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

[Featsbeyond50]

Exactly! I watched Elon's live feed first time I think Friday?
Also, Mark wants to change Threads to Twitter now.
It's a social battle! I love it.

That would be so hilarious. Certainly, the Twitter name is still under some kind of copywrite, but with the simulation status, probably not.

 

[SmokyPeat]

All this doomerism and TSLA will probably finish the day in the green.

 

[Featsbeyond50]

For how long has Elon had enough money to ensure his entire lineage doesn't *need* to work a day in their lives, but yet he's still giving 'er?

Not sure why Zachary would be all that different from Elon or any number of other people who are beyond wealthy but still work because they're passionate about something, want to continue improving the world, or whatever other reasons particularly among the high-achieving types that make it into these roles in the first place.



I'd fully expect to see Zachary picking up another challenging position somewhere

Elon is truly a different breed. He is driven like few others. It's more common for people to continue to work simply because they love what they are doing. For those of us who are not driven like Elon and don't love what we are doing, we have our number of what is enough then we will hang up our hats.

 

[Todd Burch]

So much overreaction in this thread. Feels like the FSD thread, lol.

Zach was great. The next guy will probably be great too. Meh.

 

[Buckminster]

I’m sticking the knife in. Zach was too calm to be a CFO…

 

[MartinAustin]

Wishing Zack good luck when he finally departs. Don't rule out a return... Deepak returned for a while IIRC.

IMO Zack is truly committed to the mission, and will probably stay working towards that purpose. - as opposed to retiring to a desert island.

Today's drop is probably commensurate with a finance person leaving the company. I would not like to see Franz or Drew announce their departure... that might see a larger stock drop. The list of possible "Elon CEO replacements" just got shorter - that is a difficult list to build, but it has definitely gotten one name shorter.

We also have proof that the company doesn't go down in flames when the CFO leaves, as that already happened - at much lower stock levels.

 

[betstarship]

So Musk wants to deliberately keep the stock price low in order to retain talent?

"Talent" in Silicon Valley is drawn to companies that have rising stock prices it's how they get real compensation. Many of these engineers make decent incomes but the real money is made on stock options. These options, are used to draw the best and brightest to a company. Sorry but I completely disagree with the idea that Elon is trying to keep the stock price down in order to retain talent.

I dunno, maybe he wants to spend his time on this forum joining us while still being invested in the company for the long term

 

[larmor]

All this doomerism and TSLA will probably finish the day in the green.

Not likely, Tesla still making cars for a profit and all orders are booked. New products coming online. The market always reacts negatively to companies with strong order books, continued profits and increasing product lines.

 

[Featsbeyond50]

I’m sticking the knife in. Zach was too calm to be a CFO…

Zack's calmness may have been a great asset for Tesla.

It's been 4 years so my memory may be fuzzy on this but, I seem to remember when Zack took over, it was a time of extreme stress and chaos. He may have been what the company needed at the time. Hopefully the new guy has what the company needs now.

 

[rallykeeper]

BTW, Zach stepping down should have and easily could have been addressed on the CC we just had recently. That would have been the perfect time to introduce the new CFO and talk about the transition in a way that might have eased investors concerns.

Wanted to echo this point.

Planned successions of CFOs can be announced in conjunction with earnings releases (like with Deepak in 2019) or other news events. Second, there wasn't a pre-announcement (like with Deepak) (i.e., Tesla announces that Zach will resign in [x] months.).

As a result, I'm inferring that Zach's (or Tesla's) decision occurred sometime since earnings and that Zach or Tesla wanted the transition to occur immediately.

If Tesla manages this smoothly, we won't know Zach's (or Tesla's) motive for a while, if ever. In the meantime, without that knowledge, the announcement timing doesn't feel great.

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

YES, that would occur if FSD got solved to Level 5 before 2023 ends. Although I'm honestly not sure even THAT would kick TSLA out of it's slump, because part of me truly thinks Wall Street wouldn't understand the implications and STILL wouldn't flood into the stock in volume, not until revenues started rising due to FSD at least.

We have lots of positives on the horizon but nothing immediate nor rapid, they are all slow burners. I think we are in a holding pattern for the next year or two.

Lol sorry man but your pessimism often times makes no sense. Earlier this year back in the 100's, I seem to remember you saying you didn't think 300 would be touched this year and TSLA touched it just 6 months later.

