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

[Nocturnal]

Either that or we're Super Cult Members according to the remaining blood-starved bears...

Probably the one thing the bears are right about.

 

[vikings123]

Really good video about FSD visualization from a FSD beta participant.

 

[Krugerrand]

That analysis is so far off the mark I'm flabbergasted anyone would suggest it!

Elon is probably the person that decided it would play to their advantage not to pay it! While we don't know enough to ascertain exactly what happened here, I have enough sense to know that things are not always as straightforward as they appear and dealing with government agencies is a learned art and often counter-intuitive.

Look how well he handled the Alameda County shut down orders! This played very strongly to Tesla's weakest demographic, right-wing conservatives, at a time when their auto production was expanding rapidly with the Shanghai production coming on-line replacing North American production. Not only did he get the plant up and running in record time while simultaneously showng right-wing conservatives what he was made of, the local Health Department had to slink off with their tail between their legs. It was sheer brilliance.

The astonishing success of Tesla would simply not be possible if Elon didn't have a knack for placing very talented and dedicated people under him. And common sense tells us that a $100 million dollar security deposit would certainly be run by Elon before being paid. So to suggest it wasn't paid because his deputies are "not the sharpest knives in the drawer" is to say your analysis doesn't make any sense and won't be trusted by anyone with a lick of good sense. This has "Elon" written all over it.

How about that the 100+M now appears in Q1, instead of Q4?

 

[Sanny]

How about that the 100+M now appears in Q1, instead of Q4?

This!
Cleary non-business people expect Tesla to behave like an ideal private person - pay all your bills on time (set by some higher authority like a bank clerk). Business doesn't work like that, there are 100,000,000 of reasons not to put it on autopay.

 

[carterm2]

Thank you to all the folks on this forum... and TMC.

 

[cs_umd]

Is there a place where I can find information on how much stock which type of employee gets? I just have no idea how much a sales rep or a body shop worker gets.

There was an article in Electrek earlier this year with the following information:

“According to sources talking to Electrek, most new hires are given between $20,000 and $40,000 of restricted stocks that vest over three years, starting a year after they start working at Tesla.

“Tesla also awards performance-based equity bonuses, but those have been put on hold amid the coronavirus crisis.”

Tesla's meteoric rise is making a lot of employees very rich - Electrek

 

[scaesare]

Actually, the other car makers perhaps have played it smart.

Uncle Sam will cover their costs fully and they can focus on Capexing product only whereby TSLA has been required to divert resources for their network.

I’m not convinced this is a net positive for TSLA stock price.

Good grief.

The superchargers are a drop in the bucket in terms of cost as compared to other manufacturer's ad budgets, but has done wonders not only to promote Tesla as a brand, but made long distance EV travel easily possible in a manner nobody else has nearly a decade later.

You call that a disadvantage?

 

[StealthP3D]

This is an interesting comment. I have a friend who does wealth management as his job. Last 2 weeks he has lashed out on me for comments that I’ve made that I really don’t think I was out of line. I tell others what happened and they think he has over reacted. I’ve thought about dropping him as a friend before because of his temper. The issue is he is part of my friend group and we all hangout together. I’m definitely going to limit my interaction with him. He knows I’ve done well with Tesla and I wonder if something subconscious going on there.

If this "friend" really actually liked you in the first place, he would feel only happiness for you. No reason to burn any bridges but I certainly would distance myself from him and tell him that this new low-carbon economy is going to be minting a lot of fresh millionaires over the next several years and, if he wants to grow his assets under management, he had better warm up to this new low-carbon money real fast.

 

[MikeQ]

There was an article in Electrek earlier this year with the following information:

“According to sources talking to Electrek, most new hires are given between $20,000 and $40,000 of restricted stocks that vest over three years, starting a year after they start working at Tesla.

“Tesla also awards performance-based equity bonuses, but those have been put on hold amid the coronavirus crisis.”

Tesla's meteoric rise is making a lot of employees very rich - Electrek

• Drew Baglino, holds 4,222 Tesla shares now worth more than $5.7 million at today’s close.
• Jerome Guillen, holds 9,752 Tesla stocks worth over $13 million.
• Zachary Kirkhorn, 11,831 shares of Tesla, which are now worth over $16 million.

How does Electrek compute these share worths?

 

[Donatas]

Indeed. That 100M would be converted from Cash to Pre-paid expense on the balance sheet, reducing cash flow by $100M.

Edit: I can't find it now but I read somewhere earlier today that a German official said Tesla will probably get their final permit in January, at which point they would get their $100M back. That would mean by delaying the $100M payment to Q1 they would avoid any effect on cash flow in their financials.

Not that it's a big difference but just to be factual - it's €100M, not $100M:
ZEIT ONLINE | Lesen Sie zeit.de mit Werbung oder im PUR-Abo. Sie haben die Wahl.

 

[UnknownSoldier]

• Drew Baglino, holds 4,222 Tesla shares now worth more than $5.7 million at today’s close.
• Jerome Guillen, holds 9,752 Tesla stocks worth over $13 million.
• Zachary Kirkhorn, 11,831 shares of Tesla, which are now worth over $16 million.

How does Electrek compute these share worths?

Haha I looked at this article even though I'm usually a Fred-Free Zone and I found his calculations to be hilariously nonsensical too. I'm not surprised that Fred can't do math but damn are his numbers off.

 

[EV forever]

That analysis is so far off the mark I'm flabbergasted anyone would suggest it!

Elon is probably the person that decided it would play to their advantage not to pay it! While we don't know enough to ascertain exactly what happened here, I have enough sense to know that things are not always as straightforward as they appear and dealing with government agencies is a learned art and often counter-intuitive.

