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

[verystandard]

Q1 will be epic.

"Good buying opportunity at Q1/Q2 of 2023"

 

[bballshinobi]

This is a pretty significant miss right? I am surprised the BOD let Elon sell that last batch of shares when he had material insider information about the sales not meeting expectation.

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

My personal financial decisions regarding Tesla came about when the CEO wasnt coming across daily as a liar. Like many have said he isnt being a good captain of the Tesla ship. He and Tesla board knew the macro environment and yet instead of simply taking Twitter and running it he had to come out and be a master sugar poster and liar.

I wonder why you call him a liar? What are the lies?

- The ‘epic Q4’? He said that mid-October, when Q4 was probably still going smoothly. A lot can change in 2.5 months.

- No more stock sales planned? When he said that he probably did not have any plans for more sales. But it turns out he needed more money to buy/run Twitter.

Is there anything out there that is clearly a lie?

 

[StealthP3D]

Dumped in the ocean.

/s

I know that's sarcasm, but I just wanted to point out that 70K cars would be two weeks of production. Dumping two weeks of production in the ocean would be a real logistical challenge if they didn't start the dumping three or more weeks before the end of the quarter! Dumping cars in the ocean is still difficult logistically unless you start early enough.

 

[juanmedina]

This is a pretty significant miss right? I am surprised the BOD let Elon sell that last batch of shares when he had material insider information about the sales not meeting expectation.

3.8% miss on deliveries, right? Is that big or small for WS?

 

[lazybot]

Exactly. Huge discounts at the end of the quarter should be seen as a red flag, not "they are going to make an awesome quarter even more awesome!". While it makes sense for US because of the new tax breaks, it should still have been seen as a red flag that deliveries were going to be a big problem.

With out knowing the regional distribution of the difference between production and delivery it is hard to speculate how much of a slow down there was in the US and China where most of the production capactiy currently is. In the US the slowdown could have been anticipated due to IRA and to some lesser extent due to rinterest rates, recession fears, twitter drama e.t.c. I was actually surprised that Tesla did not discount in the US until late Dec, which probably did not give enough time for all the demand at that discount to be filled. As an anecdote a family member who decided to postpone the delivery to Jan 23 due to IRA decided to take delivery after the discount was increased to $7500. Lucky for them they did end up taking delivery in 22.

 

[Brn2Run]

I realize this is a topic that touches on our identity as Tesla investors, so ego is involved and rationality sometimes takes a back seat, but here goes:

Having read TMC for several years, let me see if I have this straight:
- Tesla has no subsidies (anymore).
- Tesla is against all subsidies.
- Tesla needs no subsidies! (Gondor needs no king!)
... and the clincher....
- Tesla is being screwed out of some new subsidies.

Have I got that right?
Do we cognitive dissonance much?
Great googly moogly, people! Tesla will do fine here. They'd weather this (even if there is anything to weather, which isn't even certain now) if they just sold the best cars and had the most modern factories and the most integrated supply chain. Add in the Supercharger network, Tesla Energy, Tesla Semi, Insurance, etc., and there is not a shadow of a doubt.
(And no, there was no politically possible way to remove the fossil fuel subsidies from the US tax and agricultural codes - for decades there never has been, and given a literal 0 vote margin in the Senate? It is more likely that we would see a 600 mile range Mach E next year )

I think Tesla would be bankrupt without the subsidies they have gotten from 2012 and forward.

 

[insaneoctane]

Surprised Tesla website not updated at all with the new pricing with tax credits yet.

The latest from the Treasury department is very confusing at best....shouldn't the Tesla team be allowed to enjoy New Year's like everyone else?

 

[StealthP3D]

Production being that much higher than deliveries will reinforce the demand cliff narrative and be cited every time someone repeats the "Tesla sells all the cars they can make" line

Um, no. According to Tesla there are more cars in transit. It amounts to two weeks of production. Tesla has made no secret for some time that they are unwinding the delivery wave.

 

[thx1139]

So where is Tesla hiding this inventory? As in, physically?

I know, I really wonder where the cars are. There isnt that many on boats, unless we dont know about several boats.

 

[Stormy24]

A 3.8% miss.

Yep 3.8% miss on a number that was plucked from thin air, like how this works.

