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

[lafrisbee]

Did____________ announce anything? (asking for a friend)


~~~Tell your friend that is why the Resources Angle thread exists and is why the Investor Thread is TRIED, by Moderators, to keep clear of these statements, questions and other such info

But you knew that already~~~~

 

[elasalle]

When Model 3 was announced all Tesla had was design and plan.
With Battery Day, they have a running pilot line. With the Batteries, I think they are at a stage where compared to M3, Tesla employees were riding the initial production models.
So Batteries are gonna come a lot faster than what people think. ~cheers!!

happy to see SP ~ 400 after such a chaotic week. Next week should get interesting

 

[Criscmt]

MMs and price action in TSLA compared to other stocks

Today the price has been very close to $400. That got me into considering the MM manipulation as the driving factor.

But the side of that likes to question my hunch/beliefs got me into looking at the price action of other tech companies, AAPL, NFLX, FB, among others.
Even their price is similarly relatively stable after moving by some percentage since opening. And in many cases they are close to numbers with last digits close to "5" or "0".

1. Should the MM manipulation be seen similarly as a factor with these other stocks?
2. If not, what makes the case for TSLA being special with MMs?
3. Or, is there a case that the MM manipulation is not as much a factor, except at exceptional times?

 

[humbaba]

MMs and price action in TSLA compared to other stocks

Today the price has been very close to $400. That got me into considering the MM manipulation as the driving factor.

But the side of that likes to question my hunch/beliefs got me into looking at the price action of other tech companies, AAPL, NFLX, FB, among others.
Even their price is similarly relatively stable after moving by some percentage since opening. And in many cases they are close to numbers with last digits close to "5" or "0".

1. Should the MM manipulation be seen similarly as a factor with these other stocks?
2. If not, what makes the case for TSLA being special with MMs?
3. Or, is there a case that the MM manipulation is not as much a factor, except at exceptional times?

Looking at AAPL I'm seeing a distinct upward trend that aligns with NASDAQ. While TSLA is not completely level it lacks the distinct upward trend for the afternoon.

edit: AAPL may have peaked since hitting $112. But it is interesting to note in that light that AAPL max pain is listed as $111.25...

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Maybe inclusion will be announced this afternoon? You never know!

 

[lafrisbee]

Did____________ announce anything? (asking for a friend)


~~~Tell your friend that is why the Resources Angle thread exists and is why the Investor Thread is TRIED, by Moderators, to keep clear of these statements, questions and other such info

But you knew that already~~~~

I was trying to be funny. But you were even more entertaining... But would that not be relevant to Tesla's Stock? It also was a devilish play towards validating (or not) the 10,000 acres in Nevada that tesla has the rights to mine.

 

[pz1975]

I don't often buy weekly calls, but next week's expiring calls are setting up as a great risk:benefit proposition:

1. Macros are up significantly more than TSLA would normally be on such a day - likely due to max pain capping at 400-405.
2. There is a decent chance that the quarterly delivery report will come out next Friday before open and I don't think the IV (which has been dropping) currently reflects the % chance of that happening. The options are trading at lower premiums than I think they should be. October 9 calls (450 and 500) are trading at 2.8x and 4.5x October 2 calls, respectively.
3. "Moon Monday" seems to be a thing (thanks @Papafox for another great TSLA meme) and I expect a rise Monday unless the macros don't cooperate.

Oct 2 calls at $450 (currently at 4.10) and $500 (currently at $0.85) are my targets, and I plan to pick up 25 of the former and 50 of the latter. I'm going to wait until 15 mins before close as there may be a late-day rise and I want to get them before that.

 

[tinyrodent]

Giga Berlin weekend update. Lightning rods installed at the switchyard. Exterior of drive unit building almost complete.

 

[Singuy]

I run a company in the energy sector. A colleague runs a company in the automotive sector. About 3-4 years ago we were chewing over Tesla and I showed him some of my projections and asked him what he thought of them. His answer was that Tesla had approached them to do something (I know what it was, but I can't tell you exactly what) and they'd looked at the project/business opportunity vs the other opportunities they had. They declined Tesla and went with the other ones precisely because they could foresee that they would spend several years and a whole lot of €€€ and effort and etc, and then Tesla would mirror it and dump them. They did just fine with their other projects in the subsequent years. I am sure he was not the only 'partner' that chose not to participate. I'm not saying Tesla is wrong either, simply that a) there are pros and cons, and b) don't make the mistake of thinking that Tesla has a monopoly on intelligent, thoughtful, far-sighted talent.

