TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[Bobfitz1]

I should indeed save these questions in case I get invited on the next call as well. Good ones.

They absolutely should invite you on next call. You pose good questions and coincidentally show up some Wall Street types posing idiot questions like Adam Jonas.

One thing I'd like to hear much more about on next call is progress toward delivering modest numbers of Semi.
Not sure if they have not said much about progress and time line for quite awhile now, or if I've just missed relevant updates.
My own naive view is that there is so many M3 components used in Semi, producing them in initially modest amounts should not be
that far off. I think they could produce the first hundred in a corner of GF1 and get them out to a number of first adopter companies, while working towards an assembly line that can turn them out faster and at the cost they are targeting in say another year.
It makes more sense to get them out there in small quantities and get both feedback and a major additional bullish factor which will be seen as contributing to higher revenue and profit in 2019 and 2020.

 

[Dan Detweiler]

FYI Washington Post lead Biz Section article today:
View attachment 322408

I would expect nothing else. Eventually they will not have enough people to preach to. We're just going to have to endure it for a while.

Dan

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Surprised to see us at 11am Eastern with no short pushback. $330 close would be quite ominous for shorts.

 

[madodel]

Spiegel's ranting away, but I'm not sure many are listening.

The 10% gain looks to be baked-in right now. Another 10% would be nice. Is that being greedy?

If a bear rants in the woods should anyone listen?

 

[Bobfitz1]

I agree, especially on the battery cells which Elon said would become the limiting factor during the cc. What does not make sense is Elon's nuanced answer to growth vs reducing capital expediters to be profitable. He essentially said that Tesla has got to the point where throwing more money at growth would have little impact at this stage as compared to earlier stages. If battery cells are the limiting factor, then spending capitol on a new giga factory is exactly what would propel growth.

One or more new GFs need to get started in the near term to meet ambitious projections of production 2 - 4 years from now.
Ramping up GF1 production rapidly is what is needed in the months and quarters to come. The capital needed to build more cells and assemble more packs to have supply for 10K M3/week is far lower than the middle phase of a new GF. GF1 is now at a run rate of 20GWh annually. They need to spend what capital is necessary to get that up to 35 GWh asap, keep going to 50 and continue to the latest design target of 105 GWh or higher. One question we can only speculate about is what % of the building space currently built is actually taken up by all the equipment producing 20 GWh. It was a tad strange that Panasonic issues a statement that hey, they better go faster cause need for cells to build packs for higher production is bumping up against supply. I thought Tesla and Panasonic managements at GF would be permanently wired at this point to closely coordinate bringing more lines up as weekly M3 run rate keeps going higher.

 

[ChrisA]

If a bear rants in the woods should anyone listen?

Tesla bears today: "Look, if we built this large wooden badger."

 

[Moderatefan]

One thing I'd like to hear much more about on next call is progress toward delivering modest numbers of Semi.
Not sure if they have not said much about progress and time line for quite awhile now, or if I've just missed relevant updates.

They can't have progress until they have a plant where to build it and Elon said to not ask him questions about location for Y, Semi production...

 

[jbcarioca]

Since AAPL is now wekk over one trillion dollars in market value, even after dropping a bit. at 11:09 Eastern:
Best Bid / Ask
$ 205.37 / $ 205.38
1 Year Target
200
Today's High / Low
$ 206.58 / $ 200.35
Share Volume
24,182,108
50 Day Avg. Daily Volume
22,654,781
Previous Close
$ 201.50
52 Week High / Low
$ 201.76 / $ 149.16
Market Cap
1,009,435,653,446

That should help give us some impetus with TSLA too. Career shorts might be thinking about momentum and why AAPL has defied their 'gravity' so handily. After all AAPL defiers and TSLA defiers have lots in common.

 

[jelloslug]

They can't have progress until they have a plant where to build it and Elon said to not ask him questions about location for Y, Semi production...

They all but confirmed that the semi would be built at the Gigafactory.

 

[jkirkwood001]

One or more new GFs need to get started in the near term to meet ambitious projections of production 2 - 4 years from now.
Ramping up GF1 production rapidly is what is needed in the months and quarters to come. The capital needed to build more cells and assemble more packs to have supply for 10K M3/week is far lower than the middle phase of a new GF. GF1 is now at a run rate of 20GWh annually. They need to spend what capital is necessary to get that up to 35 GWh asap, keep going to 50 and continue to the latest design target of 105 GWh or higher. One question we can only speculate about is what % of the building space currently built is actually taken up by all the equipment producing 20 GWh. It was a tad strange that Panasonic issues a statement that hey, they better go faster cause need for cells to build packs for higher production is bumping up against supply. I thought Tesla and Panasonic managements at GF would be permanently wired at this point to closely coordinate bringing more lines up as weekly M3 run rate keeps going higher.

