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

[StealthP3D]

I'm pretty sure I heard buy and die, or if you just can't manage that, buy and forget.

I suggest it should be called "buy and really live"!

'Cause it's pretty hard to live when you're stressing over every downdraft with your finger hovering over the "sell" button.

 

[Causalien]

All time high again but single-digit ATHs don´t count any more I guess.

Good to take a look back once in a while to see where we have come from!

View attachment 561687

Been a long road buddy.

 

[Off Shore]

The SP is around $1400, all news is good, and you guys are wasting your evening arguing about service issues? I again strongly recommend the Ignore button.

And I'll drop the obligatory reminder that the Ignore button, marvelous as it is, doesn't do much good if everybody keeps engaging. Thank you all for your restraint.

 

[mickificki]

You keep ranting. So what? Tesla is concentrating on improving quality and efficiency rather than spending on increasing superchargers and service centers more rapidly. You may not agree with this, but there's no doubt that it's the right way to do things if Tesla can make it work. They're aiming high. That's what they do. They always fall short. That's what they do. But in the process what they achieve is way better than the competition.

It is in fact totally wonderful that most of the time if there's something wrong with your car that they can take care of it without you even having to notice beyond setting up a time and place. Not all the time, but every single time they do this it's incomparably better than their competition.

Yeah, they're never as perfect as they can be. And their communication and logistics still suck. Complain about that. Complaining that you don't like their priorities in spending money is just stupid.

EDIT: And any assumption that they need to grow any infrastructure at the same rate as delivered vehicles is also just plain stupid. They know exactly what stresses on the existing infrastructure they are seeing.

 

[Artful Dodger]

“The Great Tesla Re-Rating” - Morgan Stanley Ups TSLA Price Targets

 

[Sancho]

I’m super bullish about Tesla in the near and longer terms. The SP could keep rising from here.

But we are entering a truly treacherous earnings season. Earnings forecasts have been slashed, so there could be positive surprises. But the numbers should be gruesome across the board. And few companies are going to be able to give guidance for the next quarter to counteract the decimated revenues and profits.

So I have enough dry powder to take advantage of a dip caused by macro headwinds.

But if TSLA instead jumps to $2000, I have enough invested to at least go in halfsies with someone here who wants to buy an island. Can I have the winter months?

 

[kengchang]

Thanks for the jackass advice. I do not plan to follow it.

It might sound harsh but why in the world would you exercise 2022 Call? I will take it off your hand by delivering 100 shares

 

[Ocelot]

This is going to sound likes it's completely unrelated to the topic. But it's not.

Happy people find less grievances in daily life and they experience less 'bad luck'. Unhappy people find more grievances in daily life and they experience more 'bad luck'.

Person complains of service, stating facts.
Person who presumably does not know other person, says in essence they are unhappy and it’s all in their perception. Not facts.

 

[Nurkbonis]

Only reason I'm thinking about it is to minimize risk. Then, I'd buy some shares and another call.

It might sound harsh but why in the world would you exercise 2022 Call? I will take it off your hand by delivering 100 shares

 

[Buckminster]

Would love some opinions from anyone willing on what I should do.

I have two 6/17/22 leaps. One is $1,015 and one is $1,100. I'm up $61k on one and $57k on the other.

My option goal was to acquire more shares, but I don't have $100k+ I can blow by exercising them, so I am thinking of selling one and taking half the money and buying shares, then buying another another leap with the other half.

I'm looking at a 9/17/21 $2,000 call, which looks like it'd cost me about $28k. If I sold the $1,100 call for about $62k, that'd leave me with about $34,000 to buy shares.

I'd then have:

- 9/17/21 $2,000 call
- 6/17/22 $1,015
- 24ish new shares purchased
- My existing shares

I know it's my decision, but I'd like to bounce this idea off some other people with option experience.

It seems like a good time to sell, buy shares and another call.

Just curious if anyone has any thoughts.

Why is your goal to buy shares? Why not keep what you have?

 

[oldTAVguy]

I’m super bullish about Tesla in the near and longer terms. The SP could keep rising from here.

But we are entering a truly treacherous earnings season. Earnings forecasts have been slashed, so there could be positive surprises. But the numbers should be gruesome across the board. And few companies are going to be able to give guidance for the next quarter to counteract the decimated revenues and profits.

So I have enough dry powder to take advantage of a dip caused by macro headwinds.

