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

[Green Pete]

And another series of interesting tweets related to China:

View attachment 496945 View attachment 496946 View attachment 496947

Two points to note:
1. In china red is up in the stock market for anyone having confusion.
2. The chinese stock market is notorious for wild swings

 

[RobStark]

Nissan's US website shows 2019 but not 2020 models for the Sentra, Titan, Frontier and Leaf. I don't think they're discontinued. They just haven't introduced the 2020 models yet.

Nissan 2019 Cars Sales Worst in America, With Hyundai Kia Most Successful

Nissan did the worst of all OEMs in the US this year.

Probably lots of 2019 model year cars left in stock.

 

[Cherry Wine]

I'm encouraged by the growth in the r/teslamotors subreddit. It took ~1.5 years to go from 200K to 400K subscribers (Jan '18 to July '19). It only took six months to add another 200K subscribers from there to tally 600K+ subscribers (July '19 to Jan '20).

/r/teslamotors metrics (Tesla, Inc - The Original Tesla Motors Reddit Forum)

 

[EVNow]

Nissan 2019 Cars Sales Worst in America, With Hyundai Kia Most Successful

Nissan did the worst of all OEMs in the US this year.

Probably lots of 2019 model year cars left in stock.

Ousting Ghosh wasn’t a brilliant move.

 

[printf42]

And another series of interesting tweets related to China:

View attachment 496945 View attachment 496946 View attachment 496947

About stock movements for Tesla suppliers, as mentioned in the tweet, 10% is the intraday limite for Chinese stock market, after it hit 10% it would be halted. There could be many more 10% days coming for some of them.

The MIC Model 3 price was released last Friday and the market had the whole weekend to digest. There were lots of analysts call happened around Model 3 components suppliers, some rumored to have thousands of attendees.

They were lifting targets for all kinds of Model 3 components suppliers and betting this to be another iPhone moment that make many miracles for suppliers.

As I said before, I believe GF3 is the first China GF, there will be more. Tesla would get even better deals and local government support for those.

 

[Singer3000]

contrary to the way the media portrays him as a "loose cannon" he is actually very calculating with his words ($420 tweet excepted, perhaps). That was done for a specific reason that we may never know.

I’ve always assumed the $420 tweet was a calculated rear guard action against what he saw as the start of a hostile takeover attempt by the Saudis. It rings more true to me than the official story that Elon had long wanted to take Tesla private and he was panicked into action during market hours by the spiking price. Then again Elon’s brain is built very different to mine.

I really hope he does his own book day some day. Netflix are gonna get the biopic all wrong otherwise.

 

[SpaceCash]

I’ve always assumed the $420 tweet was a calculated rear guard action against what he saw as the start of a hostile takeover attempt by the Saudis. It rings more true to me than the official story that Elon had long wanted to take Tesla private and he was panicked into action during market hours by the spiking price. Then again Elon’s brain is built very different to mine.

I really hope he does his own book day some day. Netflix are gonna get the biopic all wrong otherwise.

I love this because it answers a lot of questions I had about Musk's (I thought) naivety re Saudis. I been there and seen those guys. Turns out he knew what he was doing

 

[RobStark]

In the manufacturers ranking, Tesla won the 2019 title, with 21% share (up 2%), its first since 2014, while BMW (18%, up 1%) ended the year in Second place, thus ending a three year winning streak. Better luck in 2020? Volvo was 3rd, with 13% share, with Audi ending in a distant 4th place, with 7% share.

EV Sales: Belgium December 2019

Did Etron land in 3rd because it is assembled in Belgium?

I Pace ends up one spot above Model X.

 

[mmd]

I'm encouraged by the growth in the r/teslamotors subreddit. It took ~1.5 years to go from 200K to 400K subscribers (Jan '18 to July '19). It only took six months to add another 200K subscribers from there to tally 600K+ subscribers (July '19 to Jan '20).

/r/teslamotors metrics (Tesla, Inc - The Original Tesla Motors Reddit Forum)

Have we reached the 'new paradigm' phase?

 

[KarenRei]

I recall Elon has already Tweeted that the Superchargers in the Nurburgring photo are not temporary - they are permanent. The fact that they come on pallets and can be dropped anywhere is likely the result of Tesla always striving for maximum efficiency. After all, the Supercharger Network buildout is only <10% complete. Perhaps only 1% complete. There is a lot of growth left in this story.

