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

[Discoducky]

Munro & Associates published fresh analysis on the ultrasonic sensor system removal.

Their calculation of the estimated direct hardware cost was $114, making @mongo 's guess last week the closest. This was not including other costs though, including installation labor, supply chain management, inventory, floor space, poor quality, etc. I changed my model from the $500 previous estimate last week to $200. This $300 per car difference makes a $0.20 earnings per share difference for my 2023 estimates.

Video also talks about limited vision of front cameras (blind spots and the major one pointed out is in front of the car). As a solution, the car will most likely remember what it sees as it drives forward and it also sees while parked with sentry mode (so it can see anything that moves into that blind space). I can see a few corner cases (i.e. low battery and disabled sentry mode and you approached the car from behind) and maybe they'll have contingencies for things like that where it warns you prior to driving forward in those instances.

I hope Tesla talks about the BOM and all up cost/throughput savings per vehicle in Q3 earnings as I think the cost is much higher (the harness used to be closer to $50 x2 and ECU was closer to ~$32 and yes, they have economies of scale vs 2015 prices that I was privy to, but can't imagine it is that low now).

Also, I wonder how close Tesla is to removing all CANbus dependent components? This would remove all legacy wiring and unlock more materially large savings per car. The big one left being body controls.

 

[Ogre]

I've actually got some sentiment-data collecting apparatus, if this helps calm some nerves around here. The conclusion up-front is that social media sentiment is fickle, and not as overwhelmingly positive or negative as you might think. It changes wildly day to day, and while it can have short-term trends, they rarely last long as people move onto the next thing quickly. Here's the last month worth of sentiment data around Elon on 3 example subreddits:

View attachment 863048

Not sure why you think this is relevant.

Posts like these would not have a negative VADER score:
“Elon Musk blocks Ukraine from using Starlink in Crimea over concern that Putin could use nuclear weapons: report”
”Elon turned down a request by Ukrainian officials to use Starlink in Crimea”

Would not have a negative VADER score, but are absolutely toxic to Musk’s reputation.

That is the ”beauty“ good propaganda, it can be delivered quite neutral in tone, but be complete. Neither of these stories, nor the ones about Musk calling Putin have any real basis, but these are the Musk stories which are getting repeated over and over in my Reddit client.

 

[⚡️ELECTROMAN⚡️]

Video also talks about limited vision of front cameras (blind spots and the major one pointed out is in front of the car). As a solution, the car will most likely remember what it sees as it drives forward and it also sees while parked with sentry mode (so it can see anything that moves into that blind space). I can see a few corner cases (i.e. low battery and disabled sentry mode and you approached the car from behind) and maybe they'll have contingencies for things like that where it warns you prior to driving forward in those instances.

I hope Tesla talks about the BOM and all up cost/throughput savings per vehicle in Q3 earnings as I think the cost is much higher (the harness used to be closer to $50 x2 and ECU was closer to ~$32 and yes, they have economies of scale vs 2015 prices that I was privy to, but can't imagine it is that low now).

Also, I wonder how close Tesla is to removing all CANbus dependent components? This would remove all legacy wiring and unlock more materially large savings per car. The big one left being body controls.

My big question is how is the rear camera going to replace the rear sonars? Half the time in the winter I can't see through the rain on the camera lens. It's also a little disconcerting that they don't have all the features working yet without the sonar pucks.

 

[willow_hiller]

Not sure why you think this is relevant.

Posts like these...

I'm not analyzing posts, I'm analyzing the comments on posts. So they're not headlines, they're what people are thinking about the headlines and saying about Elon in the process.

 

[Discoducky]

Have you said why you think Tesla would NOT do this method? (I'm curious).

Maybe it has some con's that some of us are not aware of? I'm guessing that if they don't need some amount of cash and you think the SP will be much higher in the future, then why not do this method?

The pro's seem nice though, assuming they aren't trying to catch the proverbial 'falling knife' with timing the SP bottom.

