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

[Chunky Jr.]

"Tesla's rival's filling reveal Chapter 11 bankruptcy is possible" - TheStreet

Tesla and bankruptcy algo likes. 50 bucks down in 2 weeks. The attack is strong.

the only thing "Tesla killers" tend to kill is themselves

 

[MC3OZ]

Lower (or within 1-2% of anyway) Q1 2023 is ballpark the latest data-based # I saw

I wonder how many Model Ys were produced at Berlin and Austin Q1 2023 compared to Q1 2024, because my impression is that the ramp has made substantial progress and we can throw in a few Cybertrucks as a bonus.

This video literally has the quote "I haven't seen Fremont this busy in long time"

it isn't a perfect guide, but from the videos I have seen, the factories seem busy and normal.

I don't know how shutdowns Q1 2024 compare to shutdowns Q1 2023, but in any case shutdowns are typically "one off" events.

 

[mongo]

Simply doing a genuine buy or sell that moves the market isn't illegal-- even you do it more than once- if it were Elons selling would be a violation.

The central nuance as I understand it:
A trade that moves the market versus a trade to move the market.
The put purchasing isn't a genuine trade if done specifically to drive the stock down.

The specific law:
Title 15 78i
It shall be unlawful for any person, directly or indirectly, by the use of the mails or any means or instrumentality of interstate commerce, or of any facility of any national securities exchange, or for any member of a national securities exchange—
...
(2) To effect, alone or with 1 or more other persons, a series of transactions in any security registered on a national securities exchange, any security not so registered, or in connection with any security-based swap or security-based swap agreement with respect to such security creating actual or apparent active trading in such security, or raising or depressing the price of such security, for the purpose of inducing the purchase or sale of such security by others.

 

[Musskiah]

The Semi Factory ($10B+ annual revenue when ramped) and Shanghai MegaPACKtory ($10-15 annual revenue when ramped depending on Megapack price fluctuation) are both reportedly to begin production in Q4 2024.

The deferred revenues from Lathrop MegaPACKtory are a staggerin $4B as of Q4 2023 and growing!! SOURCE:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1751963928542781758

In the 10-Q it was reported that $1.05B of this deferrend Energy revenue will be realized in the next 12 months. In 2025 this number will become very meaningful.

The production of Model 2 on all 3 continents will likely commence in 2025, probably not simultaneously, but in succession. Elon today confirmed Berlin expansion (below) is underway. Shanghai Phase 3 expansion began in 2021, was put on hold until it was revitalized in Q4 2023. Once the kinks are worked out on the Austin Model 2 line, the others will be soon to follow.

View attachment 1027536

I agree 2024 won't be much to write home about, but even without FSD and some of the other so-called "options" on the stock (major catalysts), these aforementioned catalysts for 2025 are imminent. They will affect the stock price materially in that year, if not late 2024

A meaninful correction to my prior post: I said Tesla Semi should reportedly production in Q4 2024, this is too conservative. We may assume...

"...that high-volume production of the Tesla Semi will be up and running by the end of the year"
SOURCE: Musk Talks Tesla Semi & Lower Priced Car Production At Grünheide - CleanTechnica

Stated another way "Musk targets high-volume production by the end of 2024."
SOURCE: Tesla to Manufacture Semi at Giga Berlin, Says Elon Musk - TeslaNorth.com

This is a $10B+ revenue boost and $2B or so in profitability, to begin to accrue within the year.

 

[Knightshade]

(2) To effect, alone or with 1 or more other persons, a series of transactions in any security registered on a national securities exchange, any security not so registered, or in connection with any security-based swap or security-based swap agreement with respect to such security creating actual or apparent active trading in such security, or raising or depressing the price of such security, for the purpose of inducing the purchase or sale of such security by others.

Ok.

Now prove they're doing that, specifically for that purpose, instead of it being a strategy they can prove makes a profit and the reason they're doing it is...making a profit.


