying it would not exist. In fact I don't remember anyone saying it would not exist. I do remember Elon saying I would have it in 2017 (I actually got it on Oct 5th 2018) and I remember being told I'd have my spoiler "within 2 - 3 months" (I still don't have it) and I paid $5000 more for my car than people who got it 4 weeks later than me, and $10,000 more for my car than people who are buying it now. Am I complaining? No. But are all the price changes and backtracking a sign of internal turmoil at Tesla? Quite possibly...

The reason is that trillions of dollars are slipping from certain people's grasp if Tesla succeeds, and you'd be naive to think that they won't put up a fight, using any means neccessary. The reason is not that Tesla is shooting itself in the foot like 3dfx. 3dfx had no product that could compete anymore and their technology was a complete dead end.

Just like the other car manufacturers.

Tesla is not helping itself - of course I agree it has many enemies and entrenched industries that have a vested interest in its failure, but almost no one thinks the future of cars is anything other than electric. So the biggest threat to Tesla isn't big oil backed shorts, it's someone else a bit more organized with a clearer vision of the future getting into the game. Like when nVidia ate 3dfx's lunch.

 

[TradingInvest]

Wait, Tesla only sold @12,000 cars in the US in April?

Am I the only person who finds this disappointing? Wasn't guidance somewhere in the 90,000 range for the quarter (worldwide) and the end-of-quarter wave being phased out?

This quarter looking sketchy.

I haven't check the numbers. If you know Tesla's history, the last month of each quarter usually has the most deliveries, by far. Shorts always try to spread FUD using the first and second monthly numbers.

Also, Tesla deliver cars in 4 areas: US, EU, China, and the rest of the world. If you just do linear extrapolation of the 12k in US in one month, you would get 12kX4X3month = 144k per quarter. Of course I wouldn't recommend to do that kind of simple extrapolation. My point is if someone think 12kX3 = 36k which is much less than 90~100k, that would be wrong math.

 

[jerry33]

Tesla sold 50% less Model S & X than last quarter and your strategy would be raise price?

Most of that was because of dropping the 75 kWh battery which previously made up 50% of sales.

 

[FreqFlyer]

I can't speak for everyone, but I wrote earlier in the day something along the lines of, "If April Model 3 US sales are over 10k, I'll be very happy. If they're under 7k, I'll be very sad." This is over 10k. I'm very happy.

People were expecting vastly more than 10k US Model 3 deliveries? Really? On the first month of a quarter? With production and deliveries divided between domestic and international? Really?

Our three realtime European countries - Norway, Netherlands, and Spain - all posted record first-month quarters. Some of them blowouts.

So I am guessing those April numbers include the sizeable number of 3s in transit at the end of March. So going forward (unless they get to 7K a week production) expect lower US sales deliveries as a more balanced international delivery system starts to take hold.

 

[neroden]

Had they sold a lot more cars there wouldn't have been a problem.

However the problem is not that they failed to produce enough cars. I agree it is not complicated. You are a disappointment neroden.

Ah, are you a complete idiot? The problem is that they failed to produce enough cars. That's why they didn't deliver enough cars, dude.

Are you trying to claim there was a demand problem? Because that's moronic. Are you asking to be ignored?

 

[Cherry Wine]

InsideEV can’t produce those figures. They only estimate US only sales. You’d have to wait for Tesla to get what you’re looking for, heh.

But, we were told there was a HUGE number of cars in transit at the end of last month. Doesn’t look like that exactly panned out either.

It's rather unlikely that the majority of in-transit vehicles were in the U.S., ergo, the in-transit numbers shouldn't have much of an impact on US sales figures for April.

 

[KSilver2000]

Let’s be objective.

This is exactly how I see it. For those of you who are long that are frustrated with the current position of the stock: Why are you frustrated?

Anyone who’s been long since 2014 would be understandably frustrated. Just parking money in index would’ve saved a lot of brain cells and made money.

I can't speak for everyone, but I wrote earlier in the day something along the lines of, "If April Model 3 US sales are over 10k, I'll be very happy. If they're under 7k, I'll be very sad." This is over 10k. I'm very happy.

People were expecting vastly more than 10k US Model 3 deliveries? Really? On the first month of a quarter? With production and deliveries divided between domestic and international? Really?

Our three realtime European countries - Norway, Netherlands, and Spain - all posted record first-month quarters. Some of them blowouts.

How in the world did you set a low range of just 7k?
People were understandably expecting more because the CEO and CFO were guiding more from a “record” first month of quarter. And when will Tesla get to 5k/week model 3’s. That figure had been repeated so many times in the past.

 

[Reality]

Wait, Tesla only sold @12,000 cars in the US in April?

Am I the only person who finds this disappointing? Wasn't guidance somewhere in the 90,000 range for the quarter (worldwide) and the end-of-quarter wave being phased out?

This quarter looking sketchy.

