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

[Reinhard]

Leased S/X have jumped from 10 to 15% of sales. M3 jumped from 5 to 8%.

Initial recognized revenues from leased vehicles are around half of straight sale vehicles. However, gross margin is 49% vs 17% (leased vs sale). $5.17B in sales. $4.25B in of sales. $0.208B in lease sales. $0.102B in cost of lease sales.

My question is....why don't they push leases more?

 

[lascavarian]

It seems to me there are two things happening. We have some new markets opening and some early adopters jumping on board. Early adopters are not endless however. There is a second more circumspect wave after the early adopters.

Tesla products are amazing. They are far ahead of competitors but that comes with a price. There is a speed of innovation that incentivizes waiting.

Tesla has been creative in the past with overcoming certain drags on sales. We may need to see those creative solutions used again in some form. There are so many amazing products just over the horizon that I suspect "Osborning" is a thing that will weigh on that second wave.

We have the Model Y, the pickup, the 3 motor drive train and the million mile battery that have all been pushed out by the "friendly" Youtube channels. How easy is it to sell a product that will be eclipsed in such a dazzling fashion in a matter of months. The second wave will find it easier to wait with every month that passes.

One option would be to begin to bump the price of FSD now that summon (however misunderstood) is turning heads or maybe bundle in some incentives with solar energy somehow or push hard on insurance and designed in safety features.

I may be completely bonkers about this but Q4 will give some indication.

 

[KarenRei]

Good god, this is ****ing exhausting....now I will have to bat down all the naysayers here at work because of the FUD that is about to take place.

You have TSLAQers at work? Ouch.

1Q2020 will probably be rough because it will be the beginning of the GF3 ramp.

They've never really explained exactly why Q1 is supposed to be bad. I'd love more clarity on that. My operating assumption had been tooling costs for MY hitting, but I really don't know.

 

[LJS22]

97k not bad. 100k would have a nice ring to it but these cars are coming from one factory. Logistics is going to be the issue.

looking forward to see how close Q3 will be to a break even. Then we get Q4 which could really be big. Then hopefully we can sum this year up for what it is...a huge step forward in mass productions of EV’s.

 

[SOULPEDL]

Ok all you stock historians...

Has there ever been a company that has had a record quarter both in production and deliveries and their stock immediately tanks? I honestly don't know. Seems counterintuitive to me.

Ah well, that's TSLA for ya!

Dan

Oh, you mean the stock that just swam upstream yesterday?
Ya, that one.

 

[Thekiwi]

The Tesla note says 97k is not final number, it’s is a “slightly conservative” estimate. Could increase by .5% or more.

Given this qualification, the number may go up when Q3 numbers come out in a month to 100k or more.

no way number will exceed 100k. 0.5% of 97,000 is 485 cars.

 

[Fact Checking]

My question is....why don't they push leases more?

It's generally a matter of pricing, but also of convenience, and there's one big change in Q3 that made Tesla leases even more convenient: Tesla Insurance.

Now someone can lease a car from Tesla and insure it in a single effective step, with a single company responsible for everything related to the car. I'm not surprised at all that the percentage of leases went up significantly, despite Tesla not pulling any of the customary lease demand levers. (Such as letting people out of their leases earlier if they take delivery of a new Tesla.)

 

[mongo]

no way number will exceed 100k. 0.5% of 97,000 is 485 cars.

Final numbers could vary by up to 0.5% or more.

Tesla Q3 2019 Vehicle Production & Deliveries | Tesla, Inc.

Edit: Pet peeve of mine is sales that say "save up to X% or more", that's the entire set of non-negative numbers.
+3.1% would do nicely

 

[mickificki]

Once again Elon f*cks us over with his damn stupid emails. Ugh! He stupidly doesn’t understand everything he sends will be scrutinized.

 

[ZachF]

They've never really explained exactly why Q1 is supposed to be bad. I'd love more clarity on that. My operating assumption had been tooling costs for MY hitting, but I really don't know.

Perhaps from overlap in MY and GF3 ramp?

 

[Reinhard]

The Tesla note says 97k is not final number, it’s is a “slightly conservative” estimate. Could increase by .5% or more.

Given this qualification, the number may go up when Q3 numbers come out in a month to 100k or more.

Which begs the question, why does it even matter if it is 97K or 100K if it is almost a round error?

In any case, Tesla delivered around 300 more cars in Q2 than they initially estimated.

 

[Leo9]

Once again Elon f*cks us over with his damn stupid emails. Ugh! He stupidly doesn’t understand everything he sends will be scrutinized.

The stock is currently down 4%. It was up over 6% because of that email.

 

[Thekiwi]

You have TSLAQers at work? Ouch.



They've never really explained exactly why Q1 is supposed to be bad. I'd love more clarity on that. My operating assumption had been tooling costs for MY hitting, but I really don't know.

IiRC that statement was made as Elon was discussing quarter on quarter growth rates.

 

[Fact Checking]

no way number will exceed 100k. 0.5% of 97,000 is 485 cars.

Yeah, and in Q2 the final number was only 150 units higher than the 95,200 they reported originally - so the actual deviation was only 0.15%.

They write "numbers may differ by 0.5% or higher" to make sure they cover all eventualities.

 

[mickificki]

The stock is currently down 4%. It was up over 6% because of that email.

Oh trust me it’ll go down more. How about another email Elon?

I just wish he’d stop saying dumb things like had we kept pace with the cash burn we’d be broke, oh we’re near 100k if we push hard we might get there. Stop throwing stupid numbers out and let your performance do the talking.

there are better ways to motivate your employees!!!!

 

[ZsoZso]

Pointless mail from Elon... Close to 100k... Ofc and then Reporting 97k... No wonder the share price gets bashed

I don't know why but somehow get this deja vu feeling...
Did something similar happened before ?
Like whispering / leaking his most optimistic hopes to let the media run-away and create irrealistic expectations out of them and then come a bit short ?
At which point nobody cares that the result is better than people expected prior to the leaked hopes...

 

[LJS22]

You have TSLAQers at work? Ouch.



They've never really explained exactly why Q1 is supposed to be bad. I'd love more clarity on that. My operating assumption had been tooling costs for MY hitting, but I really don't know.

I live in the middle of oil country and most people love my Tesla haha it’s fascinating to them

I believe Q1 2020 is considered to be a drop off simply because not many are buying cars and Elon guided that when ramp ups are happening to not expect a profit.

 

[Wooloomooloo]

A difference of 3k is quite a lot when you ask me...

It's 3.2%. The after hours price is down (drum roll please) 3.5%

So for anyone saying 3k units short isn't very much, should also be saying a 3% drop in SP isn't very much. Everyone should be happy.

 

[MountainRatMat]

Ok all you stock historians...

Has there ever been a company that has had a record quarter both in production and deliveries and their stock immediately tanks? I honestly don't know. Seems counterintuitive to me.

Ah well, that's TSLA for ya!

Dan

Lots of instances of this. It is largely based on how the performance is based on the expectations. They missed the 99,000 expectation and therefore the stock dropped. If only the stock market was rational...

 

[204EV]

The stock is currently down 4%. It was up over 6% because of that email.

Which was down 6% on no news for no reason the week before.