But if TSLA instead jumps to $2000, I have enough invested to at least go in halfsies with someone here who wants to buy an island. Can I have the winter months?

Sure you can have the winter months. I have a nice Canadian island in mind.

 

[Krugerrand]

Person complains of service, stating facts.
Person who presumably does not know other person, says in essence they are unhappy and it’s all in their perception. Not facts.

Let me refresh your memory what his personal complaints were:

Mine has been in 3 times... Once was to correct a delivery issue (same day as delivery, so at least I didn't have to wait).... second was to replace a windshield since nobody but Tesla around here does Tesla windshield replacement.... third was the HW3 upgrade.

I've also had 2 ranger visits (one to deliver and program a keycard since they forgot to actually include a second one at delivery and had to order one, and this was back when a tesla tech had to program them) and once for the charge pin recall and to address a rattle on the seatbelt attachment.

The second ranger visit took 2 tries BTW- first time they "confirmed" the appointment the night before via text, for 8AM the following morning. Then 30 minutes before 8AM the tech texts me saying he has no idea why this is on his schedule as he's in an entirely different city 100 miles away the entire day doing other work and he'd be in my area the following week instead. (Again- tesla is pretty incompetent at logistics stuff).

Complaint 1 caused the OP to um...not be put out.
Complaint 2 is somehow Tesla's fault that a windshield got damaged and Tesla was the only business in the OP's area that could replace it?
Complaint 3 was a FREE upgrade, which includes FREE make his car better for as long as he owns the car.
Complaint 4 was about an extra keycard, which got delivered to the OP at his home. OP not put out.
Complaint 5 was also addressed at the OP's home. OP not put out.

Gee, yeah. What a horrible, awful experience all of which could be rectified by 25 more service centers and superchargers within a 1 mile radius of the OP's home.

 

[FrankSG]

Would love some opinions from anyone willing on what I should do.

I have two 6/17/22 leaps. One is $1,015 and one is $1,100. I'm up $61k on one and $57k on the other.

My option goal was to acquire more shares, but I don't have $100k+ I can blow by exercising them, so I am thinking of selling one and taking half the money and buying shares, then buying another another leap with the other half.

I'm looking at a 9/17/21 $2,000 call, which looks like it'd cost me about $28k. If I sold the $1,100 call for about $62k, that'd leave me with about $34,000 to buy shares.

I'd then have:

- 9/17/21 $2,000 call
- 6/17/22 $1,015
- 24ish new shares purchased
- My existing shares

I know it's my decision, but I'd like to bounce this idea off some other people with option experience.

It seems like a good time to sell, buy shares and another call.

Just curious if anyone has any thoughts.

Where do you see Sep'21 $2,000s? I only see them going up to $1,880.

TSLA - Tesla Stock Options Prices - Barchart.com

 

[mekberg]

A lot of service is now done on the customer site using mobile service, reducing the need for brick and mortar service centers.

I really hope they kit out Cybertrucks for mobile service in place of the Ford vans they have in my area.

 

[Krugerrand]

Prepared people are happier in life. Unprepared are not.
I don't know if others are experiencing the same thing, but among my friend group, things are getting very real this month. It was very happy during June when people were released from the lock down, but just a month later. Breakups and lay-offs are hitting one after another. It is hard to get in the right mood to console them when you are giddy all the time from winning. I decided to just stay away and let the others do the consoling.

Prepared for what? If we're talking about socking some money away in good times in case something unexpected happens like a job loss, an illness, etc... well, yes of course. That's just smart. Or some other unexpected expense; new roof, new furnace, new car...also yes.

 

[Knightshade]

So your issue is with the inaccuracy of their "promises" and you're concerned about the cost of catching up. Fair enough.

Pretty much- yeah.

As I say I don't even really blame them for deciding missing all the targets was worth the cost savings and they could "fix" it later.

But now it's later- so probably considering the catch-up costs would be worth doing as regards how the numbers will look going forward for a while.

Agreed, and I'm sure Tesla would agree, although we might quibble about the word "underfund" when demand was robust.

Well, just underfund in the sense they'd need to catch up on it later.... and since it seems, you, I, and you're sure Tesla, would all agree they need to do that- again there's a cost to it. So that probably factors into future cashflow to at least SOME degree.

I'm not mad. Some folks here are touchy about possible FUDsters because we've seen so many of them.

Clearly

And I appreciate your much more rational approach of considering the actual words I wrote instead of inventing arguments I never mad and being upset by them.

