TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[EarlyAdopter]

Fun bit of back of the envelope math (thanks to my wife for this idea).

There are approximately 100 delivery centers in the US. If each delivered an average of 60 cars per day for a whole week for the end of quarter push, you'd be looking at 42,000 cars delivered in a week.

 

[lklundin]

Tell that to Bob Klutz. He used to have a different opinion of Tesla... one wonders what changed his mind.
Robert Lutz; Electric Cars - Charlie Rose
(Definitely worth a watch if you haven't seen this)

TSLA up 5%... wa-hoo!

Interesting. And as for the host, how also the less mighty have fallen.

 

[Fact Checking]

I learned today that the Bellevue, WA, service/delivery center is currently delivering about 30 cars a day. Next week they will be doing 100 deliveries per day.

100. A day.

Amazing!

I'm wondering how they are able to do that: if 30 cars a day was already "delivery hell", how can they increase that by another factor of 3??

If they stay open until 10pm that adds maybe 4 extra hours a day, which is a +40% increase, not +300% ...

Or were they under-utilized in this particular location, due to cars getting stuck in transit?

 

[Fact Checking]

Fyi if you are concerned about impact of Audi e-Tron on tesla, don't be. Audi e-tron event September 19th on 90 Broadway in San Francisco – first impressions

Range is not particularly impressive:

"They would have driven it to Tahoe, arrived with 7 miles of range, charged it back up and drove back down to SF arriving with 95 miles of range left. So the EPA may come in around 200 miles of range."​

That's Model 3 Standard Range (220 miles EPA), lower acceleration, no Supercharger network, the usual ICE software, and various ICE legacies like barely any frunk space, at 2x-3x the price?

Plus the long term eTron battery degradation characteristics of a first generation product are largely unknown - does Audi guarantee long term battery capacity?

I think the eTron is going to have trouble competing with the Model 3 and Y just on a feature/capability basis alone, but they are pricing it like a Model S/X?

Doesn't seem to make much economic sense to me. How does Audi hope for the eTron business to become profitable?

 

[EarlyAdopter]

Amazing!

I'm wondering how they are able to do that: if 30 cars a day was already "delivery hell", how can they increase that by another factor of 3??

If they stay open until 10pm that adds maybe 4 extra hours a day, which is a +40% increase, not +300% ...

Or were they under-utilized in this particular location, due to cars getting stuck in transit?

A big part of it is bringing more pre-delivery prep (inspection, detailing, paint correction, panel adjustment, service bulletins) capacity online. The old Bellevue service center, which they moved out of nearly two years ago, has been converted into a whole additional pre-delivery facility.

Getting customers scheduled, acquainted with their car, signed, and out the door isn't the limiting factor. 10 delivery specialists could handle that easily enough (10 hours a day X 10 specialists @ 1 hour of attention per delivery).

 

[Fact Checking]

I’m currently on the longest road trip I’ve ever taken for 1,000+ miles from Southern California to the Seattle area. Decided to tally every truckload of new Teslas I saw headed south down the grapevine to be delivered. This is the tally so far up to Sacramento. Most trucks had 7 cars and a good mix of S/3/X on them. It’s dark now and I’m past Fremont so doubt I’ll see much more tonight. The tally includes this truck parked at the Gustine supercharger parking lot.

Oh and also the stock price is included to keep things on topic.

View attachment 336544 View attachment 336545

Some quick back of the envelope calculations:

• You counted 30 trucks, 7 new Teslas on each,
• Your trip took ~16 hours,
• Fremont to Seattle is 825 miles,
• You average speed was ~50 mph
• Truck average speed was ~50 mph
• You drove towards Fremont, so you observed trucks at twice the average speed (100 mph),
• Let's assume Tesla is shipping cars 24/7,
• You observed 210 Teslas being delivered in 16 hours, at twice the rate:
• Real measured outgoing rate from Fremont northbound is 210 Teslas per 32 hours, which is 157 Teslas per day, or 1,100 per week,
• According to this older article California sells about 10x as many Model S's as Oregon. If Washington sales are similar, and if we assume that delivery push concentrates on west coast states currently (not enough time to get cars to the east coast by end of Q3), then the weekly delivery rate must be in excess of 6,000 units per week.
• If they are still sending the last batches towards the east coast and midwest states, then the outgoing rate (S+3+X) could be 10,000/week.

Large error bars due to imprecise state level delivery data though.

 

[MXWing]

Wonder if this will move markets hah

A Drug Enforcement Agency plane collided with a Tesla Model X as it crash-landed on a Texas street

DEA hunting for Elon. Rumors that he took Joe Rogan for a test drive. The frunk was probably loaded something fierce.

 

[Fact Checking]

A big part of it is bringing more pre-delivery prep (inspection, detailing, paint correction, panel adjustment, service bulletins) capacity online. The old Bellevue service center, which they moved out of nearly two years ago, has been converted into a whole additional pre-delivery facility.

Getting customers scheduled, acquainted with their car, signed, and out the door isn't the limiting factor. 10 delivery specialists could handle that easily enough (10 hours a day X 10 specialists @ 1 hour of attention per delivery).

Very interesting!

Most of the owner reported "delivery hell" anecdotes centered around flawed prep: dirty cars, obvious flaws prep should have caught/fixed, plus long wait times and delivery-day re-scheduled deliveries, which all sound like vehicle prep bottlenecks.

If they managed to address that then not only do deliveries speed up massively, but negative delivery experiences should drop sharply too - which is super important for consumer satisfaction which generates future demand!

Very good news IMO!

