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

[cricketman]

Tesla has a lot of proprietary/bleeding-edge stuff going on, the less remote the better. cheers!!

I have spent the last 5 years scaling my own company (before someone asks, I cant give more details right now) from 1 to 50 employees. We have a no remote work rule based on my experience in the last start-up (not mine) I worked for.

There is a very high opportunity cost of working remotely when building teams to do things that other people have not done before i.e. where no book has been written yet on what you are going to do tomorrow.

I know that every time an experienced professional is away or working from home, this means a junior person with potential is being ignored and more likely to feel overwhelmed and leave the company. And when people are away or "working flexibly" important conversations cannot be had but must be scheduled, slowing down the whole process and basically banning all casual off-the-cuff problem solving. Add to that the importance of Managers in reading the emotions of each other in cross-functional teams and especially junior members in the first years of their career working on the edge of their capabilities, and I would say it is near-impossible to recreate the in-person working environment remotely

Remote work is absolutely fine of course if no innovation or building of the future is required e.g. accountant or employment lawyer etc.

 

[petit_bateau]

Charging is a slowly increasing source of profit?

If Tesla increases production of autos by an average amount of 50% per year while the number of early cars with free supercharging for the life of the car is not increasing, would not the profits be increasing at a rate above 50% compounded annually? And wouldn't you consider any source of profit that was growing at more than 50% compound growth to be increasing more than "slowly"? But, in fact, the number of cars with free supercharging for life are declining, both in actual numbers and especially as a percentage of the fleet that have access to Supercharging. This will have a positive effect on profit growth because, obviously, they are a 100% drag on profits. After thinking about this some more, if we remove cars that charge for free (to simplify the problem), I suppose profits scale linearly with fleet size. So if production is growing 50% annually, and the average life of a car is 15 years, what is the rate of growth of the fleet over time? Maybe someone with better math skill than I can help out here.

My fleet size projections are

and cumulative distance driven by fleet in any given year (no retirals basis)

For Supercharger income vs vehicle sales and storage/solar sales, my projections are that it is immaterial by comparison, however there is an element of circular reasoning in my workings. When forecasting I took the view that S&S hold steady at 10% of vehicle income and 5% GM. The problem is that we don't have any decomposition below the S&S level, or info re Supercharger usage, to allow us to analyse meaningfully. I aim to revisit this later in the year - my models have more detail behind them so it is fairly easy, but I am travelling for a few months now.

 

[scaesare]

Science is not a house of cards where removing one collapses the structure. It's built on a solid foundation. If you are to invalidate a scientific theory of which the physics have been known since the 1890s, you need extraordinary proof that is repeatable.

Not sure if this response is supporting the assertions made by @StateoftheArt & @captkerosene , or not....

 

[henchman24]

Market really trying to keep the lid on this breakout...

 

[Ocelot]

I was wondering what was the planned battery capacity production of the multiple car companies promising to build EVs in the next years. Have someone stumble across a comprehensive table listing all the car companies with their promised vehicles and how many they will be able to produce with the disclosed contracts for battery supplies?

People at work always talk about competition which has been coming for a decade, now they announce 25 news models of EVs but do we have publicly accessible numbers on how much they will be able to produce according to global battery production capacity signed with their subcontractors?

Not sure about everyone, but ford yes.
Post in thread 'Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable'
Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

 

[NicoV]

Remote work is absolutely fine of course if no innovation or building of the future is required e.g. accountant or employment lawyer etc.

From my experience, most office environments are so utterly unproductive that working from home is easily more productive. But working at Tesla is definitely not such an environment. Your arguments against working from home apply very much to the Tesla situation, but shouldn’t be generalised for every work environment.

 

[henchman24]

And the whole market was pushed right back below the 30 day moving average... vix still fading though.

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

Market really trying to keep the lid on this breakout...

TSLA now losing all of its over performance from last week. Was clear yesterday that MM’s were stepping in and now the stock is being dropped on light volume.

