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

[CyberDutchie]

Wow, there's actually quite a bit of information that leaked there, and we can cross-check it with the other Model Y leaks:

Moez on Twitter

Moez: "Just talked to Tesla employee in Fremont. He confirmed it he first deliveries are happening in 2 weeks."

Q: "Are you sure? If true, that’d be great."

Moez: "Yes he said that there was internal launch event last week and they are working extra hard to make it happen in 2 weeks"

Q: "Initial batch delivered to employees just like Model 3s?"

Moez: "I didn’t ask that specifically. He said everyone is really pumped after the “launch” event."​

Remember that earlier leak and deleted tweets by EVBite? Those tweets talked about a Model Y meeting where Tesla employees weren't allowed to bring phones to. That might have been the "launch event".

What's in two weeks? The Q4 earnings report ...

Neither EVBite nor Moez gave me the impression of rumor machines: they are both Californians who have friends at Tesla.

I really think this is legit, now we've heard about the imminent launch of the Model Y from multiple sources.

The timing is right as well: Q1 is the seasonally weakest quarter, so it's the one that can best tolerate distraction and resource reallocation at Fremont, and which would benefit most from the first Model Y deliveries.

They'd obviously keep it a deep secret in Q3 and Q4 and sandbag the Model Y schedule, to not Osbourne sales.

They should have included a clause in the Tesla Referral program that any discounts earned from referrals towards the Signature Roadster Supercar will nullify if that person publishes any kind of leak from Tesla—whether true or not.

We all know that when leaks like the above get out before earnings it adds to the chances of a “buy the rumor, sell the news” event.

I would much rather have a “total surprise and lift off” kind of earnings event.

 

[lklundin]

Hey, I never said it was a good standard.

Right.
Standards

 

[Christine69420]

printf("%u: %s\n", 42,"

Can we settle this TN “no car supply” discussion once and for all?
TN will have many obstacles, supply of cars is not one of them.

Yes. Thank you. That was the point I was trying to make.
");

 

[Mike Smith]

Lots of posts from accountants lately. Do we have any attorneys here who can advise whether it is worth suing a short who files claims with the NHTSA for the purpose of manipulating the stock?

Federal agency looking into Tesla driver complaints of sudden unintended acceleration

CNBC has learned that an independent investor, Brian Sparks, submitted a petition to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and its Office of Defects Investigations asking them to look into the drivers’ claims.


The petition includes a collection of 127 complaints that were either submitted to the government by Tesla owners, or others filing on their behalf. These complaints, when tallied, allege that unintended acceleration of Tesla electric vehicles may have contributed to or caused 110 crashes and 52 injuries.

Sparks said he conducted primary research and submitted the petition, which CNBC obtained, because he was moved by the personal story of Jennifer Terry. Sparks is currently shorting Tesla stock, but has hedged his bets and been long shares of Tesla in the past.​

The problem is that on the NHTSA's website they call everything an "investigation". What they actually mean is that they are investigating some applicant's petition to determine whether there is a need for a formal investigation. So anyone can submit a petition and it soon shows up as an "investigation", confusing everyone.

For example, it has been repeatedly reported in the media that there is an ongoing investigation into Tesla's batteries. There isn't. They've only received a petition from someone with a concern, so they asked Tesla for information about their batteries so they can determine whether an investigation is needed.

This article from GreenCarReports explains it well:

NHTSA asks Tesla about its battery management, over reports of fire

It appears short sellers are now aware that they can take advantage of this, so NHTSA should expect a flood of bogus petitions until they stop calling their petition evaluation process an "investigation".

 

[avoigt]

GF4 land purchase contract signed by Tesla: #Gf4 #Gigafactory4 on Twitter

EDIT: One of the newspapers updated their article to say that Tesla "approved" it instead of "signed" it. Supposedly the purchase price is still preliminary.. But one step closer it sounds.

In Germany you have to go to a Notary to make it legally binding. In order to be eligible for European incentives Tesla can apply for the GF4 it needs to be a price comparable to local averages. To validate that experts working on an expertise that suppose to be finished end of month.

I have zero doubt that Tesla will sign the contract and it moves ahead but the approval from Tesla is more like a Memo of Understanding than anything else.

 

[KarenRei]

Elon Musk: "I'm Not Your Dancing Puppet"

Joey Roulette on Twitter

 

[gerebgraus]

I guess it was hard to hear the sarcastic inflection in your voice so I just took it at face value. Maybe I missed the "winky" face (along with the four other people who disagreed with your post). Oh, I just checked - there was nothing to indicate you were being sarcastic.

I never use sarcastic inflection in my voice in real life either when I make an insanely stupid statement to illustrate a point.
Unfortunately in real life I also often fail to convey the important point I want by the joke. (Even when they like the joke.) I apologize for that.