Yes, also these were the low margined SR+ versions, so it's even worse


The Tesla brand is going to survive but equity holders in the current structure are not going to fare to well in the near future imo

 

[Reality]

It's rather unlikely that the majority of in-transit vehicles were in the U.S., ergo, the in-transit numbers shouldn't have much of an impact on US sales figures for April.

agree with this

 

[Wooloomooloo]

The example you gave in the above post is in correct. At the beginning of 2018, analysts insisted Tesla needs to raise $3B during 2018, Elon said "No, we don't". They ended 2018 with plenty of cash without raising. You count this as Elon being wrong?

I wasn't incorrect - you're talking about 2018, I'm talking about this year. It hasn't happened yet and maybe they won't raise debt, but it's likely they will.

As far as 2018 was concerned, yes some investors said Tesla should have done an equity raise in 2018 to fund growth. Even ARK, their number one fan, said they'd like to see a debt raise. But I don't recall anyone serious saying they would have to.

 

[neroden]

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.

I have 28 years of investing experience, so maybe you should listen to your elders.

You're still wrong about SolarCity (and to be clear, I never said SolarCity was a good idea -- its business model was defective -- I said the *merger* was a stealth cash raise which is net profitable). You're still wrong about the hardware chip. You're still wrong about the cost to build Model 3. You're even wrong about the Alien Dreadnought, though I warned at the time that they would have serious trouble automating everything and that the idea of packing everything in really tightly was a major mistake.

Tesla is volatile. The current stock price is just stupid, a pure buying opportunity. We're going to win massively against any 5-year index in the long run. If you're smart enough to swing trade, good for you, but you're not -- you're just making baseless claims.

 

[Garlands]

Wait, Tesla only sold @12,000 cars in the US in April?

Am I the only person who finds this disappointing? Wasn't guidance somewhere in the 90,000 range for the quarter (worldwide) and the end-of-quarter wave being phased out?

This quarter looking sketchy.

Don't forget, Tesla has filled 5 ships with cars in April. Thats maybe 15k cars produced but not yet delivered. If they are producing 6k per week, that leaves at most 9k left to deliver in the US + inventory.

 

[KSilver2000]

25K/month x 3 = 75K just for 3
Would need 5K/month s & X combined worldwide to reach lower end of guidance.
Seems doable

To get to 25k/month 3’s would need more than just 5k/week, which they just can’t do for whatever reason. Remember, a month is not 5 weeks long. Only about 4.25 weeks. At even 5k/week is just 63-64k for the quarter. And as you saw from the InsideEV numbers, there wasn’t even half of 5k in the US for S &X combined.

 

[KarenRei]

So I am guessing those April numbers include the sizeable number of 3s in transit at the end of March. So going forward (unless they get to 7K a week production) expect lower US sales deliveries as a more balanced international delivery system starts to take hold.

I don't see that. Tesla is maintaining inventory across the US, and switching more often between international and domestic so as not to run out of US inventory. Yeah, it's running a bit thin in some places (particularly SR+), but still, I just don't see this.

EU seems to be pretty low on inventory, however. Norwegian deliveries were rocking it, for example, and then virtually flatlined. Looks like there's virtually nothing left on-hand to deliver. Gotta wait for the Morning Cornelia to deliver; EU deliveries should start picking back up around the middle of May.

 

[Silent Ludicrosy]

Tesla needs to get its website sorted out. They spelled “color” wrong and the interior pic is backwards.

 

[Zaxxon]

Anyone wondering why Tesla doesn't announce delivery #s more regularly need only check the last page and a half of this thread for the answer. Extrapolation beyond the face value of the data presented is hard, yet is something folks will run with whether they get the data daily, monthly, or quarterly.

 

[neroden]

Sparks fly: Inside the strained Tesla-Panasonic relationship

Operating losses in Panasonic's Tesla battery segment are estimated to have widened sharply in the year ended March 31, to 20 billion yen. (~$180M)

Long article with lots of interesting information.

This is fascinating. Panasonic is really screwing up -- failing to get to targeted production levels. Tesla has all the leverage. The opposite of the LG Chem situation where LG Chem has all the leverage against the other carmarkers.

 

[jerry33]

aren't they offering free ludicrous for previous owners? Isn't that a lot more bang for your buck?

Not if you have zero interest in a performance model. The Free Supercharging I have with my 2013 is a much bigger deal to me--even though I know it's not that much in monetary value (about $1,400) over the past six years.

 

[KarenRei]

How in the world did you set a low range of just 7k?

Below 7k was my "very sad" possibility. E.g. that the call guidance was wrong.

10k was my "very happy" possibility because it's a >50% QoQ rise. Which is wonderful.

Is the issue that you would have liked some more nuance between 7k and 10k? Okay, here you go:

<7k: Very sad.
7-8k: Sad
8-9k: Unsure
9-10k: Happy
>10k: Very happy.

Seriously, how were people getting disappointed at anything less than ~100% QoQ domestic growth while still continuing with international production and setting international first-month delivery records?

 

[mblakele]

Tesla needs to get its website sorted out. They spelled “color” wrong and the interior pic is backwards.
View attachment 402940 View attachment 402941

"Estimated delivery: June" — so we can expect at least a mini-wave of RHD vehicles at the end of Q2?