Haven't seen a response from @The Accountant or others on this topic (did I miss it?), but I think it is super interesting and our own @DaveT just made a YT video on it and does NOT seem to be aware of this method/reasoning.

Here is a primer on Treasury Shares and when this happens the company has two options on what to do with them:

The one that is meaningful for Tesla (as the other is retiring shares and why would they do that after splitting) is the one that @The Accountant mentioned

Holding onto shares​

There are several reasons why companies hold onto shares, including compensating employees, raising capital in the future, or using them for mergers and acquisitions.

 

[BornToFly]

My gut tells me TSLA and Macros get beat up after CPI tomorrow and Friday. If we are lucky, TSLA starts to climb next week into earnings...

I have now had to sell 20,000 shares to avoid margin calls from Put options I had sold because I never would have thought we would be anywhere near 600 (Pre split) this close to the best TSLA earnings on record. I've learned you just can't beat the crooks on Wallstreet....

 

[Discoducky]

My gut tells me TSLA and Macros get beat up after CPI tomorrow and Friday. If we are lucky, TSLA starts to climb next week into earnings...

I have now had to sell 20,000 shares to avoid margin calls from Put options I had sold because I never would have thought we would be anywhere near 600 (Pre split) this close to the best TSLA earnings on record. I've learned you just can't beat the crooks on Wallstreet....

I feel ya, if we breach $200 for more than a quarter, I'll need to sell shares. Can't believe I'm having to consider this...

 

[rallykeeper]

Yeah looks like the entire fund is valued at 8.6M.

Ross Gerber, who's etf has a net asset of 15M has a little over 10% stake in Tesla which means total shares owned is valued at around 1.6M.

So yeah lots of us has more Tesla shares than these people. ARK blows everyone out of the water.

To be clear, both Ross and Gary control more shares than that represented by their public ETFs. In Ross' case, he has a large individual client pool and manages about $1 billion. Similarly, Gary has a hedge fund and appears to have a large individual client with about $90 million (maybe it's just his own money?).

However, they are definitely not big fish.

Latest 13Fs (for June 30) for both of them:

Gerber Kawasaki - ~500k shares
Future Fund LLC - ~165k shares

(Note: the 13Fs for both of them are filed using pre-split numbers and are inclusive of any ETF holdings).

We might have a few TMCers above 165k, but probably not that many.

 

[Todd Burch]

My gut tells me TSLA and Macros get beat up after CPI tomorrow and Friday. If we are lucky, TSLA starts to climb next week into earnings...

I have now had to sell 20,000 shares to avoid margin calls from Put options I had sold because I never would have thought we would be anywhere near 600 (Pre split) this close to the best TSLA earnings on record. I've learned you just can't beat the crooks on Wallstreet....

You can beat them if you stay out of options trading and stay off margin.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

We might have a few TMCers above 165k, but probably not that many.

That's only 11k shares pre-split(s), or $185k at IPO pricing or a couple weeks after. $340k investment at a SP of $31, which we say at or below for quite a while.

I bet there's more than a few TMCers at this level.

 

[Webeevdrivers]

WTF we're up .037%. I thought I was going to have a great buying opportunity this morning after reading all of the gloom and doom and whining. One question I have is, has @Webeevdrivers always been such a Debby Downer, or is this a new thing?

Nah. I’m upbeat about tesla. Just not upbeat about the stock price in the next 6 to 8 months. And it’s just my opinion…which is worth what you are paying for it.

Safe travels all.

 

[OrthoSurg]

3 and 4 for sure. At least with the people we talk to. There will be new investors but I think there are a lot that will wait out the recovery and bolt. They are tired of the drama. We are still medium long. Age thing.

You can beat them if you stay out of options trading and stay off margin.

I don’t know how thinks a portfolio manager but buying a stock just before the owner of 20% of the shares might need to sell for another couple billions worth of stock might not be a good entry point.

