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

[Thekiwi]

 

[Thekiwi]

The 50% growth target was removed from the deck for the first time in years.

Outlook in Q3:
View attachment 1011882

Outlook in Q4:
View attachment 1011883

“Reality has entered the chat”

 

[uscbucsfan]

How does the stock react to this?

The stock isn't normally impacted by talk of FSD or Bots, numbers are more important short term.

Bad, good, neutral? What are predictions.

 

[Hiline]

The reduction in price of the vehicles, outside of the CT, negates that.

The difference is that the reduction in manufacturing costs was somewhat predictable. But you could argue that the IRA credits were an unpredictable positive element.

 

[Mengy]

Energy & Storage down sequentially.

Down for the quarter, but doubled for the year. In other words, trending nicely.

 

[uscbucsfan]

The difference is that the reduction in manufacturing costs was somewhat predictable. But you could argue that the IRA credits were an unpredictable positive element.

The prices weren't reduced simply due to lower manufacturing cost. It's a demand mechanism. We see that with the reduced margins.

 

[Hiline]

The prices weren't reduced simply due to lower manufacturing cost. It's a demand mechanism. We see that with the reduced margins.

Huh? This is what I was saying. The higher interest rates reduced demand. What did you say negated this?

 

[uscbucsfan]

Huh? This is what I was saying. The higher interest rates reduced demand. What did you say negated this?

The interest rate increase is offset by the price of the vehicle. You can't just attribute lower projections for interest rates.

 

[cliff harris]

I think EPS is in the same ballpark that people expected.
I'm sure after hours we drop, and if elon is controversial, it may drop further, but the real impact is normally a week+ after the call.
Its easy to pounce on any decline in anything, but compare Tesla, with its now TWENTY NINE billion in cash, 3 factories about to be built (china megapack, semi factory and mexico), 2 ramping (Berlin & Texas), the semi coming, FSD12 coming, bot & dojo in development...
...compared that with GM, Ford, VW (currently in trouble AGAIN for emissions cheating) and toyota.
Lolz.

 

[Thekiwi]

How does the stock react to this?

The stock isn't normally impacted by talk of FSD or Bots, numbers are more important short term.

Bad, good, neutral? What are predictions.

The outlook provided in the deck is maybe somewhat sobering for hyperbulls that were expecting tesla to have 25%+ 2024 unit growth and also continued medium/long term 50% growth (neither look likely now), BUT the outlook looks consistent with Wall Street expectations so maybe any stock price hit might not be that major.

 

[TespaceX]

Huh? This is what I was saying. The higher interest rates reduced demand. What did you say negated this?

People overestimating the effect of a couple percentage points interest on an average price car. This isn’t a mortgage people are taking out to buy.

 

[Buckminster]

TWENTY NINE billion in cash

Up 5. Can we have just a l'il buyback now?

 

[Singuy]

Gross margin ex credit was 16.3% q3 and 17.2% Q4. Will Tesla run the margin bottoming narrative when asked?

 

[Thekiwi]

The huge one off tax benefit going to really make the official PE ratio - which is based on GAAP EPS - look unexpectedly good.

 

[Mengy]

Anyone care to do the math? 1.8M was X% growth last year. So 1.8M * X is what? What was growth in 23?

Production growth in 2023 was 37%, 1.81 million over 1.32 million.

Given the capacities Tesla states in the report today, their max capacity for 2024 is 2.23 million minus the CT. If you assume about 50K CT's for 2024 that would give a production capacity of 2.28 million for 2024.

Now include a few shutdowns for line upgrades and unforeseen little stuff, and it's not hard to see where people like me keep predicting 2.1 million production for 2024. That would be 16% production increase for 2024 over 2023, and this is why I feel TSLA will trade more or less flat for this year. Wall Street will cry and yell about how the growth story is over, and while we all know this is not true because Gen3 growth is right around the corner, for 2024 we will probably be at the mercy of the bears somewhat.

That's my hunch at least, but I'd be ecstatic to be too conservative by the end of the year.

 

[Krugerrand]

Yes, but unlike the Japanese, Chinese are known to cut corners and things explode. Byd is pretty well know for fires in China.

Not a fair comment. Culturally the Chinese are amazingly hard workers. Decisions have been made by Chinese company owners to make some lower quality products to drive prices blah, blah, blah…. People wanted inexpensive products. The Chinese gave that to them.

At the other end of things I have seen some really high quality Chinese products priced as they deserve to be.

Are you saying Chinese made Teslas are an inferior product? Surely not. Because customers of that Chinese product say otherwise.

 

[geometro]

“growth is lower because we are capacity constrained”…. Something like that?

 

[heltok]

Some charts showing that Tesla is still executing:

Bonus:

 

[Musskiah]

"One-time non-cash tax benefit of $5.9B recorded in Q4 for the release of valuation allowance on certain deferred tax assets."

So they took all of FSD deferred revenue it seems

 

[The Accountant]

Positive Free Cash Flow for 15 straight quarters.
Since 2020, Tesla has been able to generate excess cash despite huge investments in factory footprint expansions, new product launches, R&D spend on FSD, Optimus and Next Gen Platform, etc.
And this is with price cuts and lower margins over the past year.