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

[jhm]

After my kid goes away to college, I might like to get a Tesla Bot to sit around the house.

 

[Artful Dodger]

- why is anyone expecting a $25k Tesla anytime in the next 2 years?

Because during the 2019 AGM Q&A session, Elon told us they plan on a $25K compact car in 2023 or '24 if things go well.

Did you not know this, or did you forget? Or ignoring it because it's 3.5 years old?

 

[CHGolferJim]

That was the first Tesla call of any type over many years, when I didn't come off the call buzzing with excitement and itching to buy more shares. Record car deliveries, record revenues, record margins, record earnings and 50%+ annual growth affirmed - I know, I know, how is that not amazing! I suppose because there was so much emphasis on things that might happen in the future. Personally, I'm discounting the "things that might happen in the future" and concentrating on cars in my valuation model. That is still pointing to a mult-trillion dollar company within a very few years, along with a share price of several thousand dollars. My investment is safe. Maybe I need a bigger brain to understand robots and so on. I certainly need another coffee.

Reading the transcript is valuable to be able to notice all the details which were many.

 

[nativewolf]

From today's Telegraph business page

View attachment 760863

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VW is rotten in its core. Rotten. Worse than Toyota (which is probably GJ backer) and worse than GM. Rotten. I hope they are the first to fail

 

[wooter]

See, NYC has insane cost to owning your own car. And fantastic public transit that nearly always gets you there significantly faster. Plus a ton of cabs and ubers if you really want to be in a car.

And yet nearly 50% of the population own at least 1 car.


So this has me with a lot of trouble buying the idea 9 out of 10 folks in all the other places it's much easier and cheaper to own your own car will just stop owning cars nationwide with robotaxis.


The only thing on your list I find likely is a fair # of 2-3 car households might drop down to 1 or 2 (depending on needs and household size)

I certainly expect RTs, once common, safe, and easily available everywhere, to replace individually owned cars better than 1:1, but find all these 5:1 or 10:1 ratios pretty unrealistic...

Valid arguments, and it is dependent on demography.

In The Netherlands, EV's are massively popular as company cars because they receive tax advantages. In nearby Belgium, EV's aren't as popular but they receive similar tax advantages.

However, I do not see it too far fetched that over time, people will question the need of owning a second car. Certainly if the second or first car comes with additional costs for parking.

If robocabs are available. Because for instance, Uber has a hard time landing in Belgium because of strict regulation, pretty much blocking anyone from driving Uber as a second job, part-time or even hobby. If you want to drive Uber, you need to 100% commit to driving Uber, and follow rigorous rules identical to other taxi drivers and taxi companies. And at that point, Uber isn't cheap for people looking for a ride, and doesn't bring in enough money for people to have it as a full time job.

 

[mongo]

Also not mentioned, making that final tranche “probable” means that Tesla believes it will sustain 30% auto GM so as to satisfy the final requirement for Elon’s comp package. That gives him a 1.000 batting average on all milestones and means he has unlocked the full comp package. I can’t wait to see what milestones are attached to his next package.

They were referring to the final 2 tranches of the 2018 plan, each of which are 8.44 million shares or so.

The 2012 plan has 2,637,455 shares unvested.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Tsla absolutely needs the $25K car for europe, it’s absolutely needed in our cities. They’ll probably sell a lot of these with all options at $40K.

Completely agree. I'm looking forward to the announcement of Giga Bratislava by the end of 2022: complete knockdown kit / final assembly of the MiC Model 2. LFP blade batteries FTW.

 

[nativewolf]

Because during the 2019 AGM Q&A session, Elon told us they plan on a $25K compact car in 2023 or '24 if things go well.

Did you not know this, or did you forget? Or ignoring it because it's 3.5 years old?

EM says a lot of things.. Like DOJO is going to blow us all away...oh...then it won't. Or FSD is next year...for 4 years running. He should stop talking about future products that his engineering teams are not ready to launch.

 

[The Accountant]

Since you're debunking Q accounting fraud tales, here's Standstill Capitals own toilet boy explaining how free cash flow was really about $0 this quarter-

https://twitter.com/x/status/1486496765821870083

LOL - he said "essentially".

He cherry picks numbers from the cash flow to make an incorrect point.
Let's see if I can do the same with the P&L:

 

[Boomer19]

Because during the 2019 AGM Q&A session, Elon told us they plan on a $25K compact car in 2023 or '24 if things go well.

Did you not know this, or did you forget? Or ignoring it because it's 3.5 years old?

well, on the bright side, there’s still ~12-24 months!

i do think it’s pointless to reveal now and take millions of orders, only to make everyone wait 2 years. (we’ll be waiting 3-3.5 years for the first CTs - that’s kinda silly). but right now, there’s no alternative (rivian/lightning, meh) so tesla gets away with it.

they’d probaly get away with the 25k as well, but it’s just not helpful, and probably reduces orders on 3/Y, plus where they getting batteries to make millions of cars in next 2 years? and also in 2019 (even though elon predicted the Y would outsell the 3) they may have underestimated the demand for 3/Y (zack said how surprised they were with demand in q3 call). and nobody could have predicted covid and it’s impacts stimulus/rates/supply chain/labor in 2019

bottom line. fundamentally we in good spot. but with the macro environment it’s like being valedictorian at summer school. for now.
when we bust out of this storm tesla will have navigated it better than anyone (who is in a better financial position right now to deal with this global mess?) and will eviscerate the “competition”. i don’t like waiting… but what can we do?

 

[Krugerrand]

I don't need 5 pages

1. According to many comments here Tesla has gone to the dogs
2. See avatar

QED

Unacceptable. Not handwritten, not double spaced, and questionable if that can be considered an essay since you didn’t even use punctuation. Though your points are valid.

