TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[neroden]

BTW; back to an earlier topic, but remember Martin Tripp and his lawyer, Saul Goodman.... er, I mean Stuart Meissner?

He's apparently hoping to destroy Electrek:

Stuart D. Meissner on Twitter

What a scumbag. Hopefully Fred will get a good lawyer and wipe the floor with this guy. Whoever is backing this guy is not as rich as Peter Thiel, I'm sure.

 

[neroden]

I hadn’t heard that, not that I’m doubting you. Which ones have been delayed/cancelled? And do you know for sure it was done for capex reasons as opposed to permitting/landlord issues?

It's over in the regional forums here. We don't know for sure but some of them already had permits and landlord agreements, which is very odd if it's permitting/landlord issues.

 

[dc_h]

BTW; back to an earlier topic, but remember Martin Tripp and his lawyer, Saul Goodman.... er, I mean Stuart Meissner?

He's apparently hoping to destroy Electrek:

Stuart D. Meissner on Twitter

The quiet from Tesla’s counsel seems positive to me. This guy is trolling for help from the short haters.

 

[winfield100]

Yeah, they're asking SUPER dumb questions. What I want to hear is:

"Powerwall and Powerpack backlog is huge. What is preventing you from increasing deliveries?"

Is there a website like insideevs that tracks monthy kWh of powerwall and powerpacks (installs) and/or, what are those numbers please

 

[Cosmacelf]

It's over in the regional forums here. We don't know for sure but some of them already had permits and landlord agreements, which is very odd if it's permitting/landlord issues.

How bad is SC access in your area? 6 car lineups for a slot? Valets?

 

[madodel]

Mostly just that EVs are generically better than ICEs.

But some extra details of my view:
-- Autonomy is actually harder to implement on ICEs, because of their screwy control systems and lag time.
-- I believe EV advantages will be more popular than partial-autonomy advantages.
-- For "full autonomy" robotaxis I think it will first happen in cities and will only be in big cities for a long time. (There are all kinds of reasons why it's very hard in rural areas.) Big cities are *really eager* to get rid of tailpipe pollution, and will really push EV autonomous cars over smoke-spewers, by regulation if necessary.

This may be implied in your post, but isn't it much more dangerous to refuel an ICE autonomously?

 

[Zhelko Dimic]

I...

The fundamental error with fundamental company analysis is to not take into account future growth potential and the company’s ability to meet it. That’s why so called growth stocks lose tons of money quarter after quarter. The most important single metric, IMHO, for growth stocks is top line revenue. Are we in the 50-100% YoY territory? People who have never run a company don’t realize just how inefficient a company is when it doubles in size every year. It takes a lot of resources to find, hire, and train all these new employees, and they are a drag on the company’s expenses for the first year or so (more if they are R&D engineers), not to mention, in Tesla’s case, all the capital expenses that are bought up front, yet only make money for the company on a cash basis in 10 years or whatever.

Btw, five years after Amazon went public, analysts were dumping on them, of course. You know what one of the knocks against them was? They were bad at distribution. I kid you not. The irony is that the analysts were probably right back then. Amazon was growing so quickly that they were barely able to ship out products in time. They were scrambling, spending much more money doing distribution than they would have liked. But given time, Amazon eventually got ahead of their rapid growth, and in that time, they worked really hard at fixing distribution, which, as an online retailer, HAD to be a core compentency if they were to be dominant. Do you think Bezos didn’t know Amazon had to get world class good at distribution even as analysts said they sucked at it?

The parallel to Tesla is too easy. What does everyone now say Tesla is bad at? Manufacturing. Do you know how hard it is to ramp up manufacturing when you’re growing 70% YoY? It’s really hard. Eventually they’ll get ahead of their demand, and meanwhile they are working really hard to make manufacturing much more efficient because, just like Amazon, they have no choice, the demand is so big, and also because Elon isn’t an idiot. I know he isn’t because starting several years ago, he stated that Tesla will be world class in manufacturing. I remember when he first said that in a conference call. You could almost hear the disbelief. But is obvious that one of the core competencies of Tesla has to be manufacturing. And so, eventually, they will be world class at it because that’s a strategic goal.

