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

[madodel]

Today sucked.

Days like today make me wonder if extinction might not be an expected outcome. We are doomed by these terminally stupid, corrupt people. NIO was hawked by Wall Street thieves as a "Tesla Killer". It is dying of its own accord while Tesla is thriving and set up for a major expansion in NIO's own turf. Such incredible stupidity. In the end we win. We have to.

 

[CuriousSunbird]

Questions about the lawsuit:

1) Isn't it against Musk and the board, not Tesla?
2) Wouldn't the liability, then, only be to Musk and the board, not Tesla?
3) Wouldn't the only impact on Tesla, then, be to make Musk and the board lose money, and by consequence, potentially have to sell shares in Tesla if the liability were high enough?
4) Given that Elison wasn't on the board then, isn't the only defendant who holds a large amount of Tesla Musk?
5) Given that, what does it matter that the rest of the board has to defend themselves?
6) Isn't there directors insurance anyway?

In short, is there any relevance at all to Tesla from the court ruling that the board has to defend itself, apart from a "gotcha"?

(I also seem to recall that the judge dismissed one motion of the plaintiffs too, although I can't seem to find anything about that)

I think you're right on 1-5, but on 6, Tesla has said in its filings that it maintains relatively little D&O insurance (as reported here: https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/...-tweets-highlight-need-for-directors-and.html).

 

[sparcs]

Anyone think that Elon will send out those end of the quarter emails to employees for the current quarter? I believe last quarters email was 6/25/19.

You don't see much to support that Tesla is currently operating in as much of a mad scramble as the last few quarters. US tax credit isn't a factor until Q4 so there might be a push there at the end of the year.

 

[Alphacrux]

Questions about the lawsuit:

1) Isn't it against Musk and the board, not Tesla?
2) Wouldn't the liability, then, only be to Musk and the board, not Tesla?
3) Wouldn't the only impact on Tesla, then, be to make Musk and the board lose money, and by consequence, potentially have to sell shares in Tesla if the liability were high enough?
4) Given that Elison wasn't on the board then, isn't the only defendant who holds a large amount of Tesla Musk?
5) Given that, what does it matter that the rest of the board has to defend themselves?
6) Isn't there directors insurance anyway?

In short, is there any relevance at all to Tesla from the court ruling that the board has to defend itself, apart from a "gotcha"?

(I also seem to recall that the judge dismissed one motion of the plaintiffs too, although I can't seem to find anything about that)

If today’s action was about the lawsuit, hasn’t Tesla shareholders been punished enough by the financial results of the alleged deceit? Why punish stockholders more by suing Tesla instead of musk? Guess I am just agreeing with Karen here. What kind of “relief” would the average stockholder get? It only worsens the situation. Just does not make sense at all.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Tesla bought into the Wall Street world with the May 2013 first round of Convertible Bonds that they sold in order to "pay off the DoE loan 9 years early". And by doing so, and by marking price points for convertibility of that and other converts, caused far more players to push the price up higher. So, if you want a high stock price - you must endure wall street market making. If you want a stock price based on enterprise value, profits and so on, understand that it would be lower than today.

Wrong. TSLA is 22.8% below fair market value right now (calculation based on discounted 5-yr future cash flows), as of today's closing price of $223.21

Here's yesterday's chart from SimplyWall.st (today's chart will be available this evening). As you can plainly see, fair value based on this valuation method is $289.05 right now:

So thanks for dropping bye. Next time, bring some evidence along with your unsupported opinions.

 

[madodel]

With all this talk about solar being moot, why has Elons tweet a few months ago about solar roof production spooling up rapidly and hopefully reaching 1,000 roofs at the end of this (!) year getting so little attention? I know, Elon time and all. But think about it. He was not talking about individual tiles here (I still remember the video of a handful of employees carefully inspecting every tile and moving them from one table to another). He was talking about whole roofs! At, what, $40,000-50,000 each? That is the same as 1,000 Model 3 per week!

