TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[dandurston]

20+ min without a M.Spiegel tweet, must be a record.

Spiegel did reply to a tweet:

 

[Opus BC fan]

 

[Joe F]

You could always go to the eye doctor and listen to the call at the same time. He will need your eyes to be available for checking, how you use your ears is entirely up to you!

Lousy cell service there, have tried over the years. Bringing EarPods just in case a new tower went up in the last year!

 

[dw4ngg]

Wow, in my portfolio, the rise in TSLA is more than compensating for the bloodbath in everything else!

Really appreciate all of the extremely hard work at Tesla. And our awesome Tesla products.

I don’t have anything else in my “portfolio”... is that smart?

 

[EVMeister]

Spiegel did reply to a tweet:
View attachment 346670

Or choke on them.

 

[mongo]

"In order to significantly increase the affordability of Model 3, we have decided to accelerate our manufacturing timeline in China. We are aiming to bring portions of Model 3 production to China during 2019 and to progressively increase the level of localization through local sourcing and manufacturing."

While I like this, it also worries me some. What happened the last time they accelerated manufacturing this much? Model 3 production hell.

The saving grace here is that they are probably far enough along on fixes/improvements that they can just copy-paste the best of what they have now. So it shouldn't be nearly as bad. But I'm not sure they can get a cell line up that fast, so maybe they will still make the cells at GF1 and ship them to China to start? (I sort of recall that for the EV incentives there the batteries have to be made in China, so probably not.)

Also impressive: keeping the 2.5 billion 2018 CapEx guidance while pulling in GF3 construction.

 

[KarenRei]

 

[MartinAustin]

$325

Also, I heard them wondering where Tesla was going to get the money from the Chinese factory, and if this would require capital raise etc. - even if Tesla had stated that there would be no more capital raises. Obviously they hadn't been paying attention when Tesla already said they would simply get bank loans from local Chinese banks - a perfectly conventional & undramatic method of paying for factories to be constructed.

 

[2virgule5]

"In order to significantly increase the affordability of Model 3, we have decided to accelerate our manufacturing timeline in China. We are aiming to bring portions of Model 3 production to China during 2019 and to progressively increase the level of localization through local sourcing and manufacturing."

While I like this, it also worries me some. What happened the last time they accelerated manufacturing this much? Model 3 production hell.

The saving grace here is that they are probably far enough along on fixes/improvements that they can just copy-paste the best of what they have now. So it shouldn't be nearly as bad. But I'm not sure they can get a cell line up that fast, so maybe they will still make the cells at GF1 and ship them to China to start? (I sort of recall that for the EV incentives there the batteries have to be made in China, so probably not.)

I don't read this as putting right away production lines in China in 2019, it would rather be some easy assembly that can come with local sourcing of parts (not unlike what they currently do for Europe to evade some value-added taxes), ie locally produced wheels & tires and any other part that can be added relatively easily to the pre-manufactured body+battery pack.

 

[EVMeister]

I like how these figures have been a positive surprise even to most bulls. And most bears are simply stunned. Rock on!

 

[MarcusMaximus]

$325

Keeps bouncing off of it. Lets see if it can stick...

...and, of course, as soon as I say that it jumps over 326.

 

[ThereAre4Cars]

Tesla had guided to 15% margin for Q3 and 20% margin for Q4. So they are well ahead of schedule and definitely a positive.

Only forward numbers actually matter since they embed all the knowledge of management not just trailing. 20% matches past guidance, but expectations would have been slightly elevated since it has become known since that prior guidance that AWD and P was outperforming. The same reason they beat Q3 guidance should have translated to beating Q4.

And the real problem with 20% guidance is the difficulty after 18 months of production to easily point at cost savings that allow for 25% once the SR model dominates sales volumes, but you have to actually get out spreadsheets and think in detail to understand this, which has been done elsewhere. It's my opinion this is the single number that measures business health the best but I also like these op.ex numbers. That was extremely impressive.

 

[Jayjs20]

Spiegel did reply to a tweet:
View attachment 346670

Imagine if he turns and goes long as well.

 

[RobStark]

 

[humbaba]

so i read a market watch "article" just to see what they had to say about the profit since the headline wasn't trolling. Take aways:

1) only the third time achieved profit in 8 years
2) troubled company (SEC, misleading investors)

That's it, the best Claudia Assis can come up with. Next quarter it will be "only the fourth time in 8 years".

Weak

 

[Compton]

Imagine if he turns and goes long as well.

Can’t imagine that happening. Too far down in the rabbit hole.

 

[MP3Mike]

I don't read this as putting right away production lines in China in 2019, it would rather be some easy assembly that can come with local sourcing of parts (not unlike what they currently do for Europe to evade some value-added taxes), ie locally produced wheels & tires and any other part that can be added relatively easily to the pre-manufactured body+battery pack.

But to get the Chinese EV incentives I think the batteries have to be made in China. So that really encourages making the batteries/packs there as well.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Only forward numbers actually matter since they embed all the knowledge of management not just trailing. 20% matches past guidance, but expectations would have been slightly elevated since it has become known since that prior guidance that AWD and P was outperforming. The same reason they beat Q3 guidance should have translated to beating Q4.

And the real problem with 20% guidance is the difficulty after 18 months of production to easily point at cost savings that allow for 25% once the SR model dominates sales volumes, but you have to actually get out spreadsheets and think in detail to understand this, which has been done elsewhere. It's my opinion this is the single number that measures business health the best but I also like these op.ex numbers. That was extremely impressive.

Note that this 20% includes increased costs due to tariffs and a newly increased mix in lower margin versions.

 

[sweter]

Engadget:

Absurd how people think that a person's tweets have any impact on a company's performance.

 

[M3Rider]

Did anybody notice how Atari games found a respectable place in the report?