If in 6 months I have not chosen the keeper of my fortune upon my death, you may try again.

 

[larmor]

I really liked the conference call: it is the kind of call i was looking for many years from Tesla. Confident on growth and many orders. Others have mentioned above there was no problem with cell supply. Bringing a cheaper car, while exciting does not make a company profitable-- it would take years to get to econmies of scale and turn a profit.

Bringing a robot to market-- that is curious, but i'm sure Amazon is watching closely. There are many tasks which are difficult to automate both in warehouses and automobile manufucture. Was there a mention of how far along this was? Remember the model 3 production circles of hell? And even now Tesla mentioned how each factory still has capacity to increase production!!!?? How, more square footage or just faster production of thneeds. Connecting the dots, it appears Tesla is gearing up to increase production speed.

 

[MD70]

Personally I am disappointed about no news about the smaller/ cheaper car. However it makes sense to continue to focus on increasing output of the 3 and Y.

When Tesla gets to a point whereby the wait times are no more and they sell in most countries and reduced prices to the minimum they can, then we will know what the annual sales limit is for these vehicles.
(I would welcome estimates for the annual sales figures for both models at current prices if Tesla wasn’t supply constrained)
At that point FSD or no FSD, I would think a smaller vehicle is a must as it is ideal in many parts of the world outside the US.

Musk did say at the start of the call that they weren’t thinking about the cheaper vehicle as to much on their plate right now and then later on he suggested no need for it, so it does seem contradictory.

 

[Artful Dodger]

TSLA has staged somewhat of a rally in the late pre-Market to pull even with Macros:

Here's the NASDAQ realtime chart from 09:08 hrs ET:

And here's the Pre-Market Summary: (strong Vol, now at 1.45M shares)

TSLA Pre-Market Quotes Live​

This page refreshes every 30 seconds.
Data last updated Jan 27, 2022 09:12 AM ET.

Consolidated Last Sale (15-min delay)	$943.25 +5.84 (+0.62%)
Pre-Market Volume	1,453,145
Pre-Market High	$949.38 (09:08:36 AM)
Pre-Market Low	$919 (04:11:11 AM)

 

[Singuy]

EM says a lot of things.. Like DOJO is going to blow us all away...oh...then it won't. Or FSD is next year...for 4 years running. He should stop talking about future products that his engineering teams are not ready to launch.

I don't believe Elon said anything about Dojo that is different than AI day.

 

[thx1139]

Because during the 2019 AGM Q&A session, Elon told us they plan on a $25K compact car in 2023 or '24 if things go well.

Did you not know this, or did you forget? Or ignoring it because it's 3.5 years old?

Are you saying 2023 or 2024 are out of the question? I certainly dont think so. Tesla is in a very different place now. They cant keep up at all with Model 3 and Model Y production so producing a new vehicle soon is a distraction, maybe not best word, that would slow the number of vehicles getting into hands. Unveiling the $25K car is also just asking to osborne Model 3 sales. Wouldnt it be far better to continue to design and even create a test production line and iron out the process and when the unveil the $25K car they also announce deliveries begin in say 3 months. In the meantime they sell every vehicle they make months in advance and they have levers to pull. Like a SR Model Y in the US. Move Model 3 to structural pack and castings bringing down the cost to produce and lowering price if they need to pump up demand.

 

[ggies07]

Man this thread got weird real fast. Initial call thoughts:

- why is anyone expecting a $25k Tesla anytime in the next 2 years?

Because of what he said:

Musk: Cheaper Tesla ready 'in about three years'

Plans for lower-cost batteries and a $25,000 car failed to excite investors and firm's value fell by $50bn.

www.bbc.com

At a live presentation that Mr Musk labelled 'Battery Day' he also teased the possibility of a $25,000 (£19,600), fully-autonomous Tesla "in about three years time".

That doesn't mean a 60k car + 12k for FSD so that in 10 years you make a profit right?

 

[MP3Mike]

I did not get a sense from the call that chip supply is a likely limiting issue this year. What I heard was something like: “Yes, it’s still a pain-in-the-rear thing we need to manage, but we are managing around it, and during the year we expect the chip shortage to ease.”

@Sancho How do you rectify that against this statement in the slide deck:

Our own factories have been running below capacity for several quarters as supply chain became the main limiting factor, which is likely to continue through 2022.

So they are still expecting supply chain, most likely chips, to limit how many vehicles they can make this year.

 

[CHGolferJim]

I really liked the conference call: it is the kind of call i was looking for many years from Tesla. Confident on growth and many orders. Others have mentioned above there was no problem with cell supply. Bringing a cheaper car, while exciting does not make a company profitable-- it would take years to get to econmies of scale and turn a profit.

Bringing a robot to market-- that is curious, but i'm sure Amazon is watching closely. There are many tasks which are difficult to automate both in warehouses and automobile manufucture. Was there a mention of how far along this was? Remember the model 3 production circles of hell? And even now Tesla mentioned how each factory still has capacity to increase production!!!?? How, more square footage or just faster production of thneeds. Connecting the dots, it appears Tesla is gearing up to increase production speed.

Having just read the transcript, I believe they said batteries would be considered a bottleneck if not for the greater impact currently from the chip shortage. Once the latter recedes, the former becomes the issue.

 

[thx1139]

@Sancho How do you rectify that against this statement in the slide deck:



So they are still expecting supply chain, most likely chips, to limit how many vehicles they can make this year.

But they also expect to be well above 50% growth and can do that with just Fremont and Shanghai.