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

[scaesare]

That's definitely interesting to know, but my actual puzzlement had to do not with the transmission of the booster landing, but that of the satellite deployment. For some reason that video link also seems to cut off on every occasion for the Starlink satellite deployments (as far as I can remember). Is your argument that the same phenomenon occurs there (directional feed gets perturbed)?

 

[davepsilon]

Repeat from last quarter. This means that production for the overseas markets has finished this quarter. Many cars in these productions have not been spoken for. So if anybody overseas orders a car with specs available among these unspoken inventory cars will get delivery. But there is no guarantee that such inventory cars exist. Obviously there is no demand issue right now, but claims that all cars are sold out are exaggerated.

Indeed and we don’t know if there has been any impact to Fremont production from Model Y ramp which was another unknown for this quarter. Selling out before expectation might even force one to weight this possibility with higher likelihood...

 

[Todd Burch]

The wave logistics you mention is only about the supply, the "sold out until May" change on the website indicates that the available supply in the current quarter's wave has all been sold to customers in the countries with the new May delivery date, so in a sense yes the cars are suddenly "sold out" as there are none left to buy from this quarters wave. Australia & New Zealand this isn't the case, with cars still available to purchase this quarter.

The only "supply" Tesla has is inventory--what is in showrooms, rejects, trade-ins, etc. Everything else is of course made-to-order. Yes they build common configs and send them, and yes they try to estimate demand, but when the date switches it doesn't mean they've necessarily sold tons to Europe. It just means they've sold how many they expected to sell and shipped. If they expected and shipped few, they would still have to switch the date over to next quarter.

But that's why I said a function of inventory (what they've got available to sell that hasn't been built-to-order for a specific person and claimed already) and logistics.

 

[InDaClub]

I was wondering, will this fit on a coffee mug?

 

[riverFox]

I was wondering, will this fit on a coffee mug?

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It'll fit on the BFCM. Manufactured by SpaceX of course.

 

[StealthP3D]

The wave logistics you mention is only about the supply, the "sold out until May" change on the website indicates that the available supply in the current quarter's wave has all been sold to customers in the countries with the new May delivery date, so in a sense yes the cars are suddenly "sold out" as there are none left to buy from this quarters wave. Australia & New Zealand this isn't the case, with cars still available to purchase this quarter.

Exactly! If they had enough cars to supply everyone who wanted one, no one would have to wait 2-3 months! That is far from ideal in terms of maximizing sales if they were not production constrained.

 

[SpaceCash]

I just got a response from Tesla re the solar roofing job, but this is sort of a bust; no Nevada open house... To ride to Cali tonight or not to ride to Cali tonight...

 

[Singer3000]

I just got a response from Tesla re the solar roofing job, but this is sort of a bust; no Nevada open house... To ride to Cali tonight or not to ride to Cali tonight...

View attachment 513321

Obviously it's a yes. Even if you don't take the job you might meet some interesting people and get a titbit or two about solar roof.

 

[ammulder]

I think if purchasers didn't buy FSD originally, most of the upgraders will wait until it's more mature and some will wait until it's good enough to use without anyone in the driver's seat.

I didn’t buy FSD because there wasn’t enough value there. I wouldn’t use auto park or summon, so $6-7k to have it change lanes for me seemed pretty stiff. Once city streets are there, though... then I think it’s a different ball game.

For sure I’m not waiting until no driver is needed... hard to put a date on that but ‘never’ isn’t out of the question.

 

[FrankSG]

Tesla does not generally try to time cars selling out in Europe around the time they dispatch their last ship (let alone before then); they try to estimate how many orders they'll be getting after they dispatch their ships, because all of those orders can be filled in the current quarter if you send enough vehicles to the right markets.

The only reason to not do this is if you simply do not have enough production capacity to meet demand.

Exhibit A...

This is a great point.

It's not like I was worried about demand at all (no price cuts, no incentives, no apparent effort to sell more cars at all), but I wasn't fully convinced about the May delivery estimate being a reliable data point, until I read this.

 

[Fact Checking]

unless you took a delivery of LR+ X and can show us the battery label to still be 100kWh, we don't yet know if it was a miss.

How about the gross weight of a Model X built a month ago:

Karen, you were wondering this morning about other data points on US deliveries.

Our family ordered another Tesla for pickup in Miami in order to ship to the Caribbean. Model X, pretty standard specs, white exterior, white interior; Ordered January 18th, it was available for pickup on February 12th. Roughly four weeks.

p.s. Both cats and dogs co-exist in harmony around here

GVWR of 6788 lb, and a +10 kWh change with a new battery pack would IMHO have resulted in a substantial increase in the weight of the vehicle.