So let me make my important points explicitly:

1. Somebody here found a hidden statement on Tesla's website and there was a discussion about the meaning of the statement.
The obvious interpretation was that statement an error.
2. While the statement was an error, none of the people went for that explanation. We are Tesla fans, but I prefer if we do not turn into a cult. To explain away Tesla and Musk blunders as brilliant does not help Tesla and it certainly does not help our investments in Tesla. E.g. Tesla does not play safe. E.g. The push towards alien dreadnought at setting up the Model 3 was too ambitious, that was a mistake, and Tesla paid for it. A legacy automaker would never have introduced so much innovation at the same time. Had they called it "a perfect production" they would have gone out of business. Instead, they called it production hell, and that gave them a chance to fix it partially by setting aside innovations that did not work yet. And since then they are improving the production efficiency very fast likely managing some tech. innovations that was not mature enough to work, etc. We are likely at the inflection point when Tesla's production efficiency and quality is in the process of overtaking the legacy makers, and since they dare to make mistakes their rate of improvement is much faster than that of the legacy makers. (I have had shares for a long time. Perceiving this inflection point, or as Reflexfunds calls it "escape velocity" that made me become a more active investor. )
Incidentally, after the success of getting out of production hell, the exhausted Musk made several bad and obvious mistakes "pedo guy" and "$420" Again Musk is a superman, but he is a human, but even he makes mistakes after a couple of month of sleep deprivation. When people argue that these were absolutely perfect calls, they are members of the cult and not fans.
On a more positive note: the quality of bandwidth of this forum is much much higher than any forum I have ever participated in. I am very grateful. I have learned a lot, and it also helped me make some money. I just hope to avoid the small mistakes some commenters make. I want everybody be perfect just like me. (Hint: the last sentence was not serious.)

 

[EVNow]

The purpose of the hedges is to reduce dilution to shareholders.

Right, so if they unwind it now, they have to explain why they don't care about dilution now, but did when they issued the bonds.

This will be particularly true once the share price is consistently above $607: the derivatives position will reach its maximum possible value and there will be no economic reason to not convert it to cash immediately. A deep in the money bull spread becomes a cash equivalent.

If today the price were to be $610, the bull spread would be worth $145 (40% IV, 355-209). If today the price is $1000, the spread would still be worth only $205. But, if the price were to be $610 minutes before expiry, it would be worth $298 (607-309). If they rolled the $309 call to $409 call, they will make $51 today. All this is because of significant time values left in the calls and thus delta is nowhere close to 1.

So, the question is, would it be better for Tesla to bank $145 now (if SP was 610) or get double the money in 4 years (if SP above 607).

Either way, its not clear they can actually recognize this as P&L. It makes very little sense, IMO, to recognize this as P&L instead of capital. Eventually they have to start paying income tax afterall - and companies bend over backward to try not pay tax. Ofcourse, gaap profit and profit for tax calculations are not the same - so I don't know how this would play out. Are there any tax implications of short term options profit, for eg ?

 

[⚡️ELECTROMAN⚡️]

If it wasn't possible you wouldn't be asked to do it.

Can I speak to your manager? /s

 

[PeterJA]

If I can paraphrase, it was "if you mistreat the Robotaxi, you may get kicked out of using the network. Therefore people won't do it."

I don't find that at all realistic...

If folks put as much effort into imagining solutions as they put into listing problems, then robotaxis might seem more realistic. For example...

Will Robotaxis come with a vacuum so we can clean it out if it drops us somewhere other than home?

Why not? Cybertruck will have an outlet to plug it in.

We intentionally got [a car] with seats that are easy to clean, because kids.

Why couldn't some robotaxis do the same? If you have young kids, tap the appropriate button on your phone app when you call for a ride.

We also keep an empty plastic cup or bin in the car in case we see a kid vomit coming in time, and a cleanup bag with wipes and cleaning spray and paper towels and plastic bags and a minimal clean kid outfit... Not going to be carrying that around for every Robotaxi ride.

Come on. I see parents carrying around big diaper bags all the time.
https://www.amazon.com/Diaper-Bags-Diapering/b?ie=UTF8&node=166767011

Moreover, nobody is claiming Tesla Network will completely replace private car ownership. But with some imagination put into the design, it will be an attractive option for millions of people. I agree that nobody knows exactly how many people or how long adoption will take. But the potential market is so colossal that even a small part of it will yield enormous profits.

 

[pyromatter]

 

[CanadaEV]

The problem is that on the NHTSA's website they call everything an "investigation". What they actually mean is that they are investigating some applicant's petition to determine whether there is a need for a formal investigation. So anyone can submit a petition and it soon shows up as an "investigation", confusing everyone.

For example, it has been repeatedly reported in the media that there is an ongoing investigation into Tesla's batteries. There isn't. They've only received a petition from someone with a concern, so they asked Tesla for information about their batteries so they can determine whether an investigation is needed.