As Papafox himself noted- the same market behavior was happening the other direction in calls back in 2020, driving the stock up as people opened and later closed huge call positions- often same day ones, often over and over.

 

[mongo]

Ok.

Now prove they're doing that, specifically for that purpose, instead of it being a strategy they can prove makes a profit and the reason they're doing it is...making a profit.


As Papafox himself noted- the same market behavior was happening the other direction in calls back in 2020, driving the stock up as people opened and later closed huge call positions- often same day ones, often over and over.

If the reason the strategy works is because it makes others sell (or buy), it's illegal...
Which is interesting in terms of stop loss triggering large shorts...

I'm not here to prove the situation exists, only to attempt to explain how it differs from normal trading and where the proposed senario is called out in law.

 

[DragonWatch]

Forward Observing

Dragons Flight, our third generation X, glided home yesterday. Unlike 31Mar2017 where I tried to claim we were the last Tesla delivered of 1Q17. On that delivery, we orchestrated the purchase and delivery from nowhere Nevada . Xena I was hand delivered from Seattle to Olympia, Washington. Our son-in-law let the salesperson park it in the garage; we finally met her two days later.

Fife location was opened roughly 21 months ago. When you drive in you are stretching it if you think it’s like a standard auto dealer. On the weekend, a salesperson is juggling one to two test drives and one to two bouncing around and kicking tires. Therefore, parking is slim and slimmer. The Rivian family took one of the test drive parking spots ~ our spot. I do not think they were getting in on the FSD transfer ~ I did. Keep in mind, of the last two visits, at least two semi’s were either pulling into Fife, or traveling further north. Usually, multiple off site storage locations, and constant new/used cars to buyers handed off hourly.

Oh, I almost forgot! I saw a real life CyberTruck! If we had not just bought a new X, I would be working on the boss to jump the line.

Lots of good things happening.

Cheers

 

[Knightshade]

If the reason the strategy works is because it makes others sell (or buy), it's illegal...
Which is interesting in terms of stop loss triggering large shorts...

I'm not here to prove the situation exists, only to attempt to explain how it differs from normal trading and where the proposed senario is called out in law.

But I don't agree it's called out in law.

if the PURPOSE of your trade is profit- and it also happens to move the price, that doesn't violate the law, per the text you posted.

The text you posted says the action must be "for the purpose of inducing the purchase or sale of such security by others."

An example of where actions that induce sale or purchase that violate the law would be, say- leaking a fake report that the orange juice crop will be strong to induce people to sell their OJ futures, when you know that's not true-- so you then buy them up cheap and corner the market.

The buying them up (which makes you a profit) isn't the illegal part- the fraud inducing selling cheap is.

But if you're simply buying puts in the morning, for the purpose of selling them for profit in the afternoon-- and the normal mechanics of the markets are then lots of put buying tends to lower the share price- your purpose is making money- not manipulating the share price.


Most prosecutions for manipulation are things like:

Multiple large parties coordinating activity to move a stock a certain direction (rather than one large party buying/selling)
and/or
One party making a bunch of self-dealing trades to make it look like there's a lot of volume (brokers have been busted for doing this to make private offerings of shares look better for example)
and/or
Actual fraud statements to move price in addition to market actions (short the stock heavily AND release some bad, untrue, news about it- planning to cover for a profit when the bad news drivers the stock down further-- short and distort)



Only the first one might be relevant here- if it were in fact multiple different large parties, working in coordination, to make the trades described- but it sounds like these are big single block trades which wouldn't be that?

 

[Maarten]

Tesla $25k car is a '2027 story' after Giga Texas tour, analysts say

Tesla has tasted substantial growth in its production and deliveries over the past few years, but now, Wall Street is beginning to anticipate the potential for a pullback for the automaker.

www.teslarati.com

The hits continue

This is so obviously a big b*llsh*t claim.
Tesla keeps its mouth tightly shut regarding everything about the next-gen vehicle.
And now some analyst (with a terrible record, by the way) claims that after a tour of the Austin facility he has enough information to predict the time schedule of the next-gen vehicle?
No way he has seen or heard anything during the tour.
Hope Tesla bars visits to any Tesla facility by this guy for life.