I agree your question is reasonable, but I'm not worried about it because Tesla's cash flow is about to explode. I vaguely recall reading years ago that a Supercharger station costs around $300k (contrasting with millions for a hydrogen station). You can buy lots of those with billions in cash flow.

Well, they also have a factory in Texas to build... and the one in Germany underway... and the one in China expanding... and the eventual expansion of GF Nevada to make roadrunner tech in much larger quantities (or building entire new factories to do so if they start throwing up terafactories)


Using your 300k number on superchargers, Tesla had been saying they wanted to increase their numbers at least 50% year over year all those years they kept missing their targets.

If we go with that notion, and that they're at 18k now... (which was their original 2018 target, finally reached mid-2020)- a 50% bump is 9000 more to build this year

So let's say 300k per 8 stalls and they want 9k stalls, that's still 337.5 million bucks this year.... and it's be significantly more year over year if they stuck to that rate. They probably wouldn't in countries already heavily built out (the US for example)- but they'll need to if they wanna keep expanding to new countries and markets (Eastern europe and India for example)

It's not billions but it's also not nothing.

And it's not building any additional service or delivery centers either-Not sure the cost on that- any estimate you're aware of appreciated...

Also there's cost on expanding to any new countries where they'll need to build all 3 things starting from 0.

And since Elon has said they're looking to keep the business profitable Q over Q going forward- not just cash flow positive but net profit- a few hundred million here and there and eventually you're talking real money


Again none of this is hard- and I don't think any of it will "hold back" the company or anything... but it seems like a non-trivial cost that'll need to be significantly higher in coming years than in previous ones that gets little to no mention.



One area BTW Tesla was very smart is 18 months into the 3 rollout they were able to drastically reduce the
recommended/required maintenance on all their vehicles from what it originally looked like on the S/X in earlier days.

(I'm going with the optimistic view the engineers and data supported that it wasn't needed at all- not the cynical one that they just determined it wasn't needed to make it out of the warranty period )


That alone likely reduced service center workload enough to make delaying keeping service locations up with fleet numbers viable significantly longer than otherwise.

Plus the side benefit of making TCO even more appealing compared to ICE vehicles.

The SP is around $1400, all news is good, and you guys are wasting your evening arguing about service issues?

Not really.

I asked a question about the financial impact of Tesla eventually needing to ramp service and charger deployments at a higher rate in the future than they have in the last few years.

A pretty straightforward money/business question that would potentially impact company finances and was curiouis to what degree.

Then some fanboys made up some stuff I never said and attacked the strawman they'd built.

Thankfully at least a few folks read my actual words and were open to rational discussion

 

[DaveT]

I made this offer to both my adult children yesterday
Buy 10 shares of tesla.
If you sell in the future for less then you paid, I will give you the difference and add the percent the nasdaq went up in that period. They also would get to write off the loss.
For me, I get them involved with the greatest company on earth, and in the unlikely event that they sell someday at a loss, my tesla holdings have given me more money then I could ever spend.
This way they earn their own money instead instead of inheriting all of it. I am probably going to make this offer every month and lend them the money if they ever need it.
In 2016 when I started buying Tesla my wife and I committed to giving the stock to our children when we die.We are sticking to that. We will NEVER sell a single share. In a small way we are helping our children inherit a better world.

.Did I miss anything? How does this sound?

I made an offer like this to my parents back in May 2013. If they bought xxxx shares of TSLA and held for 5 years, then I would accept all losses, if any. All appreciation they would take. Let me tell you, lots of things happened during those 5 years and it wasn’t easy for them to keep all their shares. And it was stressful at times for me as well. If I had to do it over, I would have structured the agreement entirely differently.

 

[MC3OZ]

I asked a question about the financial impact of Tesla eventually needing to ramp service and charger deployments at a higher rate in the future than they have in the last few years.

IMO Supercharging is not a big problem, paid Supercharging and the use of solar/batteries will make it closer to self-funding..

Service requires, real estate, money , trained staff and organisation... expansion will be slower due to the need to recruit, train and retain suitably qualified staff. But the money side is easier due to Tesla revenues....

I've said many times that Model Y will help with service expansion, simply because selling 2 X can fund 2 X service centres meaning more choice of location... getting 2 X trained and professional staff is the hard part...

I think overall this is not a problem, it is an opportunity, nothing like a shinny new Supercharger or Service Centre to get a prospective buyer off the fence. It is the one form of marketing that works every time you drive by...