Has anyone heard of anyone getting a Tesla Solar Roof of any style other than textured grey? I have a Slate tile roof reserved and haven't heard anything from Tesla except for an offer a couple months ago to get the textured tile installed before the end of the year.

 

[MC3OZ]

Something good that may come out of the lawsuit is more detail information about the merger and explanation of the Tesla solar strategy in the public domain.

Because the Tesla Solar strategy is poorly understood and a bit opaque...

My guess on the key elements/reasons focus around:-

1. Solar Roof
2. Vertical integration and fast charging
3. Solar sales..,.. and the residual value of existing leases

IMO any on of 1.-3. more or less justifies the merger the combination of 1.-3. above, should make it a completely obvious, for all but the terminally stupid...

So rather than focusing on what SC was, the merger is justified on what SC+Tesla can become...

1. Solar roof is now at V3 and roughly equivalent to the Tesla Roadster, if 5 years time V7 of the Solar Roof might be equivalent to a Model S and in 10 years time V10 might be equivalent to a Model 3.
Wright's Law works if you make it work, but only if you work hard at it, with a factory making products and gain experience installing products.
To have a factory making the Solar Roof initially low volume they need to make Solar Panels to help make the project viable.
In 10 years time, they perhaps start a new factory in China that only makes the Solar Roof.
The Solar roof itself will eventually be a high margin product and it fills a useful niche...

2. Another reason to make Solar panels is Tesla itself will increasingly be a consumer of panels made at GF2 at Supercharger V3 stations, and Megachargers (IMO Solar farms). The combination of batteries and Solar makes affordable fast charging very profitable.
As both a large supplier and consumer of electricity Telsa will be able to negotiate good deals with utilities.

3. It has hard to value the existing SC leases but they are not worth $0.
New rentals should be profitable, and add to negotiating leverage with utilities.
As to "why now" I don't have the complete answer, but it is a good time to ramp up solar.
Finally sales of Solar are profitable.
I am slightly surprised Telsa is using some cheaper imported panels on rentals, like the Solar Roof they will try to get Wright's Law working for Solar Panels,,, and like the Roof staying in the game is part of the process.

I suspect the lawsuit will drag on,Telsa nailing the aspects above will help with the court case, and the business generally.

Bottom line Solar is the cheapest way to make electricity by far the easiest to install and operate..

Tesla also needs to get into solar research like the "Jeff Dahn" battery research project, solar is already good enough but there are ways of making it better. 5%-10% improvement on efficiency or cost of the Solar Roof is worth throwing some R&D dollars at.

 

[Artful Dodger]

This is getting good...

Feeling GOOD, Lewis.

 

[kengchang]

Has anyone heard of anyone getting a Tesla Solar Roof of any style other than textured grey? I have a Slate tile roof reserved and haven't heard anything from Tesla except for an offer a couple months ago to get the textured tile installed before the end of the year.

I doubt Tesla will branch out to other design until the production/installation are nailed down

 

[Todd Burch]

I think we'll be back close to even by end of day. Just a hunch.

Nailed it! Haha.

Seriously, although macros carried Tesla further down as the day progressed, today was a complete surprise to me and completely undeserved movement for TSLA. Nothing has changed with Tesla between yesterday and today. This was clearly an overreaction to a nothing-burger cooked medium-well today.

I’m really a super-long though (this is the wrong thread for me), so it doesn’t bother me other than it making me want to fart more aggressively in the general direction of Wall St and the shorts.

Hi shorts! (Waves). I can hold out longer than you! I’m young, virile, and I gots plenty of emergency reserve cash monies. I’ll be here until Tesla is back up where it belongs! Y’-all keep on paying interest to short. It’s cute. I can wait.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Today was all about short sellers trying to heap pressure on Tesla to settle the lawsuit. There's no way this suit would actually be successful in court. Shareholders knew about the potential conflicts of interest and they voted to approve. This is just about short sellers trying to make Tesla and Musk lose money and face in a settlement.