Look how well he handled the Alameda County shut down orders! This played very strongly to Tesla's weakest demographic, right-wing conservatives, at a time when their auto production was expanding rapidly with the Shanghai production coming on-line replacing North American production. Not only did he get the plant up and running in record time while simultaneously showng right-wing conservatives what he was made of, the local Health Department had to slink off with their tail between their legs. It was sheer brilliance.

The astonishing success of Tesla would simply not be possible if Elon didn't have a knack for placing very talented and dedicated people under him. And common sense tells us that a $100 million dollar security deposit would certainly be run by Elon before being paid. So to suggest it wasn't paid because his deputies are "not the sharpest knives in the drawer" is to say your analysis doesn't make any sense and won't be trusted by anyone with a lick of good sense. This has "Elon" written all over it.

This. Anyone thinking that they simply 'missed' paying 100MM deposit on time is simply being ridiculous. I cannot believe people are writing articles about this so called 'miss' of Tesla's management, and even worse, there are others who believe it.

This amount is too big to be a miss. My first thought was that they simply decided to delay the payment into 2021 to help their bottomline in 2020 - that is just a few weeks away, with most of the local authorities taking off for the holidays anyways. Paying a fine for some delay is perfectly an acceptable option.

Now, with all the fuss in the media over this, I am thinking this was Elon's way of shining a spotlight on this deposit. Now, the whole world is aware that Tesla is not just going forward without fully approved permits, they are paying a hefty deposit as guarantee. In future, when it is time to get that deposit back, the German authorities will be under pressure to do this quickly. Even better, it is possible they simply get the permit approved and don't have to pay a deposit at all. After the way Elon bulldozed through the Alameda county situation, I would not be surprised if this missing deposit is simply a 4D chess move on his part.

There was a time a long long time back (maybe 1-2 years ) Elon was naive and believed that those in authority would do the right thing if shown the way. He has learnt the hard way that this is not really the case. Now he has mastered the art of politics around these issues. Alameda county was a master stroke - he got what he wanted in Fremont, while also gaining fans in the truck-driving middle-America demographic. This is exactly the same strategy he is playing in Berlin.

 

[StealthP3D]

Playing dead since 2013. I started out with this $5,000 investment. Hardest part is resisting the urge to sell after big dips (sometimes >50%) over the years. Commit and stay strong!



View attachment 619526

This kitty is going to turn into one wealthy cat:

It's so easy it's hard!

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Official volume for Friday is listed as 222,126,194 shares. I assume this includes the closing cross volume of 69,328,435? Does this ~222M figure also include the considerable after-hours volume which NASDAQ quotes at 47,114,600? When I look at the day in Fidelity chart view(by hour attached below), I count about 68M before the cross, then 69M at the 4pm closing cross, for a total volume of about 137M prior to after-hours commencing.



Can someone explain how all the math on this shakes out to 222M? Perhaps I'm just not thinking about pre-market volume?

What exactly were the volumes:
Intra-Day: [?]
Closing Cross: 69,328,435
After-Hours: 47,114,600

 

[elasalle]

• Drew Baglino, holds 4,222 Tesla shares now worth more than $5.7 million at today’s close.
• Jerome Guillen, holds 9,752 Tesla stocks worth over $13 million.
• Zachary Kirkhorn, 11,831 shares of Tesla, which are now worth over $16 million.

How does Electrek compute these share worths?

Many TMC'ers hold more stocks than that but math doesn't seem to add up

 

[Mo City]

• Drew Baglino, holds 4,222 Tesla shares now worth more than $5.7 million at today’s close.
• Jerome Guillen, holds 9,752 Tesla stocks worth over $13 million.
• Zachary Kirkhorn, 11,831 shares of Tesla, which are now worth over $16 million.

How does Electrek compute these share worths?

This must be for Dec 2021.

I love the math.

 

[Bullpup]

• Drew Baglino, holds 4,222 Tesla shares now worth more than $5.7 million at today’s close.
• Jerome Guillen, holds 9,752 Tesla stocks worth over $13 million.
• Zachary Kirkhorn, 11,831 shares of Tesla, which are now worth over $16 million.

How does Electrek compute these share worths?

This is from June - cs_umd even mentioned it was from "earlier this year".

Assume the employees are about 3x happier now!

 

[Chunky Jr.]

Anyone think it's possible that Elon is considering holding some of TSLA's cash in bitcoin? Very interesting to me as a dabbler in crypto. I'm not sure how I feel about the possibility. Seems like a huge speculation, even if you are bullish on BTC.

i couldn’t disagree more with putting the money into Bitcoin. I fail to see an advantage to doing that over putting it into Beanie Babies. Pure speculation.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

There was an article in Electrek earlier this year with the following information:

“According to sources talking to Electrek, most new hires are given between $20,000 and $40,000 of restricted stocks that vest over three years, starting a year after they start working at Tesla.

“Tesla also awards performance-based equity bonuses, but those have been put on hold amid the coronavirus crisis.”

This should be kept in mind when people bring up the non-union nature of Tesla's US production facilities.

A production associate awarded just the median amount of $30k when hired in 2017, who also achieved high performance ratings and the performance-based stock bonus associated($5k/yr?), would have stock worth around $650,000 right now.

That's a 22 year old building an entire retirement(assuming it 4x's over time) for themselves and their spouse in only fours years of hard fun work. Not too bad!

(math approximately correct?)

 

[cs_umd]

Haha I looked at this article even though I'm usually a Fred-Free Zone and I found his calculations to be hilariously nonsensical too. I'm not surprised that Fred can't do math but damn are his numbers off.

The article is from July 6th. The SP closed at 1,371.60 (pre-split) that day. There was a 5:1 stock split and appreciation since then. Zach’s ~$16M in shares back in July, for example, is now worth ~$41M if there have been no sales or awards! $25M in appreciation if untouched. HODL!