100% right on the money. I'd like to say 110% or 1000%, to express strength of me agreeing with you, but some of us know that's impossible... to be right more than 100%, without leverage

 

[kbM3]

What I kind of don't understand about all the doom and gloom about the quarterly ER and expected low cash reserve is that at the time of reporting this information will be already 1 month old? So if Tesla reports a very risky FCF and therefore might need any capital raise, surely that capital raise would have already happened in July? Otherwise I expect record-high deliveries in July would have already solved the issue or at least made it less serious?

(sorry if boneheaded)

You just don’t understand. It is cheating to project into the future. Read more Seeking Alpha and you will understand only past quarterly reports have relevance.

I guess I'm missing your logic here. We (presumably) agree that EVs are better than ICEs. But companies like Cadillac and Volvo have been doing research in autonomy in ICE cars. What do you think it is about EVs that make them better for autonomy than ICEs? Other than just being generically better, that is.

Fully automic refueling, longer maintenance intervals, lower 'fuel' cost.

In addition, 500k-1M mile drivetrains.

 

[EngRyan]

Do you really not get why Panasonic is a tenant in the gigafactory? Its because of the rights Panasonic would retain in a Tesla bankrupcy. Panasonic has no interest in a Tesla partnership because they don't want to go down with Tesla. A new owner of the gigafactory would inherent the Panasonic lease obligation. Panasonic derisks their Tesla agreement by retaining the ability to continue to produce battery if Tesla dies.

Ooook I couldn't help myself but reply.

You're conspiracy at this point is that "Panasonic has no interest in a Tesla partnership" and they more did it for a cheap factory to make batteries that they can keep using if Tesla goes under.

Panasonic has put billions into the GF and if Tesla went bankrupt I see there situation as:

1) They would have a factory with battery capacity that almost doubles the world production now...without a buyer for them. The amount of overcapacity they would be sitting on alone would most likely make the whole thing a write off.

2) People forget all the machinery is set up to produce 'little battery cans', of which no other EVs (that I can think of off hand) use. Almost everyone uses the pouch design so even if EV production picked up behind a Tesla failure, Panasonic would have to do major retooling to even try to use all that excess capacity.

3) Navada ain't a great location logistically for making a metric *sugar* ton of batteries for shipping around the world. For that alone they would probably just pack up the useful equipment and move it.

It's pretty clear to me Panasonic would pretty much lose everything investment wise if Tesla went under and the GF would be useless to them. So they chose to Partner with Tesla as a vote of confidence and as their strategy to become the largest battery producer in the world by a large margin.

At the time Panasonic entered into the agreement Tesla was still an upstart with big dreams that could statistically go bankrupt. So I'll agree they set up an agreement to manage the risk of that (no *sugar*), but to say they don't want to have Tesla as a partner and invested even agnostic to the chance Tesla goes bankrupt is pie in the sky lunacy.

 

[Opus BC fan]

It appears the FUD level on Tesla is increasing today and I expect more leading up to Wednesday. As a TSLA long, I see this as potentially an excellent buying opportunity.

 

[Zhelko Dimic]

We are already hearing, unfortunately, that a bunch of Supercharger sites (badly needed ones) are delayed, and one is actually cancelled. Hopefully this'll crank back up in Q4, when profit is going to be a lot easier to achieve than Q3.

I suspect R&D did see cutbacks but there's going to be a lot of steady-state, salaried-worker, pencils-and-computer R&D which would continue. I just wouldn't expect authorization to build any more prototypes until Q4!

I don't think any R&D will be postponed. Maybe slowed down a bit. I feel you're underestimating inefficiencies of any large organization*, and how much one can cut and still have it move forward. Especially one that's been growing like weeds and haven't been trimmed. I don't doubt many good people lost jobs, but I doubt slowdown will be anything close to % of cuts.

* I've been with IBM on DB2 developement in '99. 600 developers, we could've run on 200 easily, and 100 of them were pushing 80% of the progress. Now if you run too lean for too long, you start having side-effects, including poorer quality of the code etc...

 

[scaesare]

You really don't deserve a reply.

OK, of you are going to throw this kind of hypocritical nonsense at other posters, then what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

In this thread alone you've:

• Accused people of avoiding questions you've never asked them to begin with
• Ignored direct responses providing evidence to refute claims you've made
• Avoided providing any backing for significant allegations you've made
• Ignored questions asked of you in reply to questions you've asked of others
• Brought up issues that have been addressed/debunked on this site many times before

These are not the characteristic posts of someone legitimately debating their side of the issue in good faith. These are the typical tactics of someone spreading FUD. It's also clear that you have a sig

So I ask of you: What is the intent in your participation on this, a pro-Tesla, forum?