Seems a little short sighted and in this kind of environment when dealing with a highly vertically integrated company, I would think the best business plan is to join them vs fighting them. Because the end result is always the same, they figure out what you were providing and they will do it better and cheaper. That's just inevitable. The smart way to do business is to negotiate and innovate with them, making yourself indispensable as a partner and maybe even have a buy out opportunity. If you see the writing on the wall, then be glad that Tesla approached you first and you are willing to give them a price that they figured going inhouse is roughly the same if you were to take over that part of x, y and z.

Either way once Tesla figures it out, your company is done. And this is why sitting on fatter margins and unwilling to roll with the punches bankrupt companies.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Tesla long-term growth rate from 200GWh in 2022 to 3TWh in 2030 is about 40% per year or doubling every 2 years.

Thanks for your well reasoned comment. Together with some modeling, I think we can arrive at a good estimate.

To be clear, Tesla's goal for bty cell production in 2022 is 100GWh, The figure cited of 200 GWh includes Tesla's bty cells AND another 100 GWh purchased from 3rd parties (Pana, CATL, LG, maybe a few others...)

So our Model must produce a production curve that passes through 100 GWh in 2022, and 3,000 GWh by (or slightly before) 2030.

I'll put some more effort into it this weekend.

Cheers!

 

[printf42]

Maybe inclusion will be announced this afternoon? You never know!

You jinxed it.

I was hoping no one mentions spoon today.

 

[computerchuck]

Yeah, the manips took over, so obvious.

Not clear yet if $400 or $405 is the target though.

The risk for them is that we often get some Monday FOMO late on Fridays towards the end, this week the P&D speculators might jump in too.

 

[ggr]

Semi-Mod: it's too hard to go back and delete the political posts, but any going forward will be deleted. --ggr.

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

I was assuming $1bn capex per 100,000 cars/year from cell onwards (i.e. excluding cells). It seems to me that as they lower the capex/car they are using the capex budget that comes free to further vertically integrate and control the whole stack. For 100k cars that is 10GWh cells @100KWH/car. So the $1bn per 10GWh of cell lines may partially overlap with my prior assumption and depending on the extent to which it does I may need to revisit my calcs for not requiring any additional capital to enable 40-50%yoy growth. The extent to which that is true is also dependent on how much of the additional margin they choose to pass to consumers in price decreases, and how much they choose to retain internally for growth.

They can't overlap, since your assumption explicitly said "excluding cells". But, IF you mis-wrote and you meant "the $1bn per 10GWh of battery packs may partially overlap", then yes that's possible, and would align with what I wrote in response to Dodger.

By "additional capex to enable 40-50% yoy growth", did you mean "on top of the $3B" that they budgeted for 2020? I don't think that would be necessary, since the capex can only go into factory/production expansion. Once all the factories are done (whether it's 800k this year, or 20 million in 2030), the capex budget would be zero. By its nature, any budgeted capex is for growing production.

 

[Discoducky]

Battery day thoughts and the impact on Tesla financials. Summary: I'm HODL and continuing to acquire on dips

First off the presentation was geared way in the direction of engineering and thus has most likely gone over the heads of most people. This is not a bad thing, but rather a very normal thing for Tesla. As this was the most likely outcome; all is right with the universe. Tesla demonstrated the tech with The Plaid S and thus continued in the tradition of leading the acceleration of sustainable transportation.

What was wholly unexpected was the massive decrease in costs for batteries as well as manufacturing facilities. This, for me, was unexpected, and honestly brought me so much joy. The presentation might have well been called "We've set a date for the end of oil". As an engineer who is fairly versed in Tesla tech, the only thing stopping Tesla at this point are force majeurs and macros of the like.

The quick summary. Tesla showed tech that is well beyond anything that has been put in any presentation or white paper and will exist in the world in a time-frame that is even close to tech demonstrated. If anyone knows of anything better please forward.

The dry electrode innovation alone is at least 10 years ahead of anything else. Why 10 years? In order to do what has just been demonstrated, even though it is about 2 years away from mass production is this: To start this process you need to attract the top battery talent, establish a think tank/brainstorming/iteration lab, try and fail on soooo many possible ways to get more efficiency out of the process which involves great amounts of money, time and patience ( Why patience? So many options in batteries end up being low production value but are initially great due to potential).