The Twitter deal overhand might be a Damocles sword over any big funds trying to beat the SP500

 

[Ogre]

I'm not analyzing posts, I'm analyzing the comments on posts. So they're not headlines, they're what people are thinking about the headlines and saying about Elon in the process.

Which of these are going to come up negative on the VADER score? They are almost all anti-Musk, very few have the sort of words your filter will grade as negative. These trivial checks don’t suss out sentiment. It’s metrics for the sake of metrics. Many of them are just plays on words that agree with the top post. Many don’t have “Elon” in them at all. Your score is pointless for measuring what you think it measures.

Regardless how much of a cesspool Reddit is OT, if you want to reply, PM me or post in OT Galore. I won’t skunk up this thread any more.

 

[SO16]

I can live with Tesla being down as I know it will come back eventually and kinda makes sense given the macro situation.

But I have to admit I’m in pure shock that AMZN can maintain a PE ratio > 100 in this environment. I guess WS is expecting a heck of a holiday season. Which at this time, I don’t see how it will be.

 

[ZachF]

Green progressives are honestly the biggest obstacle to green energy at this point:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1580207674901553152

“Environmental justice” bill to dramatically increase permitting and regulatory hurtles for green energy.

WTF.

 

[Dutchie]

Haven't seen a response from @The Accountant or others on this topic (did I miss it?), but I think it is super interesting and our own @DaveT just made a YT video on it and does NOT seem to be aware of this method/reasoning.

Here is a primer on Treasury Shares and when this happens the company has two options on what to do with them:

The one that is meaningful for Tesla (as the other is retiring shares and why would they do that after splitting) is the one that @The Accountant mentioned

Holding onto shares​

There are several reasons why companies hold onto shares, including compensating employees, raising capital in the future, or using them for mergers and acquisitions.

I saw that. Getting into debt to buy back stock is dumb. It is like leverage the other way round. My advise to Tesla is stick to the things you are good at. Making great products and innovate like crazy. Leave these financial trickeries alone, it can only get back to you and eventually bite you in the butt.

 

[BornToFly]

I saw that. Getting into debt to buy back stock is dumb. It is like leverage the other way round. My advise to Tesla is stick to the things you are good at. Making great products and innovate like crazy. Leave these financial trickeries alone, it can only get back to you and eventually bite you in the butt.

I've been thinking about the buy back option. It's not worth getting into debt. But sitting on $ Billions in cash that are loosing value due to inflation is not smart when they can use some of that money to buy shares when they are deeply discounted (like they are now).

 

[Skryll]

As best I can tell, this is just LG Energy trying to take advantage of the Inflation Reduction Act. They are using the GM brand, but I don't see where GM has anything to contribute from an engineering standpoint. As far as I know, GM has no expertise in batteries, BMS systems, pack design, software, or anything else that would make it an actual GM product.

Ultium Battery Powered Electric Vehicles | General Motors tho?

 

[Captkerosene]

The semi will have unlimited demand at current prices for the foreseeable future. I think that any company that has high utilization would profit by parking their current fleet and replacing them with the Tesla ... the economics are going to be that good.

The fuel and maintenance savings are obvious but safety, reliability and ergonomics are important too. I worked in a noisy environment and it causes a lot of fatigue. Fatigue causes accidents and increases sick leave. Sitting on that diesel engine eight hours a day can't be pleasant. Truckers will migrate to the Tesla truck given the choice which will reduce turnover. Also, diesel exhaust has an unpleasant smell and is unhealthy to breathe. I think we got a real winner here.

 

[Usain]

Munro & Associates published fresh analysis on the ultrasonic sensor system removal.

Their calculation of the estimated direct hardware cost was $114, making @mongo 's guess last week the closest. This was not including other costs though, including installation labor, supply chain management, inventory, floor space, poor quality, etc. I changed my model from the $500 previous estimate last week to $200. This $300 per car difference makes a $0.20 earnings per share difference for my 2023 estimates.

I guessed $100 even. How close did @mongo get?