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

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The decision to delay working on the $25k makes sense for a lot of reasons already mentioned, but especially for service & charging. Tesla would need to build service centers & superchargers much faster to keep wait times reasonable for service appointments and charging.

That doesn't align with the explanation given by Elon. Not at all. He clearly said that due to shortages they would be able to make the same number of vehicles whether they had the cheaper car or not.

In what world does it make sense to trade more profitable, more expensive products 1:1 for cheaper products with less profit?
 
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I finally got around to reading the transcript of the quarterly earnings call. Now I understand why the market was so unhappy. I was super annoyed with Elon's comments about self-driving. I mean, we've all heard about the benefits of autonomous driving, ad nauseum. This is the most hyped vaporware technology in Silicon Valley history! I don't need another hype talk from Elon!

Just deliver the damn thing!

It's not just Tesla. Google/Waymo has been overhyping self-driving cars longer than Elon. GM/Cruise has made overpromises (full robotaxi rollout in 2019!) as egregious as Elon. Nowadays the autonomous car hype talk just gets eye rolls around Silicon Valley.

It's a whole thing of Elon poo-pooing Tesla's actual programs while hyping up vague projects in general AI, humanoid robots, and *groan* autonomous cars.
 
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I struck up a conversation here in Florida today with someone from Switzerland. His son is about to graduate college there, and I asked him what his son plans to do after graduation. "He wants to work for Elon Musk. But he knows how unlikely that is, because everyone wants to, and it's super competitive to get a job at one of his companies."

I am in agreement with the many posters here that Musk is a poor public speaker, particularly on earnings calls and product launches. He rambles, he digresses, he mumbles.

Yet despite all that (or partly because of it?) the graduating class of 2022 is completely enamored with him. So, before you post another rant about Musk's shortcomings, ask yourself this: How many people in this world want to work for you?
 
I finally got around to reading the transcript of the quarterly earnings call. Now I understand why the market was so unhappy. I was super annoyed with Elon's comments about self-driving. I mean, we've all heard about the benefits of autonomous driving, ad nauseum. This is the most hyped vaporware technology in Silicon Valley history! I don't need another hype talk from Elon!

I’ve been following a lot of the progress on FSD. While I agree that Musk has made a lot of crazy statements about it, it is finally starting to feel like it’s getting close to being ready to unleash on the general public. Right now they have 60,000 people on the beta which is a huge beta program.

I suspect this is why Musk is so excited and won’t shut up about it.
It's a whole thing of Elon poo-pooing Tesla's actual programs while hyping up vague projects in general AI, humanoid robots, and *groan* autonomous cars.
The reason Tesla is such a beast of a company is because Musk can set ridiculous goals and achieve them. There are very very few businesses which can think about a huge ambitious project which will has a 10 year time frame and have a reasonable chance to succeed. Musk has led the electric car, internet payments, reusable space vehicles, and semi-autonomous driving (just Autopilot is best in industry already).

I’m willing to go along for the ride on his next big master plan, his batting average is unparalleled.

Also… I don’t know how you can suggest he’s poo pooing his existing projects. He is delaying them, not shelving them. If he didn’t think they were worth the time he would cancel them.
 
Interesting how the media (in this case, a specialized car magazine with a name derived from the sound an ICE car makes. Nomen est omen) can twist the facts to please their readers: Tesla is in topvorm, maar voor hoe lang nog?
So according to this article:
- Tesla made $5.5B in 2021 , but 2022 may not be as good, because:
- Tesla has problems getting enough chips just like the other car vendors
- Texas and Berlin haven’t started production yet even though these factories are completely finished, awaiting productions start for administrative reasons
- Profits were for $1.47B caused by the ‘practice’ (as if it’s something borderline illegal) of selling CO2 credits
- No big news to announce
- The third gen superchargers will get 300kW, but the rollout of those superchargers is only planned for the USA
- No new models this year
They seem specialised in taking a fact and twisting it, or omitting crucial extra info, in such a way that it turns from positive into negative.
The headline implies that Tesla’s revenue will go down because of his, conveniently forgetting that the earnings call also indicated 50% growth in 2022, with better margins than 2021.
I find this amusing, especially because their readers (who will be amused by how bad the shape of Tesla is), are the ones paying for our early retirement.
 
