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

[Artful Dodger]

There are Twitter feeds of the FAILING New York Freaking Times journalists that read like TSLAQ parody accounts ...

ftfy

Once a trillionaire Elon should buy the NYT and delete it.

A greed. Bezos bought the WaPo for a reason. Elon needs more than Prav-Duh.

Doesn't Starlink give him the platform he needs to become his own International Broadcast News Network?

Jus' sayin'

 

[bhtooefr]

I think it’s possible that others with higher end cars may be selling privately due to low trade in values. (Which is more noticeable on more expensive vehicles.)

I would like to know the number of people with no trade in....out of curiosity.

Conversely, my understanding was that Tesla didn't offer great trade-in values, and the 63% coming from lower-end cars may be stretching into a Tesla.

That could require a private party sale (or, if Carmax or Carvana offer more, a sale to them) instead.

 

[CatB]

This is another fallacy. Or rather, it's one way that advertising can work, but it's not the only way. Elon disliking sleazy/deceptive/appeal-solely-to-emotion ads that he sees for other brands does not imply that Tesla must follow that path.

Get many more marketing cars out there to let people actually experience the vehicles. Hold annual contests for user-created ads like the one Marques Brownlee won. Stick some targeted web ads out there against searches for competing models. Make an anti-FUD site. Hire more (or more competent) PR people.

I concede that I broadly lumped a lot into “advertising.” I consider the latter positive messages you mention more public relations, or even consumer education - which is what PlugIn America does explicitly and what CleanTechnica does as well.

I’m doubling down on my dislike of “commercial advertising” though - it frequently “succeeds” by bombarding people with implied messages about how uncool, unattractive they are unless they have something they don’t have or look like human beings instead of whatever society approves of. I believe it is a substantial contributing source to depression, body image issues, anorexia, and probably other mental illnesses as well. And don’t even get me started on the environmental cost of spam snail-mail, the productivity cost of spam-email, and the collective personal cost of every human being who has to listen to robocalls ...

Rant/off. Sorry for OT, but I think anyone investing in TSLA needs to understand what/who they’re investing in. Tesla’s goal is a good and noble one. I hope they don’t shortcut their way there by employing means that violate other good and noble values. We’ve had conversations here that Tesla uses advertising budget to deploy superchargers - that’s a place where ICErs can observe EVs *working* and happy EV owners. The contest they did for YouTube commercials a while back - they crowdsourced good, honest content. Could they do more? Sure, but so can we.

 

[Tslynk67]

Premarket back in the +4% range again, meanwhile FAANG around -0.5%.

Yeah, macros looking slightly negative and $TSLA hovering around 4% on above-average volume, bodes well for main trading.

 

[Sudre]

Question about advertising that I asked before but no pro-advertising person answered.....

How long does it take for advertising the work?

I will repeat a few other thing.

Elon says demand IS NOT A PROBLEM. Yet people want to advertise because that one person said they did not buy for whatever FUD. That is great. So when Tesla starts to have a demand issue they can start advertising. As all the pro-advertising people state, the FUD problem will just go away.

If you believe that demand is a problem then stop investing in Tesla because you believe Elon and team are lying thru their teeth. Not good to invest in a company deceiving you.

Has anyone heard of a company advertising just to raise their stock price? Heck I thought that would be illegal. That seems the only real reason to advertise right now. The best advertisement for the stock price is to simply produce results.

Advertising should start. I agree. I don’t think we are their yet. They still can’t produce enough cars to fill current demand.

 

[Boomer19]

Tesla (TSLA) Bear Story Will Be Disproven In The Coming Weeks/Months - Baird
Baird analyst Ben Kallo reiterated an Outperform rating and $340.00 price target on Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) after management indicated demand is not a concern. The analyst believes consensus is overly negative and Bear arguments will be disproven in the coming weeks and months.

The analyst stated "We have seen several signs of steady demand over the past few weeks, and management indicated quarter-to-date orders have outpaced production (90% of orders from non-reservation holders). Importantly, Musk indicated the company could achieve record deliveries in Q2". He also sees 6 catalysts that could send shares higher:

1) delivery release (expected by July 4) with potentially record volumes

2) potential cash flow positive quarter

3) Battery and Powertrain Analyst Day (expected this summer)

4) volume production from the Shanghai factory

5) pickup truck unveiling

6) announcements regarding strategies to expand manufacturing/battery production capacity

 

[HG Wells]

I like that there exists a $35k car because it counters the “EVs are toys for the rich” line of FUD.

To Boss Short:

Since Tesla is still shiping $35 K cars and they are getting closer to producing cars in China, Is it time to switch our FUD over to
“EVs are toys of the proletariat ” ?

Your Partner in Crime
Chief Editor
Shortsville Times

 

[Zero CO2]

LInk to shareholder meeting replay please ...

 

[dgodfrey]

TMC should actually already have this: take the biggest pieces of recurring FUD and have a simple one paragraph rebuttal. Make it short enough that it can not only be linked to online, but so that each one paragraph rebuttal can be a simple image to post directly in twitter replies etc.

Can't keep up so apologies if already suggested but a Tesla FUDbuster Wiki page could be a reputable source. May seem less biased than an "official" Tesla link.

 

[Solar Aussie]

Question about advertising that I asked before but no pro-advertising person answered.....

How long does it take for advertising the work?

I will repeat a few other thing.

