Spekulatius

I have owned the tire companies, before, Michelin. Sumitomo and Pirelli (a long time ago).I never liked GT because of their high leverage and because the company used to bleed market share over time. I need to look at them again.

I am looking at cheap car supplier stocks DLPH - the “ugly” part of the former Delphi after the Aptiva spinoff. DLPH product portfolio with drivetra8n components and electronics doesn’t look that bad though. Debt resulting from spinoff is a bit higher than I would like to see. They are supposed to do $4.7 in earnings this year. LEA - seat and electronics. I like the seat business, because it won’t be disrupted, is customer facing and there are only few global competiors in this space, the largest being ADNT. LEA has bought back a boatload of shares and trades at 8x earnings. ADNT - see above. Spinoff from Johnson controls. They currently have execution issues and looking for a permanent CEO. I would guess that thru make it through, since they are the largest supplier in the car seat business and the balance sheet still look OK I am not sure if those are better than auto stocks, as they are a bit pricier, but probably easier to create value, since they are smaller entities. I would like o hear the opinion of board members. The chart look toxic, but the business is doing reasonable well.

Woman on average have better returns than men accord8ng to a fidelity study. Men care about being right, woman care about returns. https://www.fidelity.com/about-fidelity/individual-investing/better-investor-men-or-women

There is a constant stream of packages from AMZN delivery centers to my house. Only my wife knows what’s in them. >:( I moved recently and bought a house, so discretionary items were home gym equipment, paint, several pieces of furniture, tools, pressure washer. A lawn tractor is probably next. I will also need winter tires.

I’d say on average activism is a good check on management. However, there are some problems associated with it (short-termism, maybe too much focus on cost cutting?). Also, it looks like Elliott is “walking the line” in terms of what is acceptable behavior. The Elliot activism looks like blackmail to me. They don’t win by arguments, they win by blackmailing and discrediting people. It’s a pretty lowlife way of making a living. Also potential harmful for him and his employers, friends or family, if he ever gets into issues with the wrong people who pay back in his own currency and up it a notch.

I think NWLI is a better company than KCLI and it deserves a higher multiple. I owned NWLI st around 35% of book and sold for a little more than 50% book - too early obviously.

The money in a box analogy is pretty good in this case. What would you pay for Per $ for money in a bank account controlled by someone else (for decades) yielding let say 3%? Certainly not a 100c on the $. 50c maybe? Even 70c on the $ would be too high.

I think a lot of the investment in electric cars will replace investment in ICE cars and will not be incremental. Investment in self driving car technology will be mostly incremental, simply because it is a new technology. Most of TESLA losses come from manufacturing and the spent to build the infrastructure for a new car manufacturer, not from R&D. A big car company like BMW or Daimler or GM can afford the same R&D spent than TSLA does.

Is is really? I do follow some gamers and there are way more viewers on YouTube than on twitch for those that stream on both simultaneously. From what I see YouTube has features to donate to players directly and better chat functions that Twitch has not yet implemented. This may depend on the player community and the game played. I see some players have 10k+ viewers in thr twitch app and they may not stream over YouTube. There is probably enough room for more players anyhow.

If cars can drive themselves, I would expect the numbers of miles driven to go up significantly. It is possible, that the self driving feature will increase the price of a car significantly. Driving up utilization is fine, but this doesn’t change the fact that most cars are used from 7-8AM and from 5-6PM weekdays for commuting. If you reduce the number of cars, it would mean shared drives or people would have to wait. I do agree that self driving cars will change the value proposition of a car. The key feature may be how well the self driving system works, not the mechanics of a car so much. However keep in mind that a self driving cars isn’t just software, it is and advanced sensor, electronics (radar, lidar (?) system where the software is part of the solution. The car makers have quite a bit of know how in system engineerinf using sensors and electronics, so I am guessing that the will take part of thr design of thr self driving feature. I don’t know how this plays out, but I do t think the self driving feature will make the cars itself a generic, like Windows did what PC’s. I don’t think that is likely the case.

So, how much are the effects of the PR hurricane hit still impacting the results? I get about $20M in OCF and $30M in Capex spent. FCF was -$15M last quarter, so we get $35M/ quarter? Revenues going up 2% vs -2%? Not exactly enticing. Next quarter, we get negative currency effects from the strong US$. At least the Hurricane season this year is below normal, so with a bit of luck, nothing in the Caribbean gets hit.

musk said the automotive industry has a lot of room for increased efficiency, I think he is learning achieving it is harder than he thought! Tesla is a poster child for inefficiency by any productivity measure. Elon also still thinks that no one can do a better job as CEO of Tesla than he does. The god complex is alive and well. I think him running the company has a lot to do with the failed production ramps.

The focus on quarterly earnings is in fact due to management being fixated and incentivized on it. It differs a lot from company to company too. Incentives explain almost everything.

