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

[MarcusMaximus]

The 649 billion does include health and global warming externalities. That's why it's 649 billion instead of 4.6 or 27.4 billion.

Pump taxes alone generate close to 100b/year in the US, so it's idiotic to talk of financial subsidies for oil. Percentage depletion and whatever are not even rounding errors compared to all the taxes (pump, severance, income, etc.). The environmental issue is the only issue. Unfortunately there is no accepted dollar figure for externalities. And you'll never win an argument by quoting the IMF's ~$100/ton because your opponent will simply quote a much lower price (or $0) from a different source. Endless arguing, zero convincing.

Elon has it right. Transition requires green solutions that are better in some ways, more or less equal in the rest for roughly the same price. Going on about "fossil subsidies" does more harm than good.

In terms of legal solutions, if you don’t want a tax, a very good one would be banning dumping CO/CO2 on public roads. If you want a gas car, that’s fine, but you need to have a way to capture that into a liquid/solid form that you can, personally, handle the disposal of, whether such a solution costs $1 or $100,000.

I suppose compressing the exhaust into a tank which you, again, are in charge of disposal of(without releasing into the air) would work too.

 

[SteveG3]

Created a new thread to move this discussion out of this one:

EV and Solar Related Policy Proposals Among US Presidential Candidates (and Fossil Fuel connections)

 

[HG Wells]

How much have the middle east wars cost ? Would we be having these wars if they only exported camels ?

One hump or two ?
If its two, a police action might be worth it.

 

[Artful Dodger]

How much have the middle east wars cost ?

Yeah, and how much oil/jet fuel/youth does the US Sixth Fleet burn every day while patrolling the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Med? How is that not an 'oil subsidy'?

 

[Off Shore]

Me three.

And it is going to self drive itself behind my Tesla RV. Then when we need to run into town for some beer...off in the roadster we go!

This is what I have in mind:

 

[SoGA Fan Club]

While I agree with all of you about the cost of the wars in the middle east, the thing you have to remember is that if we were not there, Russia would have been. And while I SO want us to totally transition off fossil fuels, having to pay $10-$15 a gallon for Russia's gas 20 years ago would have destroyed our economy.

I'm just thankful that Bush had enough sense to see a real solution to the problem - not more wars. Sad thing is, most conservatives BLAME Obama for electrics cars instead of GIVING Bush credit. That's what happens though when you get your news (well, information) from one source - and they could care less about the truth (if they even know it).

 

[Chunky Jr.]

Einhorn could visit the factory and still claim it's all a fraud because he didn't see a $5B pile of cash anywhere.

 

[TradingInvest]

In case Elon is reading this, please tell Einhorn that shareholders appose the idea to give a short special treatment. Real investors should have priority to meet with Elon and tour the factories. After all investors had their turns, than shorts can have a chance (maybe in 2045). Einhorn doesn't deserve it.

 

[RobStark]

But i'm sure there were much more productive ways the state could have spent the money initially rather than awarding an unproven startup (Silveo) a huge factory.

New York State bureaucrats had a budget to subsidize "green" manufacturing and no where to spend it.

Gov Cuomo's vote totals in Greater Buffalo were also looking weak in his first run in 2010 and wanted to up those numbers in 2014. Deal with Silveo was signed in 2013.

 

[wipster]

Ha! Tesla made Family Feud tonight in an answer to "Something rich people complain about that makes you want to slap them"

Don't really know how to take that...

 

[SO16]

In case Elon is reading this, please tell Einhorn that shareholders appose the idea to give a short special treatment. Real investors should have priority to meet with Elon and tour the factories. After all investors had their turns, than shorts can have a chance (maybe in 2045). Einhorn doesn't deserve it.

Especially a short that has attacked to an unhealthy level. Why in the world should Elon “reward” this kind of behavior? It only encourages the next crazy person to say even more outlandish things in order to get noticed. STOP giving these people the spotlight.

 

[Tim S]

Data point regarding demand and US east coast deliveries... a poster on our local fb group says she ordered a Model 3 on 10/17 and is not expecting delivery until December at Mt. Kisco NY.