Elon says demand IS NOT A PROBLEM. Yet people want to advertise because that one person said they did not buy for whatever FUD. That is great. So when Tesla starts to have a demand issue they can start advertising. As all the pro-advertising people state, the FUD problem will just go away.

If you believe that demand is a problem then stop investing in Tesla because you believe Elon and team are lying thru their teeth. Not good to invest in a company deceiving you.

Has anyone heard of a company advertising just to raise their stock price? Heck I thought that would be illegal. That seems the only real reason to advertise right now. The best advertisement for the stock price is to simply produce results.

Advertising should start. I agree. I don’t think we are their yet. They still can’t produce enough cars to fill current demand.

So Tesla starts advertising and Shorts will immediately say there isn’t enough demand so Tesla has to advertise just to drum up business. Elon can’t win when shorts keep relentless dissing

 

[Solar Aussie]

Instead of advertising they could do product placement

 

[CorneliusXX]

Finally a great question! Don’t think Tesla will advertise but they could get a couple of people to do PR.

It's surprising they have not done this before. All the PR companies are tree huggers, I wouldn't be surprised if many would offer their services for free just for the notoriety.

 

[Fact Checking]

So I went back and here's what Elon said about Q2:

[timestamp 33:00]

"[Q2] sales have far exceeded production, and production has been pretty good, so we're actually doing doing well, and we have a decent shot at a record quarter on every level, [...] if not it's gonna be very close, [...] we've got a shot at a record quarter, and 90% of orders are coming from non reservation holders, so these are new customers."

[timestamp 69:40]

"we feel good about demand, that's you know I think not a major issue the profitability is always challenging if you're a fast growing company and I think that the scale at which Tesla is growing is like hard to appreciate but last year we we doubled our fleet like so we made as many cars last year as we had in our entire history and this year you know it's gonna be like pretty like similar at least sort of sixty to eighty percent growth of the total vehicle fleet made more than that so it so it's hard to be profitable with that level of growth we could slow down but then that would not be good for sustainability and the cause of electric vehicles and and solar and storage [...] so you know I think we can be cashflow positive despite having a very high growth rate."
​

Note that there's several levels of new information there that I haven't seen reported together yet:

• Q2 is still guided as non-GAAP profitable, which should reduce the chances of a surprise $250m+ profit triggering S&P 500 inclusion.
  
• Note the "sales have far exceeded production" wording. That's not the wording you'd use with poor demand and Tesla just limping along.
  
• Q1'19 S+X production was only 14k units, and it was an open question whether Tesla could still do 25k/quarter production after the layoffs, reduction in production and the change to Raven. If Elon included S+X in his remark then this would suggest that they can do 20k+ production and maybe 20k deliveries in Q1, which would be huge and would remove much of the cash and GAAP income drain that the S+X drop caused in Q1. I still think S+X production not quite at the Q2'2018 level of ~24k is still in the cards for Q2.
  
• Record at every level would I think normally also imply record revenue. If this verifies then record production, deliveries and revenue in Q2 would falsify all the TSLAQ talking points rather forcefully.
• 90% of demand is now organic, not pent-up demand from reservation holders. This was expected by everyone who looked at the huge reservation queue - but again this is huge if we can see it actually verified in practice as well.

I suspect this wording and JB's presence and good mood is what is behind much of the after-market bump yesterday, and the strong pre-market performance of TSLA today (so far).

 

[UncaNed]

LInk to shareholder meeting replay please ...

Tesla Annual Shareholders Meeting

 

[Ratanpara]

New information revealed in Annual meeting

Probably at small scale but If Tesla Network is ready before fully Robo taxi, Tesla could have small stream of income coming from Network soon.

We have good chance for record quarter on every metrics.

 

[shootformoon]

I think tsla could create a JV with panasonic in the short term to attack the cell scarcity problem. Panasonic's current equipment can be counted as a minority stake in the JV so their investment will be compensated. And in the long term, tsla can buy out the JV when cash on hand is not a problem.

Panasonic's bottleneck is availability of labor in Sparks, NV. This has lead to whole lines being idled for a shift due to insufficient workers on site. Further, excessive overtime is causing employee fatigue and burn-out.

Telsa's advantage in this respect is its automation expertise. We've already heard that Tesla had a hiring freeze at GF1 after the Grohmann SR pack machine came online, while Panasonic can't hire enough skilled people to support the battery cell lines that already exist.

If Tesla can automate cell production in a meaningful way that reduces labor requirements, it opens the floodgates to reliable production, with further expansion of additional lines all with reduced capex and lower labor requirements.

I say Tesla "has control of its own destiny".

Cheers!

 

[Krugerrand]

Don't tell me you two are married.

That came very close to earning you a disagree, then a funny. You’ll notice you got neither because I simply could not decide and I could see where one might get that impression. I’ll ask, though, that you never put that thought to words again. Like ever.

 

[Driver Dave]

Well NO DEMAND has run its course.

I wonder what's next?

 

[anthonyj]

Well NO DEMAND has run its course.

I wonder what's next?

-1 demand

https://jalopnik.com/mitsubishi-north-america-sold-negative-three-3-lance-1832274956

 

[kbM3]

Elon said that ~40% of new owners are trading up from Camrys / Accords / Priuses. These aren't rich people. They're smart people who see the long term cost benefit of EVs.

Agree with your main points. However, I feel compelled to point out that you can’t judge someone’s wealth by the vehicle they drive. Many, many multi-millionaires drive, Camry’s, Accords and Priuses.