The idea that today had anything to do with Nio is crazy. A competitor failing is a good thing.

So you didn't look at these 2 small EV makers?

Arcimoto
NASDAQ: FUV
3.35 USD −0.17 (4.83%)

Electrameccanica Vehicles Corp
NASDAQ: SOLO
2.30 USD −0.045 (1.91%)
​

I think too much TSLAQ has got you seeing tweet, tweet.

If you stop buying their b.s. they'll stop selling it. This was a bear raid, from the opening bell to the close. Shortzes don't need an excuse, they make them instead.

 

[KSilver2000]

Finally sales of Solar are profitable.
I am slightly surprised Telsa is using some cheaper imported panels on rentals, like the Solar

Why surprised?
Those 310 Q panels are absolutely dirt cheap to acquire. It’s not like they’re selling 380-400W panels with 22+% efficiency from the likes of SunPower and LG. How else would Tesla price the sales and rentals the way they are doing.

 

[Chunky Jr.]

If the Q3 numbers are good, today is just noise. If not, it is a harbinger. I'm hoping for the former.

 

[Todd Burch]

"Ten years from now you will be able to buy a horseless vehicle (EV) for what you would pay today for a wagon and a pair of horses (ICE). The money spent in the keep of the horses (on gas and ICE maintenance) will be saved and the danger to life (with AP) will be much reduced.”

- Thomas Edison (with my own parenthetic additions)

This quote and a lot of other similarities from this 1930 article:

Get A Horse! America’s Skepticism Toward the First Automobiles | The Saturday Evening Post

Rule #1: Don’t EVER quote Edison on a Tesla forum.

(Sorry...he didn’t mean it, Nikola).

 

[MC3OZ]

Why surprised?
Those 310 Q panels are absolutely dirt cheap to acquire. It’s not like they’re selling 380-400W panels with 22+% efficiency from the likes of SunPower and LG. How else would Tesla price the sales and rentals the way they are doing.

I'm only surprised because I expect them to use their GF2 panels where possible.

But they clearly don't have the volume or price for the low end of the market.

 

[Todd Burch]

Didn’t see this posted yet. Unwinding of the wave secured:

⛴ Morten Grove on Twitter

 

[elasalle]

Didn’t see this posted yet. Unwinding of the wave secured:

⛴ Morten Grove on Twitter

Should help with EOQ US inventory too

 

[TradingInvest]

Cannon-Brookes' plan to power Singapore

Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes will invest part of his personal wealth in a $25 billion project to create the world's biggest solar farm, its biggest power storage system, and a 3000-kilometer cable to export energy to Asia.
It seems the energy storage part will be from Tesla.

I have great respect to entrepreneurs like Mike. These people have vision and are willing to do good. Politicians can't solve real issues, great entrepreneurs together can.

 

[KarenRei]

Didn’t see this posted yet. Unwinding of the wave secured:

⛴ Morten Grove on Twitter

I'm dubious that that ship is there for Model 3s. I mean, you never know, but... that's not the sort of ship you normally use to ship cars in bulk across an ocean. And if it's to ship them in containers, where are the containers?

Also, let's not forget, at the end of last quarter there were also some Model 3s stashed at the port... I guess you could say "surplus" from during the quarter. Unless these numbers grow rapidly and quickly fill Pier 80, my assumption is going to be that this is the same thing.

But I could be wrong.

 

[elasalle]

Cannon-Brookes' plan to power Singapore

Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes will invest part of his personal wealth in a $25 billion project to create the world's biggest solar farm, its biggest power storage system, and a 3000-kilometer cable to export energy to Asia.
It seems the energy storage part will be from Tesla.

I have great respect to entrepreneurs like Mike. These people have vision and are willing to do good. Politicians can't solve real issues, great entrepreneurs together can.

Why hasn't he tweeted to EM. EM would be up for challenge again