That's not the point. The point is that what they installed comes that way, with two pedestals fed by one cabinet. The fact that there's two pedestals is not indicative of anything. It'd be more work for them to make it have only one pedestal than to have two. I was countering the argument that the fact that there's two pedestals means that the car is supposed to for some reason have two separate charge ports that can be used simultaneously (which would be ridiculous design regardless)

 

[KarenRei]

Have we reached the 'new paradigm' phase?
View attachment 496959

You think Tesla deserves to peak at a market cap of $80B, then fall down to a small fraction of that value for the longer term? Really?

Tesla is building a ~$1-2T business, but is discounted 20fold due to its need to prove itself against extensive doubt over the coming years.

 

[Fact Checking]

I’ve always assumed the $420 tweet was a calculated rear guard action against what he saw as the start of a hostile takeover attempt by the Saudis. It rings more true to me than the official story that Elon had long wanted to take Tesla private and he was panicked into action during market hours by the spiking price. Then again Elon’s brain is built very different to mine.

That was my and @neroden's take as well - and it clearly explained the rush to control the narrative: according to later SEC documents Elon tweeted the $420 tweet from his private jet, with minimal input from other board members.

Back then Elon probably already suspected that Q3/Q4'2018 is going to be fantastic, because they knew their cost base and had a lot of pent-up demand. This was the report that I believe Elon read and which might have increased urgency and triggered the $420 tweet:

Tesla shares rise on report Saudi Arabia sovereign wealth fund has $2 billion stake​

And prior August 7 we did notice weird TSLA buying pressure here on TMC, which started after the July 4th bear attack that drove the price below $300:

Note that on the $420 tweet day the price was already at around $350, $365 intraday, fueled by Q2 earnings that already showed a positive inherent cash flow (modulo working capital fluctuation) and the Saudi speculation, which was later on confirmed to be a 4% stake in Tesla.

Also note that "$420" might have been a joke in part, but it was also exactly a +20% buy-out premium over the ~$350 price levels on August 7, so a fair offer. (350*1.2 = 420)

Note how the next 2 weeks after the $420 tweet were spent (successfully) organizing a $20b buy-out consortium that emphatically did not include the Saudi PIF. The Saudis also later on hedged (shorted) their stake and invested in another EV maker, so the relationship clearly cooled down.

Bears immediately hung on to "The $420 tweet was a lie, it's impossible to take Tesla private!" false narrative and started shorting big time, helped by institutionals and eventually the SEC itself.

In hindsight, had the Saudi PIF taken over Tesla and taken it private, we'd possibly not have seen the $400+ levels of today.

So SEC confrontation aside, Elon did Tesla investors a big favor by making Tesla "uninvestable" for a year or so, this avoided the Saudi takeover (the bone-saw memes would never stop ...), and it also kept VW-Porsche from taking over Tesla at the $180 price levels earlier this year, which I'm sure they were looking at...

The German "Manager Magazin" published a well sourced piece that also quoted members of the Porsche family bemoaning Tesla's high share price ... when it was below $200:

Tesla: Daimler, BMW und Volkswagen machen Jagd auf Elon Musk

"Hunting down Tesla"

"Electro-visionary Elon Musk fails due to the downsides of the auto business. Important investors lose confidence, the German premium providers are attacking. Tesla is ready for a takeover."

...


"The Tesla dream still glows in Diess, according to top VW managers familiar with his thinking. He believes that Volkswagen can benefit from Tesla's battery and, above all, software expertise. "He would get in immediately if he could," says one of his top people. The money is there too, for the beginning a participation is enough. It was more difficult with the approval of the major shareholders, the families Porsche and Piëch."​

Right after they leaked this to Manager Magazin, Porsche family members "denied" the report:

Volkswagen not interested in buying Tesla stake​

I think they wanted to drive the price down a bit more by creating the impression that despite Diess being the super best friend ever of Elon, they are still not interested in bailing out Tesla - and then gobble up Tesla for the EV tech.

Then early September, they were on again:

Tesla: Wolfgang Porsche schließt Beteiligung nicht aus - manager magazin

"Volkswagen co-owner Wolfgang Porsche apparently does not rule out a stake in the US electric car maker Tesla."​

I think they were still under the impression that the Taycan would pressure Tesla, and that Tesla has cash flow troubles and needs a bailout.

Lucky for us, VW-Porsche miscalculated, Q2 already drove the share price to $250 levels, and Q3 financials started the rally to $420 ... and Elon never had any interest in selling Tesla's assets to VW.