 

[NicoV]

Q4 delivery/prod=92%
Q3 94%
Not a dramatic difference. IIRC there were no delivery headwinds in Q3.
For the Benelux deliveries some headwinds were late arrival of the last 2 ships from China, lack of car carriers, problems getting the administration done on a couple of days notice (e.g. the Athlon lease company refused to process the delivery between Christmas en Newyear).

We need more quarters of unwinding the wave to see if there’s a trend. I’ve read the Benelux delivery thread and the deliveries last week where as hectic as when I got my Model 3 the last day of the quarter almost 4 years ago. Not a pleasant delivery experience. We need more deliveries the first 6 weeks of the quarter in Europe. More deliveries from Berlin will help, but that will take time.

 

[TN Mtn Man]

Can't wait to see how CNBC spins a 47% increase in production YoY and a 1 3/4 million annual run rate based on Q4 as a bad thing.

 

[EVWatcher]

Roughly 10% of a quarters production appears to be in transit. There are 13 weeks in a quarter. 10% would imply average transit time for a tesla in an ideal delivery cycle would be 1.3 weeks.

Does anyone know what the average transit time for a tesla sold is?

Edit: Little more napkin math. If tesla is to grow so to will the number of cars in transit at the end of every quarter. It should have been a red flag from last quarter that expectations were that production and deliveries were so close together. We should be ready for at least 7% or 1 weeks of any given quarters production to be in transit moving forward. Obviously the previous quarters in transit vehicles will be sold in the current quarter but as tesla is constantly growing production volume it will always have more in transit the current quarter than the previous quarter.

 

[MXWing]

3.8% miss on deliveries, right? Is that big or small for WS?

It depends on if WS wants it to big or small.

If one was truly objective, Tesla outperformed relative to the mess of what macro has been Q4.

Since they are not objective, the reports and movement will go the way that makes WS the most amount of money this week.

On the subject of objectivity, I think it's safe to say we've lost at LEAST one sale due to Tesla entering the culture wars. I wonder if it was as high as 20,000.

 

[capster]

Yes. Or internality. I'm afraid these things keep coming.


I'm afraid Tesla Energy is not achieving the same growth rates as the competitors and is lagging. Margins aren't great historically either.

To be clear. These are good P&D numbers. Well done team. But they aren't going to be what the market wants to hear.

* (posh words being endogenous and exogenous)

Yes, well done team! Thank you everyone at Tesla for your hard work! I’m especially grateful that deliveries were not less than 400K.

Q1 is usually not great for auto sales, but perhaps this Q1 will be good. There are the incentives. There is the inventory. The weather in Europe is unseasonably warm (to put it mildly) and some of the US has warmed up too.

 

[thx1139]

I wonder why you call him a liar? What are the lies?

- The ‘epic Q4’? He said that mid-October, when Q4 was probably still going smoothly. A lot can change in 2.5 months time.

- No more stock sales planned? When he said that he probably did not have any plans for more sales. But it turns out he needed more money to buy/run Twitter.

Is there anything out there that is clearly a lie?

Not talking about just Tesla. If someone establish himself as willing to lie about other things why believe him about Tesla?

 

[30seconds]

Has anyone seen China production numbers for December?

 

[sdtslafan]

I think those of you who are long term shareholders should be thinking more like long term shareholders. These numbers don’t matter long term. Really this recession is Tesla’s opportunity to take market share. That’s thinking like Silicon Valley and Tesla was born in Silicon Valley. Cut prices, keep earnings low, don’t worry about stock price which may still drop, gain market share…

Some of us like myself sold shares past few years and felt horrible when price went to 400. This is our chance to get those shares back at a discount.

Elon sold many shares which increased the float substantially so there is much more share supply and share price is not longer as resilient as it once was. Do you think Elon cares if share price goes to $75? Neither should you.

Think bigger, longer term, consider buying more with spare funds, and wait. This undoubtedly will be the longest game you’ll ever play. But economies of scale will come into play and prices will drop and people will buy no matter what elon says on twitter. People care most about their bank account first and foremost with rare exception.

Just my 2 cents, could be wrong.

 

[DanCar]

Whatever the reason, offering discounts means they are desperate to move cars in that particular quarter. To me, that's a red flag. If they had no problem meeting their numbers, they would not have offered discounts.

It costs money to store vehicles. Increases risk if something happens to them. Seems better to me to offer a discount.