With GM and Ford earnings next week...

Aren't the dealers better positioned to profit from the increased "margin" associated with the supply chain caused supply - demand dynamic? My thought is while the manufacturer struggles to get parts, they generally sell those vehicles to the dealerships at published wholesale pricing. It's then the dealerships that add huge market induced markups? Maybe the manufacturer is discounting less than usual to the dealers, but it seems like the stealerships are making the lions share of markups. So....the manufacturer is suffering from reduced efficiency from running their factories at reduced capacity/scale without much markup potential. Plus they are now throwing additional money investing in "getting in the EV game" also at very low rate production .... Seems like their earnings should be utterly dismal.
 

TSLA After-Hours Quotes​


Data last updated Jan 27, 2022 08:00 PM ET.
This page will resume updating on Jan 31, 2022 04:00 PM ET.

Consolidated Last Sale$851.8 +5.45 (+0.64%)
After-Hours Volume595,092
After-Hours High$867.0908 (04:56:29 PM)
After-Hours Low$843.99 (04:15:51 PM)


TSLA.2022-01-28.20-00.png


Shortzes achieved their brief; MMs got their preferred Closing SP, all is normal on Wall St.

Main St? (well, we're still waiting...)
 
With the latest SP action, many of us struggle to separate the macro impacts vs the BS. I choose to go to fundamentals to guide my thoughts. If there are re-evaluations of PEs, where does that put us? I look no further than to use @The Accountant 5-year estimates for EPS to evaluate the SP today and in the future with various PEs...

1643450006303.png


I think this shows the absurdity of the stock falling much lower. Even staying at 850 this year would suggest WS assigning a PE of 66. Find your own PE comfort levels, but TSLA is strong. Thanks to @The Accountant for providing his estimates to make this easy!
 
Troy has some thoughts on future growth rates



I could maybe buy this theory (the building bit anyway) for 2023.... but Austin was about 18 months from start to deliveries (assuming we're getting deliveries any minute here) so seems like there's still at least 6 months for them to start another building on site and have it ready to spit stuff out start of '24.... (and likely even more time than that since they're not starting from a bare site with no permits to do anything).

I guess he might have a point on berlin depending how much longer we wait on that one :)

Also seems to be ignoring any further shanghai expansion, which we know can get done pretty fast.
Expanding and ramping an existing site should be much easier and faster:
Some basic infrastructure can be shared (power station, utilities, road access, logistics area, office spaces, ...), local regulations and processes are known, there are existing construction plans with worked out details, you know the contractors, the contractors know your expectations and are familiar with the construction methods, experienced personal can easily be brought in for issues and ramp up and you can do the things in the right order, now that you know all the required details and further compress the timeline...

I think when Tesla talks about announcing new factories, they refer to completely new sites. The existing plants will be under continuous modifications and expansions. Just like they don't talk about Shanghai expansions, where we know most/almost all from local sources, not official Tesla communications.
 
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Soo... Elon mentioned it earlier, but the Motley Fool transcript may have a typo:
Tesla (TSLA) Q4 2021 Earnings Call Transcript | The Motley Fool

Yeah, Elon said a quarter million Cybertrucks per year: (with his usual qualifying adverbage :p )

Elon Musk: "Aspirationally we'd like it to go, just on a rough order of magnitude, we'd like Cybertruck to be at least on the order of a quarter million vehicles per year"

Here's the video (queued to time index 37:58)

 
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This does provide further clarity on the decision to delay production of the 25K model.

Disagree on just this one part (the rest of your comment is pure gold). The 25K Model is NOT delayed, that's a narrative cooked up by the financial media and analysts (which you've somehow internalized).