 

[Troy]

Serious question here…what data do we have suggest light deliveries in Q1?

Describing Tesla's Q1 deliveries as "light" would be an understatement. Here is data I use to calculate deliveries:

China: Weekly insurance numbers. This data is very reliable. In addition to that, we also get monthly China domestic sales numbers from CPCA (China Passenger Car Association), and historically, the two data sources have been always very close when we look at quarterly sales.

Europe: Each country in Europe releases its own monthly registration numbers. You can see these here. Many countries also release data before the month is over. The data quality is excellent.

US: There is no official sales data for the entire US. We never find out the actual numbers. The best way to calculate US sales after the quarter is over is to calculate Tesla sales in all other countries in the world and then subtract that number from the global number released by Tesla. That's what I do. The best way to calculate US sales during the quarter is to calculate inventory carried over from the last quarter to the current quarter, plus, all production in the US in this quarter, minus, estimated inventory at the end of this quarter. This calculation is complicated. I don't want to share the latest data I have but to give you an idea, here is what my inventory calculation looks like excluding this quarter and the last one:

My method relies on calculating production from VIN data reasonably accurately. Unfortunately, Tesla doesn't release production by factory. They only release the global production number. In addition, we get China production numbers from CPCA. That means I need to calculate production for Fremont, Giga Texas and Giga Berlin. I use VIN data to do that. Normally, we never find out the actual numbers for any of these factories but in the last shareholder letter, Tesla mentioned an important number. They said, "in 2023, the Tesla Fremont factory produced nearly 560,000 vehicles".

Tesla released the shareholder letter on January 24, 2024. Therefore we can go back and check what my number was before that. Here is the production table that I tweeted on January 3, 2024. I was calculating 558,838 for Fremont, pretty much in line with Tesla's "nearly 560,000" statement. This suggests my calculations for Giga Texas and Giga Berlin should be reasonably accurate too. I use VIN data for those factories too.

 

[larmor]

This is so obviously a big b*llsh*t claim.
Tesla keeps its mouth tightly shut regarding everything about the next-gen vehicle.
And now some analyst (with a terrible record, by the way) claims that after a tour of the Austin facility he has enough information to predict the time schedule of the next-gen vehicle?
No way he has seen or heard anything during the tour.
Hope Tesla bars visits to any Tesla facility by this guy for life.

Cheaper mass produced car requires huge volumes to achieve economies of scale. Achieving high through put on an automobile is going to be challenging whatever way its done-- subsegmentally or optimus or whatever, so does not take a rocket scientist to know that it will be a ways down the road. But based on prior experience, there were few MS around, and then a few years later, everywhere, and similarly with M3 and MY. Wow this article must have been written by a brain surgeon who is also a rocket scientist. Or maybe used an AI algo 'create/craft' an article with high click through...

 

[Buckminster]

Has anyone seen anything on V12.3 that suggests we won't be rich (again..) this year?

I might need to keep these threads warm:
Tesla Network prerequisites

Tesla Network / Robotaxi Business Model

Tesla to license Autopilot / FSD

 

[Buckminster]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1768339594049687831

 

[NicoV]

Thanks for the info on deliveries. IDK, but it seems Tesla would cut prices if demand fell as much as some are thinking (~420k). As noted, Model Y prices have been fairly stable. I bought a Model Y in Q3 ‘23 (my fourth Tesla) and today’s prices are similar or perhaps a little higher than what I paid. Furthermore, inventory levels seem to be normal or even a little less than normal. No science here, just looking at zip codes.

Tesla took a lot of heat for dropping prices, but I don’t think they’ve changed. They are still profitable and cash flow positive, so they’d probably lower prices even more if sales weren’t keeping with production.