I don't think VW-Porsche has the money to take over Tesla at these price levels - and Elon would not agree to a one-sided partnership that gives Tesla's software crown jewels to Volkswagen - which I think VW had in mind in the summer.

So yeah, IMO Tesla investors dodged two takeover/dilution bullets in the span of a single year ...

The possibility of takeovers needs to be understood too when buying options: in a takeover much of the time value of an option can go to zero, which wipes out deep out of the money option holders.

 

[Fact Checking]

Note that there's an update to the GF3 layout:

BTW., I found a photo of another Tesla employee who was photographed with that GF3 layout image T-shirt two days ago, this time in the U.S.:

Does anyone recognize him by any chance?

Spoiler: Here's a bigger photo with the Tesla employee's face included as well.

So I'd say the GF3 layout/plan is probably legit, genuine and the latest version:

 

[dha]

You think Tesla deserves to peak at a market cap of $80B, then fall down to a small fraction of that value for the longer term? Really?

Tesla is building a ~$1-2T business, but is discounted 20fold due to its need to prove itself against extensive doubt over the coming years.

Yeah it's nonsense fear mongering. And we will soon have concrete sustained earnings that substantiate current valuations. Consensus EPS for TSLA in 2020 is $5.57. I personally think they will achieve $8-$10 but just going with $5.57...

That gives them a PE of 80 based on current share price which is not unreasonable given 50% YOY revenue growth.

By comparison, NFLX is currently trading at PE of 104 growing 30% YOY. CMG trades at a PE of 80 growing 16% YOY.

 

[Mars ☰mperor]

特拉风T☰SLA mania on Twitter

Tomorrow’s MIC Model 3 delivery event will also mark the official start of Model Y project at Giga Shanghai!​

Giga Shanghai has gone PLAID!
​

 

[KarenRei]

BTW., I found a photo of another Tesla employee who was photographed with that GF3 layout image T-shirt two days ago, this time in the U.S.:

View attachment 496969​

Does anyone recognize him by any chance?

Spoiler: Here's a bigger photo with the employee's face included as well.

So I'd say this GF3 layout is probably legit, genuine and the latest version.

BTW, I have to say, I'm really glad to see Elon "hanging out" with fans - not for their sake, but for Elon's. Almost every human - and depsite appearances, Elon is one - needs socialization. And IMHO people who are supportive of his mission are good people for him to have in his life (in contrast to, say, Twitter trolls or duplicitous journalists who only are interested in a clickbait "scoop" or people who only care about his money/fame)

 

[Fact Checking]

BTW, I have to say, I'm really glad to see Elon "hanging out" with fans - not for their sake, but for Elon's. Almost every human - and depsite appearances, Elon is one - needs socialization. And IMHO people who are supportive of his mission are good people for him to have in his life (in contrast to, say, Twitter trolls or duplicitous journalists who only are interested in a clickbait "scoop")

Yep, and the 3+ hours podcast with Third Row Tesla should be epic! (The photo includes the Third Row Tesla crew.)

 

[NicoV]

In the manufacturers ranking, Tesla won the 2019 title, with 21% share (up 2%), its first since 2014, while BMW (18%, up 1%) ended the year in Second place, thus ending a three year winning streak. Better luck in 2020? Volvo was 3rd, with 13% share, with Audi ending in a distant 4th place, with 7% share.

EV Sales: Belgium December 2019

Did Etron land in 3rd because it is assembled in Belgium?

I Pace ends up one spot above Model X.

991 e-trons this year in Belgium is far from their target of 2500, see my post Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the 2019-2020 Investors' Roundtable
It is probably high for a country like Belgium because I expect a lot of VW management (of the Belgian E-tron factory, and also local dealers) to be morally obliged to buy one.

 

[KarenRei]

Premarket 439.00 -4.01 (-0.91%), roughly matching macros.

 

[SteveG3]

About stock movements for Tesla suppliers, as mentioned in the tweet, 10% is the intraday limite for Chinese stock market, after it hit 10% it would be halted. There could be many more 10% days coming for some of them.

The MIC Model 3 price was released last Friday and the market had the whole weekend to digest. There were lots of analysts call happened around Model 3 components suppliers, some rumored to have thousands of attendees.

They were lifting targets for all kinds of Model 3 components suppliers and betting this to be another iPhone moment that make many miracles for suppliers.

As I said before, I believe GF3 is the first China GF, there will be more. Tesla would get even better deals and local government support for those.

more on the shares of some Chinese Tesla suppliers pushing up against daily 10% gain limit, or close to it

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?