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

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Two or three quarters is a flash in the pan to an investor with conviction. I would wait more than 2 or 3 years for TSLA to start appreciating again (as long as the fundamental reasons I bought the stock remain intact) but that's not going to be necessary. I can't say that as a fact, but I can say it with conviction. Conviction should never be blind; it should always be based on real things.

In 1997 I started buying QCOM with the conviction they held the keys to high-bandwidth cellular data. Cellular data was, at the time, slower than molasses and as expensive as caviar. People actually thought the common person didn't need high-bandwidth cellular data. I knew they wanted high bandwidth cellular data; they just didn't know it yet.

In 1998 QCOM went down, not up. It made no sense as Qualcomm was profitable and growing. So, I bought more. It got cheaper still! It was about 30-35% cheaper than the very low price I had already Identified as a bargain even though adoption of Qualcomm's technology was growing rapidly and proving its abilities in the real world with millions of users. I even sold highly appreciated MSFT stock that still had a bright future to buy more QCOM. It was our biggest position of just a handful, by far. Then we moved into our tiny uninsulated summer vacation cabin in the neighboring County, sold our real house (that we owned outright) and put 90% of the proceeds into more QCOM which showed no signs of life if all you looked at was the market price. In the spring of 1999 Ericsson settled out of court with Qualcomm and the stock quickly doubled. I watched with mild amusement as greedy people, not wanting to lose their unrealized profits, sold for two, three or four times what they had originally paid. They thought payday had finally come! Over the next 9 months QCOM continued to appreciate until it was worth 36 times the doldrums of 1998. Every $100,000 invested had turned into $3.6 million. I didn't sell a single share until the day before it peaked, the last trading day of 1999. This is what I had waited 3 years for, and it was worth the wait! Investing is not for the impatient or those quick to take profits. That said, I am not expecting TSLA to perform just like that! But the longer the price is held down, the more it will resemble a rocket ship again. If markets were not so spastic, TSLA would more closely resemble a locomotive of the kind that steam-rolls your way to great wealth. Instead, it goes in unpredictable and irrational fits and spurts that have little to do with the actual value of the company.

Always judge the value of a company by your own analysis, not the current share price or recent share price movements! That's how you lose. And remember that 2 or 3 quarters in the investment world is like 5 minutes to a day trader. Don't invest with impatience - that's not how you become wealthy Manipulators rely on other's impatience to finally get their way. And never sell a stock simply because it doubled or tripled quickly, only sell because it has become abundantly clear the future of the company is not bright enough to justify the price. Even then I would caution against selling too soon as momentum and market FOMO will typically push the price far higher than it has any right to be. If the company is as good as your analysis showed, it will likely be OK to hold through a multi-year period of doldrums if you get caught in the downdraft that stagnates for a multi-year period. Ideally, you would sell before such an event but it's almost always better to hold too long than to sell too early (unless the company has no substance or staying power).

I would argue that TSLA, as a long-term, core holding, is undervalued at more than triple the current price even if I assume FSD will never work. And that's an assumption I'm not willing to make.
I would like to nominate this as a post of particular merit, though I don't know the formal process. It's a specific and concrete story of highly variable stock price over a multi-year period, a price that fails to reflect the steady and objective growth in underlying value.
 
Hopefully, come Sunday, it is lifted...


"Chengdu, which reported 157 domestically transmitted infections on Wednesday, is the largest Chinese city to be locked down since Shanghai in April and May. It remained unclear whether the lockdown would be lifted after the mass testing ends on Sunday."
Not "off topic" given the potential impact to our TSLA value, but I wonder about root cause analysis here--is the Chinese COVID vaccine as bad as it appears?

Did any western vaccines make it to China?
 
People wonder why Electrify America chargers never work vs a super charger. Here is your answer.

z1q5bw8za4l91.jpg
 
Chengdu in lockdown. City of 21 million, home to a lot of factories (Foxconn/Apple, Toyota etc) - I have no idea if this impacts Tesla supply chain, but be prepared.

