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

[The Accountant]

Reviewed the numbers . . . listened to the call . . .read comments on this forum . . . digested the situation.
My inner voice right now:

1. Stock was at $100 a year ago and I survived.
2. Tesla took price cuts in 2023 and spent $9B on CAPEX and still generated $4.4B in Free Cash Flow (Cash is now at $29B)
3. In 2024, Tesla can still take some price cuts, spend $10B-$12B in CAPEX and still land at about $30B+ cash on hand.
4. The Balance Sheet is pristine . . .$29B in cash and 44m (not B) in recourse debt.
5. There is enough cash to execute the Strategy (actually more than enough). Enough cash for Gen3, Optimus, FSD, Mexico, Megapack factories, 4680, etc.
6. With the exception of BYD, the competition is falling further behind and in some cases have waved the white flag.
7. Things are good; patience is my friend.

 

[cab]

Honestly, based on little more than Tesla's own report and call, there is a case to be made for divesting of some tsla holdings for a while and re-entering the fray later. I mean they basically said "we are working on it...all of it... this year...see you next year". Of course, ideally we would have all done that about 8 weeks ago!
Ugh, HODLing is hard!

 

[Quesder]

now where is the bottom? 185? New analyst target $170? Should we sell now and pick up again at the bottom?

 

[Singuy]

And I don't think it's as easy as Elon is pretending. TSLA is having enough troubling training their own fleet. Presumably the legacy company would need to device a method/network to collect data for their FSD licensed vehicles, buy thousands of NVDA GPUs, and know how to train their NNs.

No I think they will just get the entire package. Tesla's FSD computer and camera integration. This package with the software is not cheap and hard for legacy to find a way to pass it down to the customers when it potentially can cost 30% of the cost of the car. Then you add on the liabilities these legacy has to deal with as people do have high expectations if they drop 10k on an addon option, it's a hard sell until everyone is talking about how sleeping in their Teslas have changed their life.

 

[Mengy]

This is just copium, the stocks gone nowhere for 4 years. MM's can't manipulate a stock for 4 years, yes the chart is a mess but at the end of the day flat is flat. The company isn't even giving a sales target for 2024. MM's can't manipulate Tesla's yearly growth rate.

TSLA is literally up over 510% over a four year period. Your statement "the stocks gone nowhere for 4 years" is factually incorrect. If you had said a two year period, then you'd be correct.

 

[Paracelsus]

This
With the stock price at $248 at Dec 31, my cumulative return on my investments since 2016 had been 1,138% compared to the S&P at 170%.
You can see from the graph below that my returns followed the S&P until 2020. What happened? I invested in TSLA in 2019.
Many will compare to the all-time-high, but stocks don't go straight up on a linear trend . . .those who hold TSLA long term should expect the dips.
We'll see another ATH again likely followed by another dip . . . but that's the life of a buy and hold investor.

View attachment 1011471

Agree and well put @The Accountant - "that is the life of a Buy and Hold Investor". And very much worth a deeper dive with the value of hindsight now:

While a 'Buy and Hold' strategy certainly can't keep up with the short-term returns that those who hold the Playbook clearly enjoy, it is the one strategy that allows us to comfortably keep skin in the game and come out the other side on the same profitable trendline we enjoyed before this all went Full Tilt. 'When in doubt......Zoom Out', and those of us able to hold throughout these legendary manipulation games played with $Trillions have come out on the other side quite comfortably ahead and on the same trendline we entered it all in April 2020. The short-view is a dangerous perspective. I know too many people that have 'made money yet lost a fortune' by selling before they needed to out of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. If I took the short view I could easily be shaken by my portfolio being worth 1/2 of what it was at the peak of the pump & dump. But take another step back and I can say to myself that I have seen this share price before.........when I only owned about 1/10th as many shares then, before a couple splits and a lot of living along the way. Hang in there!!! TSLA has always felt Darkest before the Dawn when the Spring is Coiling Up.

 

[Dutchie]

Ok, that was it for the stock to explode any time soon.

But hey, look at the bright side, it gives us the next year or two to load up on shares.

 

[Artful Dodger]

@Artful Dodger What are you thoughts on the earnings call, Dodger?

I thought the team was really strong, especially how they answered in detail questions from Analysts Pierre Farague and Dan Levy about further opportunities to remove COGS from existing auto products: in Logistics, in Design, and in Materials. A very strong showing, Elon barely needs to comment anymore. The Tesla team is running at a 2:12' Marathon pace right now.

Personally, I grately appreciated Tesla EXCLUDING 'analyst-who's-best-idea-for-2024 is shorting TSLA' Toni Scaramouche... Thanks, Martin!

Cheers!

 

[Artful Dodger]

Good News for our Swedish members:

Union chair who was prepared to drive Tesla out of Sweden to step down: report

... after only 4 years in her job, too. Past half-dozen Union Leaders have stayed an average of 10 yrs each.