The price isn’t $5, it’s $50 with free TV valued at $45. It’s very likely a promotion. Verizon has a broadband business (FIOS) and they are selling for way more than $5 - I know, because I am their customers. VZW can’t keep the price at $50 either be sure they need to pay the streaming company (GOOGL), so the $50 would be losing money for them. VZW is not know to give service away for free.

One thing about the SEC investigations that are going to occur us that it makes it much more difficult to raise debt or equity. I do t think that a call to Uncle Warren would work either.

^ I agree on what Liberty states . I have seen this burnout syndrome on a close relative and Elon appears to suffer from the same. He needs to acknowledge the problem and make changes. I think he needs to hire A CEO who can run Tesla without him being involved day by day and work in a technical and leadership role. Make no mistake, the burnout syndrome is a mental health issue already.

There are mandatory vehicle inspections in some states in the US as well. NY and MA have mandatory vehicle inspections and in fact, cars tend to be in a better shape than in CA for example where there are none. I am fairly certain that the average car age is higher when vehicle inspections are absent. What? Of course there mandatory car inspections in CA for emissions ( https://www.dmv.org/ca-california/smog-check.php ) Maybe you mean mechanical/safety inspections? But mechanical inspections are not as strict in MA as in EU and they don't check much. OTOH emission inspections are presumably stricter in CA (not sure about MA) than in (most?) EU. Yes, there are emission tests in CA, but those are easy to pass compared to emission and safety tests in MA and NY. You see a lot of non roadworthy cars in CA (yes, I am stereotyping, but you can tell that a 20 year old Buick’s driving with 50mph on a highway is probably driven by a Hispanic in CA). I don’t see these cars in NY or MA.

You can get the same prices (U.K.) in the US, if you go prepaid. Cellphone, Internet, cable TV have been expensive in the US forever, although prices in Europe are going up too. That’s the reason why CHTR and CMCSA are a much better business than LBTYA. As for TV, part of the reason was that TV wasn’t commercial and run like a public utility, that was paid by a viewers tax (at least in Germany). Private TV stations came up in the 80’s and had to finance themselves solely with ads. I think this kept prices low, but now we have premium channels (sports movies) that are subscription based.

There are mandatory vehicle inspections in some states in the US as well. NY and MA have mandatory vehicle inspections and in fact, cars tend to be in a better shape than in CA for example where there are none. I am fairly certain that the average car age is higher when vehicle inspections are absent.

Why so close to the money? If you believe this is binary ($0 or $420), then OTM puts are the way to go here. There have been plenty of deals recently too. I picked up some lottery tickets with a ~1,000:1 payoff. It was the day of the fake bid tweet and they still doubled. There are really two, three ways to look at these: 1) Buy near dated puts with almost no premium, continue to roll hoping for a blow up 2) Buy long dated ATM or ITM puts to avoid premium 3) Look for mis-pricings within date structures. (This is where I play, just another 'value' type thing). They do exist. What fascinates me is the whole short destruction thesis. Does Musk not realize that most likely 100% of the convertible holders are short the stock as a hedge? Couple that with options makers and there are a lot of shorts who are doing it for structural reasons. It blows me away that short sellers become a boogie man when companies fail to operate. Ah yes, short sellers are the cause of manufacturing and delivery disfunction. Why not get heads down focused on the business and let results take care of themselves? I firmly believe this is a donut the way Bear Stearns was. One day they're "fine" and then suddenly they're trading for a buck. Oddball: I've been playing around with these. Can you give an example of a 1,000 /1 shot? A financial can go broke much faster than an industrial. TSLA would need at least 2 quarters to go broke, if they weren’t able to raise any money. Likely they would be able to raise some equity or lawn some assets, so it would take longer. Far out of the money puts are not a speculation on deal breakage, which is what I was looking at, it’s a speculation that TSLA goes broke.

My favorite would be the German car makers Daimler and BMW.DE. Both trade at around 7x earnings, no debt if you separate out their finance arm and below tangible book. They paying dividends too - Daimler is around 6 %. Shrug. An alternative is buying the Exor conglomerate with holdings in FCAU, Race, CNHI and insurance( former Partner RE) at a ~40% discount.

I am guessing that software toolkit’s will be sold enabling to build a website that is compliant. could be a great business at least in the short run and probably sticky in the long run.

The ideal situation ( imo) would be if Elon would be one CTO and they would hire a competent CEO from the outside. I don’t think it would square with Elon’s ego however.

The halo effect is still working. Once it wears off, the pendulum could swing the other way.

Is their content library really that good? They haven’t done great with movies for a lobgvtine and Spongebob and MTV sent exactly exciting either Nickelodeon is dead because kids are watching YouTube nowadays. Go with best in class DIS, if you are bullish on content, imo.