Looks like another week of underperforming for TSLA specific.

 

[henchman24]

TSLA now losing all of its over performance from last week. Was clear yesterday that MM’s were stepping in and now the stock is being dropped on light volume.

Looks like another week of underperforming for TSLA specific.

Tesla is ~12% up over the last week. Nasdaq is ~6%... so it hasn't lost it all from the last week. Tesla will be targeted more during these raids (nothing new when there is blood in the water, the sharks feed) and 770 seems to be a line in the sand right now. With little catalysts in the next week or two for Tesla specifically, the whole market needs to move for Tesla to have strong moves.

 

[The Accountant]

Remote work is absolutely fine of course if no innovation or building of the future is required e.g. accountant or employment lawyer etc.

Don't exclude accountants. One time I took a break from my desk and went for a stroll onto the factory floor and noticed something. That walk led to an innovative mfg process which one year later saved the company $12m. No joke. . . .true story. If I had not had the opportunity that day to interact with the production workers on the line . . .I am not sure if we would ever have found that $12m savings.

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

Tesla is ~12% up over the last week. Nasdaq is ~6%... so it hasn't lost it all from the last week. Tesla will be targeted more during these raids (nothing new when there is blood in the water, the sharks feed) and 770 seems to be a line in the sand right now. With little catalysts in the next week or two for Tesla specifically, the whole market needs to move for Tesla to have strong moves.

I'm talking overperformance of it's beta.

Since May 4th, TSLA has been targeted nonstop, week after week. Being driven down farther than it's beta on macro down days and capped well below it's beta on macro up days. Last week finally broke that trend. Now all those gains of outperformance are gone and the stock is trading exactly like it has since May 4th.

Nasdaq down 7% since May 4th. TSLA down 22%. The stock has been absolutely destroyed and singled out.

 

[Rarity]

Don't exclude accountants. One time I took a break from my desk and went for a stroll onto the factory floor and noticed something. That walk led to an innovative mfg process which one year later saved the company $12m. No joke. . . .true story. If I had not had the opportunity that day to interact with the production workers on the line . . .I am not sure if we would ever have found that $12m savings.

Which is why having those accountants on the second floor of Giga Texas has some merit, even if such a thing has rarely been done.

 

[henchman24]

I'm talking overperformance of it's beta.

Since May 4th, TSLA has been targeted nonstop, week after week. Being driven down farther than it's beta on macro down days and capped well below it's beta on macro up days. Last week finally broke that trend. Now all those gains of outperformance are gone and the stock is trading exactly like it has since May 4th.

Nasdaq down 7% since May 4th. TSLA down 22%

Fair enough, I was stating it has held its beta from last week.

Of course Tesla is being targeted... it is ripe for it in this market. Growth stock in the headwinds of recession (which I don't think will happen, but the market clearly does), Shanghai shutdown, and Elon being Elon just at a higher rate than normal. Makes it easy to target. With very little for near term catalysts, Tesla is at the mercy of the market gaining some strength to break the cycle until July rolls around.

 

[Rarity]

I know of Tesla Software Engineers who were remote working in Chicago pre-Covid. There isnt a Tesla office for IT workers in Chicago. So wonder if Elon even knows that they had people working remote pre-pandemic.

I think this is a long-standing question that Musk was following pre-pandemic. He has focused on it in tweets and the like. So my working assumption absent information otherwise is that the vast majority of executives are already working on-site and that this e-mail is more Musk signaling to everyone, including potential recruits, how Tesla rolls. Or maybe Musk saw uneven application of his wishes and he decided to be crystal clear about them.

Tesla will continue to be on a hiring binge over the next few years, so there is value in setting expectations to everyone.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

I have spent the last 5 years scaling my own company (before someone asks, I cant give more details right now) from 1 to 50 employees. We have a no remote work rule based on my experience in the last start-up (not mine) I worked for.