Your post above this talked about the PE (which is actually 70 right now) being stagnate for the next year but in reality, it'll likely be stagnate for just 1-2 quarters. Because of the scale Tesla will be at for the start of 2024, any stabilization in prices or improvement in prices if rates drops will have outsized impacts on margins and EPS. Bigger impacts than the price cuts that happened this year, which could easily reverse the impacts to the positive side for Q1/Q2 of 2024.

Just those reversal of the price cuts impact at a scale of 525-550k vehicles per quarter could easily lead to a 50% improvement in earnings YoY. Nevermind the fact that Energy in the past quarter finally started to make a material impact on earnings. It's not big by any means but the improvement in margins YoY actually helped EPS instead of being a drag on it. As Energy grows revenue going forward, the YoY impacts of gross margin improvement will actually help EPS in total for Tesla.

 

[Krugerrand]

For how long has Elon had enough money to ensure his entire lineage doesn't *need* to work a day in their lives, but yet he's still giving ‘er?

I believe Elon has already gone on record and said his offspring will have to male their own way and that he won’t be giving them The Fortune. I also believe Elon intends to spend it all on Mars colonization.

 

[MartinAustin]

the announcement timing doesn't feel great

Tthere is no "great" time to announce the CFO is leaving

 

[elasalle]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1688594602180198414

 

[capster]

1. If you had no idea what the company did or where they competed and looked at their income statements I think you would come to a couple conclusions. A. This company is growing very fast with a high value product. B. Their profit is eroding as they grow very fast. AI/FSD//VPP, look like side projects right now. …

For heaven‘s sake, Elon again made it abundantly clear on the Q2 ‘23 webcast that FSD and AI have high priority—perhaps the highest—at Tesla. Go back and listen to his comments about NVidia and Dojo compute, FSD data, etc.

My takeaway, they seem to have found an ‘easier’ path that has more massive training compute requirements. They are pointing the company at FSD and by extension AI.

… Honestly I have gotten to the point of ignoring Elon, it's fun to read but I dont make any investing decisions off his thoughts (twitter, CC, otherwise) anymore.

Perhaps this is why you missed it. Personally, I pay a great deal of attention to what Elon says, including the fact that he feels the need to "repeat himself" on particular things.

 

[AndrewZ]

Elon is truly a different breed. He is driven like few others. It's more common for people to continue to work simply because they love what they are doing. For those of us who are not driven like Elon and don't love what we are doing, we have our number of what is enough then we will hang up our hats.

Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger still go up on stage and answer hard questions from Berkshire investors after nearly a century of life each, both could have checked out a long time ago. I can think of many other household names that still go hard despite having insane wealth along with regular people who go hard with more modest wealth but no real need to work, if only for purpose. I dunno, not buying that Zachary is checking out of all this because he has $100m and I don't think a capitalist system often rewards people to that degree if they'll check out soon afterwards.

I believe Elon has already gone on record and said his offspring will have to male their own way and that he won’t be giving them The Fortune. I also believe Elon intends to spend it all on Mars colonization.

It's the way to do it, these people who are bastions of capitalism I think just want to see the world continue advancing and want to do their part to help it along for as long as they can.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Wishing Zack good luck when he finally departs. Don't rule out a return... Deepak returned for a while IIRC.

Indeed, so did JB Strabel, now as a Tesla Director even while he's advancing the mission at Redwood Materials.

IMO Zack is truly committed to the mission, and will probably stay working towards that purpose. - as opposed to retiring to a desert island.

Wouldn't be surprised if he pops up as CEO at a struggling OEM, just in time to turn them from the precipice.

Today's drop is probably commensurate with a finance person leaving the company. I would not like to see Franz or Drew announce their departure... that might see a larger stock drop. The list of possible "Elon CEO replacements" just got shorter - that is a difficult list to build, but it has definitely gotten one name shorter.

I don't really care much if we get a new CEO (the deep bench at Tesla is already running the show), I'd just like it if we benched E for a couple of conf. callz... you know, rest the bench

"Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Zach Eflin offered some encouraging words to Wander Franco after he was benched for two games"​

Cheers to the Boys of Summer!

 

[FlamingPIG]

Thank you @The Accountant for sharing your perspective as an ex CFO <3

https://twitter.com/x/status/1688547270684270592

 

[Artful Dodger]

Tthere is no "great" time to announce the CFO is leaving

Pobody's nerfect.

his offspring will have to male their own way

... your Freudian slip is showing.

 

[ZeApelido]

I think we can all agree Zach stepped down soley because Elon coming on earnings calls even though he said he wouldn't.