 

[gora321]

The story of Bob Lutz and constant repeats Tesla is doomed remind me of one story.

After WWII the soviet Stalin tried to murder Josip Broz Tito (President of former Yugoslavia) several times with no success. After a while Stalin received the massage from Tito: You have sent many murders to kill me. Stop doing that or I will send a guy in Moscow and I will not need to send another one. Stalin understood the message and stooped.

I'm sure that one tweet form Elon about GM is doomed would be enough.

 

[avoigt]

Range is not particularly impressive:

"They would have driven it to Tahoe, arrived with 7 miles of range, charged it back up and drove back down to SF arriving with 95 miles of range left. So the EPA may come in around 200 miles of range."​

That's Model 3 Standard Range (220 miles EPA), lower acceleration, no Supercharger network, the usual ICE software, and various ICE legacies like barely any frunk space, at 2x-3x the price?

Plus the long term eTron battery degradation characteristics of a first generation product are largely unknown - does Audi guarantee long term battery capacity?

I think the eTron is going to have trouble competing with the Model 3 and Y just on a feature/capability basis alone, but they are pricing it like a Model S/X?

Doesn't seem to make much economic sense to me. How does Audi hope for the eTron business to become profitable?

"He also claimed that for europe they would already have level 5 autonomy, mostly would be a regulatory problem at this point.!

Thats hard to believe. Given the definition of L3 what I have seen in youtube videos so far from Audi is not even L3 but just the claim.

L4 and L5 are very different levels and Audi is not known for being strong here nor did I heard or see anything. Also their approach for autonomous driving is to program 35 algorithms (Audi's comment I a Video) that should span all possible driving scenarios a car will have.

Thats unrealistic and shows do me that they may not even have understand the complexity of autonomous driving challenge. Finally Lidar is nothing that will help you to solve the challenges also often reiterated by them. Show me an Audi that drives coast to coast on L5 and I start to believe....

 

[vigleik]

I believe the above numbers are expected by the market. Most people agree with those numbers.

Here is the current analysts' estimate on Yahoo:
Q3 revenue 6.06B earnings -0.45
Q4 revenue 6.74B earnings 0.74
2019 revenue 28.3B earnings 2.87
I feel their revenue estimate is pretty close. I guess Q3 will be slightly GAAP positive instead of a loss, it all depends on how the delivery goes. A few thousand extra cars get delivered by the end of September or delay into October could make a difference.

For short term trading, charts and some technical indicators are more reliable at predicting stock moves.

Two points:

1. Delivering 80,000 cars in Q3 is not, according to the back of my envelope, compatible with revenue of 6.06B. So unless Tesla misses on deliveries, revenue will come in above analyst estimates.
2. Those earnings estimates are, I believe, non-GAAP. The GAAP numbers are typically about $1 lower, so slightly GAAP positive (which is what most of us are expecting) is a really big beat.

Not an advice, and all that.

 

[gora321]

Green here (Europe). Those dips have less and less effect.

 

[Yggdrasill]

Every dip moves shares from weak longs to strong longs. So, over time, baseless FUD will tend to have less and less effect.

 

[UnknownSoldier]

More to the point, at some point people actually do figure out the FUD is FUD and start to ignore it. The Boy Who Cried Wolf is a thing after all. It doesn't matter if you're strong or weak, or even if you're long or short. All the smart shorts have known a long time that the FUD is FUD, they are just trading the swings or slowly covering during dips. I don't know why they come in here and try to spread their FUD knowing that nobody in this thread, including themselves, believes any of it. Well actually I do know, a lot of the FUD-spreaders are paid by the post to spread it constantly on all forms of Internet social media.

 

[jeewee3000]

Every dip moves shares from weak longs to strong longs. So, over time, baseless FUD will tend to have less and less effect.

And some weaker longs are quite strong longs right now. The FOMO prior to two positive quarters is very tangible.

 

[Words of HABIT]

Fundamentals ~ Charts 101
.....Again, while the shorts say show me the money, I say show me the competition.

Keep in mind the Model K, pickup, BFT (truck), and newer roadster are on the horizon. FYI ~ when they go into production, please pull out the existing production ramp up charts of the S, X, and 3 from zero to . . . so no one, except the shorts get their hair on fire. Actually, I hope it is their dollars.

It was a good recovery day!

No wonder TSLA is up, Tesla just announced a new model.

 

[avoigt]

Best crash test results ever! Looks like the X did not even flip.

The story is: "He crashed with his Model X in a landing plane with 3 DEA Agents in it"

Thats one of the stories no one will ever believe...

 

[Fact Checking]

Best crash test results ever! Looks like the X did not even flip.

The story is: "He crashed with his Model X in a landing plane with 3 DEA Agents in it"

Thats one of the stories no one will ever believe...

BTW., I guess the DEA pilot who got into that emergency is relieved as well that they crashed into a Model X: had they collided with some other car they might have seriously injured the occupants!

 

[Fact Checking]

NASDAQ pre market price action in the European session:

• NASDAQ futures are up to yesterday's daily high in the trading session, which is bullish
• Dow futures are up too by about 6 points
• In low volume trading $TSLA just broke through the $300 price level, with some trades at $301, which is a pretty rare occurrence in the pre-market, as major lines of resistance are rarely breached.

If these trends continue then these are green macro and bullish signs for $TSLA trading today.

 

[gora321]

Best crash test results ever! Looks like the X did not even flip.

The story is: "He crashed with his Model X in a landing plane with 3 DEA Agents in it"

Thats one of the stories no one will ever believe...

The optimistic look would be: There are so many Teslas on the streets that you cannot avoid them even if emergency occurs.