There is a very high opportunity cost of working remotely when building teams to do things that other people have not done before i.e. where no book has been written yet on what you are going to do tomorrow.

I know that every time an experienced professional is away or working from home, this means a junior person with potential is being ignored and more likely to feel overwhelmed and leave the company. And when people are away or "working flexibly" important conversations cannot be had but must be scheduled, slowing down the whole process and basically banning all casual off-the-cuff problem solving. Add to that the importance of Managers in reading the emotions of each other in cross-functional teams and especially junior members in the first years of their career working on the edge of their capabilities, and I would say it is near-impossible to recreate the in-person working environment remotely

Remote work is absolutely fine of course if no innovation or building of the future is required e.g. accountant or employment lawyer etc.

Remote meetings don't require scheduling unless you have flexible hours.

You just need a culture in which a remote call is considered the same as walking over to somebody's desk and talking to them.

 

[stealthyc]

Remote meetings don't require scheduling unless you have flexible hours.

You just need a culture in which a remote call is considered the same as walking over to somebody's desk and talking to them.

I also started and scaled a company, and we were fully remote. What we did was just sit on an open Google Hangout call for the normal 8 hour work day. Everyone just stayed muted unless they had something to say, and so it was very much just like working in an office with people. It worked very well.

 

[ZachF]

I'm talking overperformance of it's beta.

Since May 4th, TSLA has been targeted nonstop, week after week. Being driven down farther than it's beta on macro down days and capped well below it's beta on macro up days. Last week finally broke that trend. Now all those gains of outperformance are gone and the stock is trading exactly like it has since May 4th.

Nasdaq down 7% since May 4th. TSLA down 22%. The stock has been absolutely destroyed and singled out.

Tesla is outperforming over the last year, underperforming over the last 6 months, and roughly the same the last 3 months

 

[Krugerrand]

WRT WFH, vertical integration and co-location of production and design is much of Tesla’s (and SpaceX’s) secret sauce that allows Tesla to innovate so quickly. Engineers and production workers working among each other allows rapid problem solving and product improvements.

Exactly! It does no one any good to have engineers sitting at home while everyone else is hands on at the factory. How can a closures engineer (as an example) be helpful if he/she doesn’t have his/her butt down in GA seeing firsthand issues? Answer: He/she cant.

Those panel gaps don’t get solved by running a computer simulation in a home office. Optimus doesn’t become the next best thing since Flufferbot until somebody actually puts it on the production line and sees firsthand it would be better off sweeping the floors with a toothpick.

People thinking ‘this’ is Elon being heavy-handed? Big boy pants required when trying to save the world from itself.

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

Fair enough, I was stating it has held its beta from last week.

Of course Tesla is being targeted... it is ripe for it in this market. Growth stock in the headwinds of recession (which I don't think will happen, but the market clearly does), Shanghai shutdown, and Elon being Elon just at a higher rate than normal. Makes it easy to target. With very little for near term catalysts, Tesla is at the mercy of the market gaining some strength to break the cycle until July rolls around.

My post is more like a warning to those thinking of adding more on margin right now, playing with options, or over leveraging themselves.

The stock is clearly still firmly in the hands of hedgies and MM's. The breakout last week and outperformance of it's beta was just a false breakout.

Tesla is outperforming over the last year, underperforming over the last 6 months, and roughly the same the last 3 months
View attachment 811393View attachment 811394View attachment 811396

Yeah......I don't really care lol. In fact, I think the thought that TSLA is only outperforming the overall market by 13% YoY shows just how corrupt the whole thing is. It's not like TSLA didn't increase their earnings 657% YoY......oh wait they did.

You can't even use the argument of TSLA being a super high P/E that was due for a correction. The P/E multiple had already compressed dramatically before the market decided to even sell off.

 

[Krugerrand]

If true gives recruiters at companies looking for hiqh quality engineers something to use to poach Tesla talent.