This article from GreenCarReports explains it well:

NHTSA asks Tesla about its battery management, over reports of fire

It appears short sellers are now aware that they can take advantage of this, so NHTSA should expect a flood of bogus petitions until they stop calling their petition evaluation process an "investigation".

It doesn't seem that these 'Agencies' have a lot to do, other than investigate. The SEC is the same. In theory, they are 'agencies' in the sense of 'agents representing the public's interests'
In reality, they are bureaucratic organizations subject to lobbyists' interests, and probably somehow beneficiaries of lobbyists' largess.

 

[Mike Ambler]

The world is expected to need nearly $50T in new energy investment by 2035. The notion that storage isn't going to be a major part of this is frankly nonsense.

This!

I read somewhere (and am convinced of it myself) the grid will eventually be represented as a big battery, with a SOC target (say 70%). The price paid to generators and cost to consumers will track up and down as we move away from this SOC target...taking into account day/night SOC swing due to solar production, obviously.

 

[Ipe]

I quote this completely because no matter how much evidence there is, no matter how quickly the evidence accelerates in quantity and quality, no matter! most peopel cannot begin to understand how profound the change has already been.

Just imagine that there are still Australian national politicians who refuse to believe what Hornsdale has been doing, much less the more recent distributed phases. Frankly I am astounded! Then US politicians insisting wind power causes cancer and high pollution, 'clean coal' is so much better. Denial is so powerful that otherwise intelligent people do not realize that Tesla Energy is soon to be more consequential than is the automotive business. It does not compute if people willfully refuse to see the evidence.

We should begin to make the TE contribution estimates and forecasts just as soon as we have 2019 results.

I totally understand that we're facing an exponential growth in renewable energy and energy storage in the next decade.

But I am in the dark about the reasons why Tesla should be in a special position to take advantage of this. In my reasoning PV-modules are dirt-cheap nowadays and will be getting cheaper still. And I think battery-storage is relatively low tech especially when there are no special demands (size, weight, safety) like when they are used in cars.

Would somebody care to enlighten me? Is it the battery-supply? What am I missing?

 

[Creekstalker]

I see only three possible conclusions we can draw from that. Either:

1) you think you have better "numbers" or market data than Musk himself, or;
2) you think you are more visionary than Musk himself (can more accurately draw valid conclusions from the data), or;
3) or you think Musk a lying hypester/fraudster.

Yes, these are the only three possible conclusions. Ban FrankSG ASAP. Obvious troll.

/s/

 

[RobStark]

I am with you there - my TMX will not be a robotaxi. But then I also know people who rent their cars on car share networks like Nabobil.no - Private car rental in your neighbourhood including Tesla owners - so some people are OK with this.

More important are people who really can't afford a car suddenly realizing they can afford a Tesla if they share it as a robotaxi. And their friends will hear about their genious way of financing a really nice new car.

And then I would change my mind about my TMX being on the robotaxi network if I could use the profits to buy a Roadster that only I would drive.

Massive profits for Tesla, Massive profits for Tesla retail owners( to the tune of a Tesla Roadster) and dirt cheap prices for consumers of TaaS that drives massive populations to ditch their own private car ALL at the same time is pure Fantasyland.

 

[Steve m]

shipping cars suddenly seams easy

 

[EVNow]

I totally understand that we're facing an exponential growth in renewable energy and energy storage in the next decade.

But I am in the dark about the reasons why Tesla should be in a special position to take advantage of this. In my reasoning PV-modules are dirt-cheap nowadays and will be getting cheaper still. And I think battery-storage is relatively low tech especially when there are no special demands (size, weight, safety) like when they are used in cars.

Would somebody care to enlighten me? Is it the battery-supply? What am I missing?

Cost.

Not only of the battery - but also sales. Tesla is able to get a lot of orders with almost no marketing/sales cost. This "acquisition cost" being very low is what helps Tesla.

 

[Sancho]

Batteries as low tech? Driving down the cost of batteries through innovations in materials science, engineering and other tech disciplines is THE non-medical technical challenge of the 21st Century. The winners will be richly rewarded.

 

[erthquake]

I totally understand that we're facing an exponential growth in renewable energy and energy storage in the next decade.

But I am in the dark about the reasons why Tesla should be in a special position to take advantage of this. In my reasoning PV-modules are dirt-cheap nowadays and will be getting cheaper still. And I think battery-storage is relatively low tech especially when there are no special demands (size, weight, safety) like when they are used in cars.

Would somebody care to enlighten me? Is it the battery-supply? What am I missing?

It’s Tesla’s software that makes them superior. Their ability to smooth out spikes and instantly keep the grid frequency constant is what makes them special. And I suspect Battery day will reveal Tesla’s imminent ability to make those batteries far more cheaply than anyone else.