(I think we can exclude a 5-10% jump in chemistry, I suspect @KarenRei would agree that improvements in chemistry are rarely that dramatic.)

@Cherry Wine has a newly built Model X as well, maybe he could take a picture of the door sticker too (without the VIN)?

Btw., is the battery sticker easy to access for @Prime_Number or @Cherry Wine to take a photo of?

My (potential) criticism is that not all information is equal, not all information is harmless, not all information wants to be free, and that battery pack size speculation is one of the strongest Osborning forces - and it's unconditionally harmful especially if the information turns out to be inaccurate. Since your tweets are widely disseminated and reported in the Tesla blogosphere and social media, I'm sure you are aware of the responsibility, especially close to the end of the quarter.

 

[generalenthu]

I am thinking about writing covered calls to fund diversifying my portfolio. I'd rather monetize some upside potential than sell shares.

This is sort of my strategy when I want to lighten up eventually, which is may be a couple of doublings from here.

Sell covered calls out of the money. When they expire worthless pocket the cash and pay them taxes. Don't let your stock get called though if they are in the money. Buy them back, take the loss. Now sell enough stock at the price to have matched tax liability to utilize the short term losses.

Almost a win win situation in my book. You either get cash or diversify. Can rinse and repeat this a few times. As each time you'll be selling only a bit of stock and with a greater probability you'll be just earning option premium.

 

[Opus BC fan]

So what is the SP that we will see engineered by the MMs tomorrow?

 

[LN1_Casey]

So what is the SP that we will see engineered by the MMs tomorrow?

my guess it’ll drop below $900 by about $30-50, then raise above it by $10, and then end just at or just below $900.

Then come Monday... oh boy.

 

[StealthP3D]

my guess it’ll drop below $900 by about $30-50, then raise above it by $10, and then end just at or just below $900.

Then come Monday... oh boy.

Will it end on an even or odd penny?

I'll be impressed if it acts as you are guessing it will!

 

[verygreen]

How about the gross weight of a Model X built a month ago:

a month-ago built car is not LR+.

Btw., is the battery sticker easy to access for @Prime_Number or @Cherry Wine to take a photo of?

yes. refer to here: Decoding Your Tesla Battery Pack Version

My (potential) criticism is that not all information is equal, not all information is harmless, not all information wants to be free, and that battery pack size speculation is one of the strongest Osborning forces - and it's unconditionally harmful especially if the information turns out to be inaccurate. Since your tweets are widely disseminated and reported in the Tesla blogosphere and social media, I'm sure you are aware of the responsibility, especially close to the end of the quarter.

I include all the discaimers I can think of to warn people when I don't have too much to base my info on. LR+ on the other hand IS real, has real increase and such, now we just need to determine what battery comes with it.

 

[Green Pete]

Will it end on an even or odd penny?

I'll be impressed if it acts as you are guessing it will!

For anyone who believes this pattern to be predictable next week weekly calls purchased during the typical MMD expiring next Friday are not the worst idea.

Not advice just speculation.

 

[jhm]

This is sort of my strategy when I want to lighten up eventually, which is may be a couple of doublings from here.

Sell covered calls out of the money. When they expire worthless pocket the cash and pay them taxes. Don't let your stock get called though if they are in the money. Buy them back, take the loss. Now sell enough stock at the price to have matched tax liability to utilize the short term losses.

Almost a win win situation in my book. You either get cash or diversify. Can rinse and repeat this a few times. As each time you'll be selling only a bit of stock and with a greater probability you'll be just earning option premium.

A third possibility is to write cover calls and use the cash to buy more shares of Tesla. If they expire too deep in the money you can lose shares, but other wise the upside is to gain more shares. Might be an interesting strategy when Tesla is otherwise going sideways.

At any rate, I'm waiting for this run to slow down. I'm not interested in selling off my upside potential just yet.

 

[thait84]

For anyone who believes this pattern to be predictable next week weekly calls purchased during the typical MMD expiring next Friday are not the worst idea.

Not advice just speculation.

It'll work until it doesn't. Lol

 

[pz1975]

I just got a response from Tesla re the solar roofing job, but this is sort of a bust; no Nevada open house... To ride to Cali tonight or not to ride to Cali tonight...

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You can get about 100 reference letters from us here if you need!