I guess we’ll know in about two weeks.

Cheers!

In March 2019, 5 years ago, I paid 68280 euro for a dual motor Model 3, with 19” wheels and FSD.
If I configure the exact same car now, the price is 64480 euro.
Edit: wrong math: So taking into account inflation, this Model 3 is still more expensive than what I paid 5 years ago.

If Tesla was so demand limited, wouldn’t they rush the Highland Performance Model 3 to market?

 

[ebullio]

In March 2019, 5 years ago, I paid 68280 euro for a dual motor Model 3, with 19” wheels and FSD.
If I configure the exact same car now, the price is 64480 euro.
So taking into account inflation, this Model 3 is still more expensive than what I paid 5 years ago.

If Tesla was so demand limited, wouldn’t they rush the Highland Performance Model 3 to market?

I don't get your math, taking into account inflation the 64k would be even less in 2019 Euros

 

[NicoV]

Belgium permits largest battery storage park in Europe:

Grootste batterijpark van Europa krijgt vergunning in Dilsen-Stokkem

In België zit vijf gigawatt aan batterijparken in de pijplijn. Dat komt overeen met het vermogen van vijf kerncentrales.

www.standaard.be

600 MW on a site that previously was earmarked for a gas power plant. Operational in 2027 or 2028. The same company also has plans for a 300MW storage on a different site. Currently there’s 150MW of storage in Belgium.
Belgium has 5GW of battery storage in the pipeline.
Belgium is on track to have 25GW of solar+wind, and 5GW of storage by 2030. Currently the peak consumption is 12GW. The Netherlands and Germany have even bigger plans.
Source: a researcher from the electrical energy lab of the the university of Ghent:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1768554141989691889

 

[NicoV]

I don't get your math, taking into account inflation the 64k would be even less in 2019 Euros

Indeed I was wrong.

 

[nativewolf]

To make money?

Assuming they can show the strategy did that, and they didn't make any illegal trades (no inside info, no naked shorting without a Madoff exception, no publishing fake "Tesla on verge of bankruptcy stories, etc) I'm not sure what law, specifically, Papafox thinks they're violating. The securities laws around manipulation generally require you to manipulate in a way that is, itself, against the law. Simply doing a genuine buy or sell that moves the market isn't illegal-- even you do it more than once- if it were Elons selling would be a violation.

If the SEC thinks the behavior is bad for fair and free markets they can always propose new regulations (I mean, good luck getting them to... and I'd be super curious to see the wording that'd let them prevent opening and closing options same day, but only when "bad" people do it?

But likewise good luck asking for an enforcement action where I can't see any much of a legal case for there being one)




Lower (or within 1-2% of anyway) Q1 2023 is ballpark the latest data-based # I saw (and MS, GB, and others have been cutting their own "predictions" pretty near in line with that since their meeting with Tesla in Austin as well).

So get ready for a fresh round of everyones favorite last-place-tipranks "analyst" telling you about Teslas busted growth story.





Sure, improving the Nevada cells is a possible source- but given they themselves have targeted "sometime during 2024 or 2025" for the upgrades (and there'd be downtime to get them in place and working) it's unlikely that'd materially increase supply THIS year.

Ditto the Kansas plant, which at last report had March 2025 for start of production-

https://www.kansascity.com/news/business/development/article283784103.html

Right, I think realistic expectations on the batteries for both of those is late 2025/early 26

 

[replicant]

TSLA, last 5 years

S&P500, last 5 years

We're fortunate the stock market is well above its 2021 peak. Or the TSLA stock price would be looking much, much worse today…

 

[geometro]

TSLA, last 5 years
View attachment 1028220

S&P500, last 5 years
View attachment 1028221

We're fortunate the stock market is well above its 2021 peak. Or the TSLA stock price would be looking much, much worse today…

That bottom one is a price chart? No dividends, so less useful.