 

[electracity]

What are you talking about? It’s Panasonic’s investments, not Tesla. Panasonic is not loaning Tesla anything. Are you on the daily discord bear conference call? You used to have some salient skeptical discussion points. This bizarre conspiracy stuff is disappointing. Not sure where you are getting these new talking points. Step back and start thinking for yourself again, whoever your channeling is not up to your prior standards.


Your point seems to be that any investment Panasonic makes is secured a second time by Tesla, so if Panasonic spends 1bn on machinery in Sparks, Tesla has to provide collateral for Panasonic’s investment?

Can you document this practice? Seems unusual for a general contractor to collateralize all investments of junior partners. Why include partners at all at that point?

I'm making perfectly clear points to anyone who has been to business school or has equivalent work experience in accounting and finance. This is basic stuff. If you don't understand my point it is due to your lack of knowledge.

Tesla reported the capital lease for Panasonic's equipment in their form 10-K for 2015.

Panasonic has agreed to partner with us on the Gigafactory with investments in production equipment that it will use to manufacture and supply us with battery cells. Under our arrangement with Panasonic, we plan to purchase the full output from their production equipment at negotiated prices. As these terms convey a right to use the production related assets as defined within ASC 840 – Leases, we will consider these leased assets beginning with the start of cell production in 2016.

What this does, effectively, is put Panasonic in front of non-secured lenders for claims on the machinery that makes battery cells. It's an investment because a capital lease is recorded as an asset.

Partnership is with a small "p". The gigafactory would be a separate corporation if it was co-owned by Tesla and Panasonic. I doubt corporations can even register a Limited Partnership in Nevada. AFAIK those only apply to individuals.

 

[Tslynk67]

skabooshka‏ @skabooshka 21h21 hours ago
Daily production update. On July 26, 2018 Tesla produced approximately: Model 3: 780 Model S: 170 Model X: 150
That's extrapolated: 5460 M3, 7700 M3+X+S a week.
It wasn't that long ago that they'd make this many cars in the quarter...

If @skabooshka is a bear, as some have hypothesised, then he's not doing a very good job at it

And if really a leak then I assume Tesla aren't closing-down because they either cannot work-out who it is or they're happy for the figures to get out into the wild.

 

[aubreymcfato]

If @skabooshka is a bear, as some have hypothesised, then he's not doing a very good job at it

And if really a leak then I assume Tesla aren't closing-down because they either cannot work-out who it is or they're happy for the figures to get out into the wild.

Someone on this forum recently made the hypothesis that he could lie on the numbers to hype bulls and write calls... is this possible?

 

[AlMc]

Someone on this forum recently made the hypothesis that he could lie on the numbers to hype bulls and write calls... is this possible?

I may be in the minority but I am not investing any money based solely on one person's numbers who does not appear to be a C level person within Tesla.

 

[anticitizen13.7]

If @skabooshka is a bear, as some have hypothesised, then he's not doing a very good job at it

And if really a leak then I assume Tesla aren't closing-down because they either cannot work-out who it is or they're happy for the figures to get out into the wild.

I strongly advise people to ignore @skabooshka.

We don't know what motivates this entity, or the reliability of their observations.

 

[Tslynk67]

"Of course I still love you", we just have "A Shortfall of Gravitas"

So Much For Subtlety, I Blame Your Mother. Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory...

 

[AlMc]

I strongly advise people to ignore @skabooshka.

We don't know what motivates this entity, or the reliability of their observations.

Wish I could give post a 'like', 'love', 'informative' and 'helpful'

 

[dc_h]

40 – Leases, we will consider these leased assets beginning with the start of cell production in 2016.

What this does, effectively, is put Panasonic in front of non-secured lenders for claims on the machinery that makes battery cells. It's an investment because a capital lease is recorded as an asset.

What this also does is monetizes Panasonic’s investment upfront. So Tesla assumes the risks and reaps the rewards. You’ve made a similar argument about Tesla’s obligations to buy billions in cells which will bankrupt them as soon as everyone stops buying Tesla cars.
All of your assumptions lead to tslaq and if Tesla keeps making and selling awesome best in class cars, I just don’t see any chance of that happening.