Just this innovation alone would secure a lead in the EV industry. However, so much more was shown with very reasonable timelines. Crazy that they have also gone to the extent of greatly improving the cathode production process. I had no idea how involved this was.

I think my favorite hidden gem was the slide that separated the types of new batteries into long cycle life, long range and mass sensitive. It is a lovely easter egg to the million mile battery (aka 4000 charge/discharge cycles), which to Tesla, is already in production as LFP in China and not a huge deal for this presentation.

Oh, and one more thing. It seems that Tesla has taken every page out of Apple's playbook.

1. Custom ASICs, designing own boards
2. Building SW and service stack to fully communicate back to custom infrastructure
3. Make changes to the supply chain to the lowest common supplier

However, TSLA is now adding pages

1. Objectionable best in class product; measurable features like range, acceleration, cargo space, safety...etc
2. Objectionable best in class value; measurable from cost, margins, free cash flow
3. AI custom ASICs for both training (Dojo) and serving (in car ASICs)
4. Leader in glass tech (coming with Cybertruck)
5. Leader in car entertainment
6. Leader in subscription services
7. Taking core tech in the power grid with utility scale and residential scale storage
8. Credit money from other car companies
9. I'm sure I left out many others

 

[elasalle]

Maybe inclusion will be announced this afternoon? You never know!

 

[Christine69420]

The Battle of cents.

 

[Tslynk67]

Battery day thoughts and the impact on Tesla financials. Summary: I'm HODL and continuing to acquire on dips

First off the presentation was geared way in the direction of engineering and thus has most likely gone over the heads of most people. This is not a bad thing, but rather a very normal thing for Tesla. As this was the most likely outcome; all is right with the universe. Tesla demonstrated the tech with The Plaid S and thus continued in the tradition of leading the acceleration of sustainable transportation.

What was wholly unexpected was the massive decrease in costs for batteries as well as manufacturing facilities. This, for me, was unexpected, and honestly brought me so much joy. The presentation might have well been called "We've set a date for the end of oil". As an engineer who is fairly versed in Tesla tech, the only thing stopping Tesla at this point are force majeurs and macros of the like.

The quick summary. Tesla showed tech that is well beyond anything that has been put in any presentation or white paper and will exist in the world in a time-frame that is even close to tech demonstrated. If anyone knows of anything better please forward.

The dry electrode innovation alone is at least 10 years ahead of anything else. Why 10 years? In order to do what has just been demonstrated, even though it is about 2 years away from mass production is this: To start this process you need to attract the top battery talent, establish a think tank/brainstorming/iteration lab, try and fail on soooo many possible ways to get more efficiency out of the process which involves great amounts of money, time and patience ( Why patience? So many options in batteries end up being low production value but are initially great due to potential).

Just this innovation alone would secure a lead in the EV industry. However, so much more was shown with very reasonable timelines. Crazy that they have also gone to the extent of greatly improving the cathode production process. I had no idea how involved this was.

I think my favorite hidden gem was the slide that separated the types of new batteries into long cycle life, long range and mass sensitive. It is a lovely easter egg to the million mile battery (aka 4000 charge/discharge cycles), which to Tesla, is already in production as LFP in China and not a huge deal for this presentation.

Oh, and one more thing. It seems that Tesla has taken every page out of Apple's playbook.

1. Custom ASICs, designing own boards
2. Building SW and service stack to fully communicate back to custom infrastructure
3. Make changes to the supply chain to the lowest common supplier

However, TSLA is now adding pages

1. Objectionable best in class product; measurable features like range, acceleration, cargo space, safety...etc
2. Objectionable best in class value; measurable from cost, margins, free cash flow
3. AI custom ASICs for both training (Dojo) and serving (in car ASICs)
4. Leader in glass tech (coming with Cybertruck)
5. Leader in car entertainment
6. Leader in subscription services
7. Taking core tech in the power grid with utility scale and residential scale storage
8. Credit money from other car companies
9. I'm sure I left out many others

F*** me, you can't post stuff like that, 3 minutes before close on a Friday

Looks like the Monday FOMO crowd came back from the pub...

 

[bkp_duke]

The Battle of cents.

In the last second someone looks to be trying to piss into the cheerios and push the price up.

 

[Tslynk67]

Semi-Mod: it's too hard to go back and delete the political posts, but any going forward will be deleted. --ggr.

Grumpy mod, lazy mod, pfff....