(You may be finished with Covid, but COVID is not finished with your portfolio)

Don’t count your Q3 results before they have hatched etc.
Tesla's raw materials (parts) have grown from $2.8B to $4.9B in just two quarters. I estimate they have enough raw materials for about 33 days of production. Some of this has to do with the Berlin/Austin ramp, some from the Q2 lockdown . . but it's clear that Tesla has been building its parts contingency stock to ensure it can weather bumps in the supply chain. I know it only takes one $2 part to hold up production but they are in better shape than ever before at this point.

1662034852482.png
 
People wonder why Electrify America chargers never work vs a super charger. Here is your answer.

View attachment 847840
Electrify America uses chargers from three different companies. So we don't know what the other two look like inside.

But just the fact that EA has to support three charger types makes maintenance three times as hard.

Also, part of what makes EA's chargers more complicated is that the cables are liquid-cooled (and much heavier for the user). When you start charging you can hear the pump start pumping. That's how they were able to support 350kW charging long before Tesla. But it never mattered because there were no cars that could accept such high charging rates. So EA paid a lot of money for complexity and capability that nobody ever used.

It's just another example of the advantages of Tesla's vertical integration.
 
Anticipation.jpg

With the old Heinz ketchup slogan in mind, my anticipation while waiting for funds to clear at the broker is over. Seven fresh-picked chairs were obtained in the pre-market at a price below yesterday's close.

Plus, I've de-deworsified by selling the ARKG and ARKK I had bought with spare change over the past year or so.

Hopefully this helps in some small way to stoke the fire under the SP.

HODL
 
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Earnings S-Curve . . . . . . at our Doorstep

Analysts have consistently underestimated Tesla's earnings:

1662036724700.png


Their consistent underestimation is difficult to understand. Tesla's earnings (EPS) have been somewhat linear over the past several quarters.

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The analysts would have been more accurate just by plotting a number along the trend line.
My Non-GAAP eps is $1.31 for Q3 (on the linear line) but analysts have $1.05 for the quarter.
(Q1 2022 peeked above the trend at $1.07 due to a one time gain of $285m in reg credits)

But . . . .this easy trick won't work any longer starting in Q4 as Tesla will now enter the Earnings S-Curve.

1662037340662.png


This Q4, we reach the inflection point in my opinion:

1662037470373.png


In Q4 I estimate that we break from the linear trend and start the ascent up the S-Curve.
I am a conservative forecaster so the slope up can be more dramatic than what my chart shows.
Also you need a few more years added to the chart to really appreciate the S-Curve slope

Here is James Stephenson's EBITDA chart (a good proxy for earnings) going out to 2025.

1662037691842.png


Why the S-Curve now? With Berlin and Austin ramping . . .earnings will be impacted by the Multiplier Effect (not sure if I can borrow this term here).
Earnings are impacted by higher deliveries and also by higher average selling prices and also by lower cost of goods per vehicle and operating costs growing slower than sales (leverage).

Most analysts won't be ready for this. And we may not see a reaction in the stock price immediately as its not often clear that a company has entered the S-Curve until 2 to 3 quarters in. But at some point the spring gets sprung in 2023.
 
Heavy dumping at close was across the board on the QQQs. High volume, large percentage drops from AAPL to NVDA.

TSLA included but oh so much company.

September and October historically have been usually the periods when stock market crashes really took hold. Don’t understand why this would be the case at the moment, but media definitely telegraphing this.

Let us see what the inflation measures say and whether the FED will truly continue raising aggressively even with inflation dropping harder than expected. I doubt it but the people selling now will be pretty happy.
 
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Reactions: EnzoXYZ
Western vaccines are pretty bad with omicron. Over 50% of the people got it at my workplace and we all got triple shot.

It’s endemic. Trying to make it otherwise is like trying to stop the tides.

China already has a rapidly slowing economy from the largest property bubble in human history unraveling, throwing lockdowns on top of it is going to nuke their economy.

Xi is destroying all of China’s progress.