Skål!

 

[⚡️ELECTROMAN⚡️]

Honestly, based on little more than Tesla's own report and call, there is a case to be made for divesting of some tsla holdings for a while and re-entering the fray later. I mean they basically said "we are working on it...all of it... this year...see you next year". Of course, ideally we would have all done that about 8 weeks ago!
Ugh, HODLing is hard!

I agree, but it's a gamble. do you feel lucky punk, do you?

 

[MrMoo]

TSLA is literally up over 510% over a four year period. Your statement "the stocks gone nowhere for 4 years" is factually incorrect. If you had said a two year period, then you'd be correct.

That's just semantics though. I can also say its down 30% over a 3 year period.

 

[Artful Dodger]

5. There is enough cash to execute the Strategy (actually more than enough). Enough cash for Gen3, Optimus, FSD, Mexico, Megapack factories, 4680, etc.

Enough cash to buy back some shares then?

P.S. Big Congrats to your X/Twitter handle @CPAinNYC for winning the closest-to-the-mark EPS-sweepstakes at $0.71 per share, predicted==actual. Well done!

Ladies and Gents, we are in the presence to grateness!

 

[Artful Dodger]

Cybertruck projected for annual production of ~250k /year by Elon at the earnings call. Why not 750k/year to be up there with the Ford F 150

250K/yr is likely the realistic annual production for the existing CT production line, once ramped up to 2 shifts. To go subtanitally higher, like 500k or a million, would require adding more lines. With the Gen 3 platform being the priority at Austin right now, that space is already taken. If they do want more CTs they'll need another assmbly hall. There's already rumors of CTs to be produced in Mexico, you'd have to think those would be for export though.

 

[Artful Dodger]

The part about Legacy not taking up on Tesla's FSD licensing due to they don't believe is real is not true.

Everyone can see how real FSD is, legacy has Teslas to benchmark and they have paid for FSD.

Indeed, FSD beta v12 videos are almost certainly why GM ditched Ultra-Cruise this week.

GM May Be Canceling Ultra Cruise | GM Authority (Jan 22, 2024)

 

[Motor Mouth]

That's just semantics though. I can also say its down 30% over a 3 year period.

Well, that's ridiculous. You self-picked the first time period and were wrong. Admit it and move on. Doubling down is embarrassing.

 

[⚡️ELECTROMAN⚡️]

@Artful Dodger will you please change your avatar. I'm starting to question my sexual orientation.

 

[Paul_SF]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1750360180439859223

TMC peeps:

 

[dhanson865]

Reviewed the numbers . . . listened to the call . . .read comments on this forum . . . digested the situation.
My inner voice right now:

1. Stock was at $100 a year ago and I survived.
2. Tesla took price cuts in 2023 and spent $9B on CAPEX and still generated $4.4B in Free Cash Flow (Cash is now at $29B)
3. In 2024, Tesla can still take some price cuts, spend $10B-$12B in CAPEX and still land at about $30B+ cash on hand.
4. The Balance Sheet is pristine . . .$29B in cash and 44m (not B) in recourse debt.
5. There is enough cash to execute the Strategy (actually more than enough). Enough cash for Gen3, Optimus, FSD, Mexico, Megapack factories, 4680, etc.
6. With the exception of BYD, the competition is falling further behind and in some cases have waved the white flag.
7. Things are good; patience is my friend.

I agree, I love the post, and yet this will likely delay my early retirement. I've been waiting for it to revisit $400+ and I guess I will have to keep waiting.

 

[MC3OZ]

250K/yr is likely the realistic annual production for the existing CT production line, once ramped up to 2 shifts. To go subtanitally higher, like 500k or a million, would require adding more lines. With the Gen 3 platform being the priority at Austin right now, that space is already taken. If they do want more CTs they'll need another assmbly hall. There's already rumors of CTs to be produced in Mexico, you'd have to think those would be for export though.

I think Drew gave a cleverly worded answer because some folks jump at every shadow,,,

1 x 4680 line is more than keeping up with the CT ramp. Fully ramped to 25GWh that line should support around 180K CTs (rounding down a bit for yield etc.)
Plan A - the ramp of that line keeps pace with the CT ramp.
Plan B -the use one of the other 2 working lines (A 4th line is currently being installed.)
2 lines are currently being used for yield and speed testing, but one could probably be quickly diverted to production if required.
Once Tesla is happy with the yield and speed test results, they may switch all available lines to production and start 4680 Model Y production.
They will do that when speed and yield indicates CT and Model Y can both be accommodated.
It's the old "sharpening the axe" approach again..
Middle of the year another CT line will be added.
I think the current configuration is 2 CT 4680 lines + 2 X Model Y 4680 lines.
The 4 new lines are for Gen3 and kick starting Mexico.

 

[SmokyPeat]

Seeing as how the stock already sold off pretty massively this year going into earnings, does it drop more than the 6% it did in after hours tomorrow?