 

[JRP3]

I think the writedown has nothing to do with the operations or underlying value of the factory, it is purely a change of accounting treatment due to a new opinion on the nature of the rental contract (Tesla has to pay just $1 rent per year). The new auditors are just saying to the state - while you do own the factory, you cannot claim its market value on your balance sheet because you have given away most of this value in the form of close to zero rent. It's amazing they were ever able to account for it any differently to be honest.

Exactly, most people seem to just be reading the headline and not understanding what the article actually says. Just as intended of course.

 

[JRP3]

To be fair, TT007 called the recent big jump accurately, before the jump happened.

Just like the 1,000 other jumps he "predicted" which never happened. Usually the stock soon dropped. Some people actually thought he knew something, and lost money. I warned people then, and I'll keep doing so. He knows nothing and it's dangerous to pretend otherwise. Don't perpetuate the myth.

 

[ggr]

Data point regarding demand and US east coast deliveries... a poster on our local fb group says she ordered a Model 3 on 10/17 and is not expecting delivery until December at Mt. Kisco NY.

West coast too. A co-worker of mine ordered around the same time and is hoping to get delivery before Christmas. I think everything is going to NL at the moment.

 

[Tim S]

Side note to how oblivious shorts are... no cars are made in Buffalo. Why would he want to tour that factory because they are only valuing Tesla as a car company with no consideration for solar and energy. You would think he would want to tour Fremont.

He lives in NYC. He can't afford a plane ticket to California. He can drive to Buffalo.

 

[BBone]

A few days for clearance of customer's payments (also remembering deliveries are heavily weighted to the final weeks of the Q). Slight delay receiving funds from leased vehicles. Likely a longer delay for clearance of funds from selling trade in cars to third party retailers. Longest delay for utility scale battery projects. Likely a combination of reasons, but hardly an interesting question. If he thinks that's the sort of thing that matters towards long term value (or odds of success) of a rapidly expanding tech driven company, he's completely missing the point.

I think Einhorn clearly fits into the category of traditional stable company finance experience with absolutely zero expertise of how to analyse and value growth companies. Somehow he got himself way out of his comfort zone with his short tech investments and its killing his fund.

I discussed this misapplication of valuation techniques and experience previously:

Agree with you absolutely @ReflexFunds . I'm a former investment banker as well and I worked in the specialty world of tech investment banking. All the models are at best guesses with only some supportability and very high in my experience variability and fudgability. I won't tell you the bank I was with but I can say that anyone who relies too much on valuation models for growth companies or new technology companies is merely making an educated guess at best. I'm not saying there's a better way but you do need to pick the right model or better yet set of models as you've mentioned and adjust them to suit the uniqueness of the situation. And given that so many models are based on various assumptions going out years or decades, there is very high variability even if everyone agreed on the valuation methods.

 

[hacer]

Generally speaking, not having to pay a tax that other businesses are expected to pay is considered a subsidy.

Einhorn can be philosophically opposed to that if he wants but there is nothing nefarious about it. He's just using it to try to give people a "dirty" feeling when they hear "Tesla".

That's especially funny since Unicorn personally receives huge tax subsidies Taxation of private equity and hedge funds - Wikipedia.

 

[StealthP3D]

VW starts pre-production at all-electric vehicle factory in China - Electrek

'While pre-production is starting now, the actual official start of production is not expected until October 2020.'

Wait, what? We were told during the Model 3 ramp that the "real car makers" could just flip the switch and be at full production. No problem for the pros. Now we learn that VW is going to spend a year in pre-production? Something Tesla is spending about two months on at GF3? I don't understand. Has the media somehow misled us? There must be some mistake - I'm sure VW will be pumping out cars full throttle by the end of the year..

It makes perfect sense. VW is simply being a good sport about it. They have such an advantage when it comes to cranking out quality cars at volume they want to give Tesla a fair head-start. It wouldn't be sporting of them to bankrupt Tesla so quickly.

 

[hacer]

Exactly, most people seem to just be reading the headline and not understanding what the article actually says. Just as intended of course.

Even when you read the article it goes to great lengths to make it look like a boondoggle for Tesla's benefit. One thing they totally avoid is that most of the money spent rehabilitating the land and building the factory went directly into the local economy, rather than being handed to Silevo (or Tesla) as the article would have you believe.