Panasonic has already committed to adding 3 lines at GF1 to reach 35 GWh - see here.

 

[mikevbf]

It was a tad strange that Panasonic issues a statement that hey, they better go faster cause need for cells to build packs for higher production is bumping up against supply. I thought Tesla and Panasonic managements at GF would be permanently wired at this point to closely coordinate bringing more lines up as weekly M3 run rate keeps going higher.

If I remember right, Panasonic also said they would be willing to spend more from their side to ramp this up if Tesla wanted. So I guess that is one answer to increased cell production without Tesla spending much more.

 

[jkirkwood001]

...One thing I'd like to hear much more about on next call is progress toward delivering modest numbers of Semi...

Please don't. Tesla / Elon have finally provided a sober and not-overly-ambitious plan to get sustainably profitable. IMO, we shouldn't encourage them to go back to over-committing what they can achieve in the short-term and blowing through cash in another mad scramble (e.g. flying in robots from Europe, building new "permanently temporary" GAs, etc.). The Semi and the Y (and Roadster) will have to wait until Model 3 production is more stable, profit is shown, and some of the upcoming debt due is paid off.

 

[Compton]

Spiegel's ranting away, but I'm not sure many are listening.

The 10% gain looks to be baked-in right now. Another 10% would be nice. Is that being greedy?

I wonder how long he will be able retain his job as a fund manager.

 

[NicoV]

The 10% gain looks to be baked-in right now. Another 10% would be nice. Is that being greedy?

Are margin calls sent during trading hours? If not, we can expect some increases due to margin calls over the next few days.

 

[defc0n]

Surprised to see us at 11am Eastern with no short pushback. $330 close would be quite ominous for shorts.

Yep the damn thing can't make up its mind what it wants to do now Made a few bucks off the swings today at least. Did bounce off $324 twice early on. $324 - $334 is today's range thus far. I'd watch those two price points carefully.

One thing I'm wondering is if analysts are going to increase their ratings on the stock soon now due to less perceive chance of buckwuptcy. That should shoot it back up to $350+ if so.

 

[Cosmacelf]

It was a tad strange that Panasonic issues a statement that hey, they better go faster cause need for cells to build packs for higher production is bumping up against supply. I thought Tesla and Panasonic managements at GF would be permanently wired at this point to closely coordinate bringing more lines up as weekly M3 run rate keeps going higher.

I didn't think it was strange. Panasonic was just giving shareholder guidance, same as Tesla just did. All Panasonic said was that were ramping cell volume to meet Tesla's needs.

 

[tivoboy]

I expect SP to be at least trading between $600 to $1000 by Jan 2020, conservatively
also realize that I just plunked in practically 50% of my entire net worth in a single call option! I need a little margin of safety

IF they can get 1,000,000 cars a year (I doubt it) by then with ~20K in margin per vehicle (again, a stretch) then this will certainly trade between 600-1000.

 

[tivoboy]

I'd be surprised if the short squeeze happens. I'm certainly not covering, though I will admit that the ER wasn't as bad as me and other shorts we're hoping for.

The problem is... It's still guidance.

They burned 740M cash last quarter. It's the 3rd quarter in a row with >$4/share losses. Accounts payable now dwarfs cash. And to top it all off, gross margin on the expensive Model 3 versions is still below 5%.

this I think was missed by many. Pushing AP into Q3/Q4 either by design or process Is fine, but it will come due soon enough. The reading of the cash on hand is that nearly 900M is deposits, which we knew they would do, but it's not true working capital for COGS or AP.

 

[jabe]

I wonder how long he will be able retain his job as a fund manager.

he blocked me on twitter.. if I am blocked his block list must be HUGE>>

 

[jkirkwood001]

Instead of the various suggestions Tesla use capital to expand production at new plants and for new models, why not finally open up sales to Europe? This will:

• eliminate any question about waning demand (which I think is over-stated anyway)
• provide a sustainable demand for the Performance and other higher-margin cars, and
• address a gaping public relations hole - many (half?) of first-line waiters don't live in the US (or Canada).

The only downside to this modest and inexpensive proposal is if they still aren't building enough Model 3s to satisfy the US demand prior to the federal rebate being reduced Dec. 31st. Oh that, and jkirkwood's AWD might take longer to be delivered to Canada... seriously.

Thoughts?