So in the long run, Tesla needs to consider making these sites more visible ...

 

[Knightshade]

Let me refresh your memory what his personal complaints were:

Mine has been in 3 times... Once was to correct a delivery issue (same day as delivery, so at least I didn't have to wait).... second was to replace a windshield since nobody but Tesla around here does Tesla windshield replacement.... third was the HW3 upgrade.

I've also had 2 ranger visits (one to deliver and program a keycard since they forgot to actually include a second one at delivery and had to order one, and this was back when a tesla tech had to program them) and once for the charge pin recall and to address a rattle on the seatbelt attachment.

So far you have listed 0 actual "complaints"

Another person mentioned the # of service visits they'd had- and the reasons for them.

So I did the same.

The second ranger visit took 2 tries BTW- first time they "confirmed" the appointment the night before via text, for 8AM the following morning. Then 30 minutes before 8AM the tech texts me saying he has no idea why this is on his schedule as he's in an entirely different city 100 miles away the entire day doing other work and he'd be in my area the following week instead. (Again- tesla is pretty incompetent at logistics stuff).

Congrats! you did find an actual complaint.

A fairly reasonable one too.

A business confirming an in person appointment the night before- then the person the appointment is with calling you 30 minutes prior to say he's not showing up and there was never any chance of him doing so seems reasonable to complain about.

Why do you think it isn't?


Ironically one of the people bitching about my post actually told me "their communication and logistics still suck. Complain about that."- apparently not realizing that was literally the exact thing I was complaining about.

But apparently you disagree?

Complaint 1 caused the OP to um...not be put out.

And also wasn't actually a complaint in any way. Just a description of having had a service interaction that went fine.

Complaint 2 is

Also not actually a complaint. Just a description of having had a service interaction that went fine.

You seem really unclear what the word means.

Complaint 3 was a FREE upgrade, which includes FREE make his car better for as long as he owns the car.

[/QUOTE]

No, it wasn't. HW3 upgrade isn't free. It's only done if you paid for FSD

Were you not aware of this?

In any event, the only "complaint" involved was- again- repeated confirmations of scheduled appointments- which they would cancel at the last minute. 3 different times. Each time they had a different excuse for their lack of parts BTW, which the next guy cancelling changed the story on each time.

Complaint 4 was

Also not actually a complaint- just a description of having had a service interaction that went fine.


about an extra keycard, which got delivered to the OP at his home. OP not put out.

Complaint 5 was also addressed at the OP's home. OP not put out.

You mean besides the fact I got up a couple hours early since they'd confirmed by early appointment the night before- and stayed home from work to be there for it- and then the guy called 30 minutes before he was due to tell me he was 100 miles away and was never, ever, gonna be in my area today at all and would instead reschedule me for a week later when I'd again have to be home for him.

Bonus- when he showed up he informed me his dispatcher was upset he'd been honest with me the week before and instead told him he should've lied to me and said he had to reschedule due not to double-booking, but car trouble.


So again- in every case the actual service performed was perfectly fine and I didn't have any complaint at all about em.


But there were 2 issues of incompetent communication and poor logistics.



it's just stunning how little reading comprehension goes on here.

 

[printf42]

Tesla's goals and plans change all the time based on new information. This is agility. As @StealthP3D stated clearly, Tesla had more demand than they could handle despite their service problems and all the media FUD about it. So they spent the money and staff time on higher priority things.

I imagine management is quite aware that mainstream car buyers will be less forgiving of service problems than early adopters. I trust Tesla will cross that bridge when they come to it. They're not dumb, and they listen to customers.



You mean no excuse apart from running the business efficiently and taking care of first things first.

I guess one thing people often overlook is, service center is not a profit center for Tesla.

ICE OEM want to have Dealer Service Centers proportion to their fleet size, so they can continuously milk their customers through services. All while keep the reliability of their cars on a delicate balance between “profit on parts” and “drive away customers”.

While for Tesla the solution is to constantly improve their cars so they won’t need that many SC per fleet size.

My very limited interaction with service is I didn’t really see those legendary months long waiting time as everyone is bashing about.(Bodyshop is different, and part shortage is often caused by ramping up, not by bad service or lack of SCs.)

So unless at some time I myself got angry about their services, I don’t think Tesla would need to put too much resources into services.(putting resources into improving the cars would pay off better long term)