Telsa stated during the June 2019 AGM an aspirational goal to produce a $25K compact car in 3 or 4 years. There has NEVER been a schedule for its release, hence there can be no "delay".

Even Tesla's own quarterly Investor's letter has stated these words for many Quarters: "Future Project: In Development". There IS. NO. DELAY. Wall St. made one up to crash the SP.

Further, the 25K compact car is not even past the "aspirational" range stated 2.5 years ago. Yet people blindly parrot the "delayed" narrative, as if it was the case.

This is how the hedgies beat you, by getting you to repeat their falsehoods. Another win for the hedgies.
 
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The 25K Model is NOT delayed, that's a narrative cooked up by the financial media and analysts (which you've somehow internalized).

Telsa stated during the June 2019 AGM an aspirational goal to produce a $25K compact car in 3 or 4 years. There has NEVER been a schedule for its release, hence there can be no "delay".

It's not even past the "aspirational" range stated 2.5 years ago. Yet people blindly parrot the "delayed" narrative, as if it was the case.

This is how the hedgies beat you, by getting you to repeat their falsehoods. Another win for the hedgies.
Thanks for explaining the disagree.

You are right, it isn't actually delayed, we have just brought into social media predictions of a timeline.

Regardless, the more I think about it, I'm convinced Tesla is doing things in the right order.

When Elon talks, we get a lot of interesting information,.
 
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This is how the hedgies beat you, by getting you to repeat their falsehoods. Another win for the hedgies.
Except, if you want to beat the hedgies, you also need to recognise their manoeuvring so you can adapt to when the hedgies win, so you can win with them.
 
You’re flat out wrong. Laughably wrong.

2023:

Fremont 750k
Shanghai 1 million
Berlin 400k
Austin 500k

Total 2.65 million for 2023

2024

Fremont 750k
Shanghai 1.25 million
Austin 1 million
Berlin 750k
Tesla Energy - equivalent of 500k

Total 4.25 million

Also, given that the constraint during 2022 and 2023 is likely to be chips, not batteries, and definitely not assembly lines ... ... once Austin is running on Y (and then 3) this creates the possibility of temporarily shutting lines in Fremont to retool them. In particular switching the 3 line to all-castings would in turn free-up some floor space by stripping out a lot of robot welding and stamping areas. Maybe even the opportunity to either build a new paintshop or rework the existing paintshop (though that implies a much bigger all-plant shutdown for the duration). There's a lot of work required to get another GA line into Fremont, and at some point that paint shop needs to be tackled, otherwise Fremont at 750k will not be reached.
 

This is a direct, co-ordinated attack on TSLA's PE multiple. since hedgies can no longer point at profitability, they're attempting to undermine the basis for valuing TSLA with a high PE ratio. Best part for them is its a lie that can not be falsified until the time period in question has passed.

Same reason why AJ says Tesla'a China production will peak mid-decade and decline by 2029: he's lying and he know it, and he knows nobody has prove he ISN'T lying for a decade. By then, the damage is done and he's forfiled his brief (and been paid).
 
This is a direct, co-ordinated attack on TSLA's PE multiple. since hedgies can no longer point at profitability, they're attempting to undermine the basis for valuing TSLA with a high PE ratio. Best part for them is its a lie that can not be falsified until the time period in question has passed.

Same reason why AJ says Tesla'a China production will peak mid-decade and decline by 2029: he's lying and he know it, and he knows nobody has prove he ISN'T lying for a decade. By then, the damage is done and he's forfiled his brief (and been paid).
Well apparently you can have single digit % revenue growth/year and still have a PE of almost 50 with some of these "value stocks" because...rate hikes...
 
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This is a direct, co-ordinated attack
same old signs, brokerages nudging shares away from margin users, emails sent to people suggesting they diversify, someone actually looks to have requested reporter(s) create a story about damage done to margin-using tesla shareholders, meanwhile rando commenter$ show up to spread doubt and outrage over nothing.
I see the classic oil banks doing another shakedown using their own holdings in EV companies.