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TSLA - Tesla Motors


Palantir

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Hhhmmmm... depends

 

If they need to start building it soon they will need to raise capital. If it starts running late because it's on "Elon Time" (i.e. Enthusiastic Mode) then they might have become profitable and be able to funnel those profits from the Model 3 into Giga3 in China.

 

People said all the same things about Amazon.com back in the day, and Bezos was subject to scathing analysts and short sellers too. It looked like they had a valid argument because Amazon had high costs and wasn't showing a profit, but Jeff just had a different plan.  8)

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Amazon has always had free cash flow; they just invest through the income statement. To compare their business model to Musk's (which is to operate a car company: low gross margins, low ROIC) misses a lot of things.

 

To put this in context, they just signed a MOI, which isn't an actual agreement. Further, they've announced this China plant story before like 2 years ago and it led to nothing.

They also have to get the capital to build production for the semi, and the Model Y, so when you add it all together it is a HUGE amount of capital they require to meet the promises they've made. Add to that the track record of consistently coming up late/short/with worse quality than promised, and I don't see how this all plays out as promised. 

 

The real risk for Musk is that the US hits a slowdown sometime in the next 2-3 years when he has to raise all of this capital and then can't. This thing is built on a house of cards (negative working capital, no free cash, capital intensive and highly cyclical industry etc.) and will like fall hard in any real selloff.

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Yes, a company with negative cash flow and a junk credit rating will build one of the largest auto plants in an industry that is insanely capital intensive. I'll believe that when I enjoy my Tesla Candy while traveling on the hyperloop.

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Yes, a company with negative cash flow and a junk credit rating will build one of the largest auto plants in an industry that is insanely capital intensive. I'll believe that when I enjoy my Tesla Candy while traveling on the hyperloop.

 

You mean the underground Hyperloop built by the Boring Company... on Mars.

 

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There may be no pedal if that one was built under the tent in the rush days of late June? Maybe that the red cable won't be fully connected to the battery?

 

Then Musk having nothing better to do, called for the build-out of a submarine to rescue kids in Thailand. Once it arrived, the kids had all been securely evacuated.  ::)

 

Cardboard

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Watching the Tesla story unfold is really something.

 

Some of the latest developments are: the employee Elon Musk publicly accused of being a saboteur has now filed a whistle blower claim with the SEC, he is using the high profile lawyer who handled the Monsanto whistleblower case (Stuart Meissner). Meissner has gone on twitter accusing Tesla of making false mass shooter reports about his client to the police. And just today it seems many of the California elites who had been praising the cars are now turning on Tesla after propublica revealed Elon Musk is a major Republican donor.

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-11/ex-tesla-worker-escalates-legal-battle-by-blowing-whistle-to-sec

 

 

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Here's a video that talks about the model 3. In it is a guy who tore a couple to bits and really know what he's doing. Would recommend if you wanna know about the 3 or are into cars in general. Really interesting stuff.

 

 

A few takeaways:

 

1. The electronics and the battery are really, really good.

 

2. The suspension and balance is really good.

 

3. The mechanical and FFQ bits suck.

 

4. The manufacturing is bad. The bottom line is that this was a well thought out car put together by people by people who don't know how to make cars.

 

4.1 I'm sure I'm gonna confuse people a bit here about the design bit but stick with me. One part talked about that if Tesla were to have just designed the car - as in thought out the car. But then went to Magna and let them design and manufacture it. -- Design here refers to the physical design from an engineering and manufacturing point of view. Then they would have had the output they desired, the quality would be impeccable, and it would have been a phenomenal vehicle that would be hard to match in today's market.

 

5. There's no way they can make a model 3 for $35,000 and make money on it.

Subsequent video From Munro Associates came out today:

 

 

Took a U-Turn on margins.

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-16/tesla-model-3-critic-flips-view-sees-sedan-being-profitable

 

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I found that very interesting, though the margin he came up with through detailing the bill of materials presumably refers to the rear-wheel drive long-range models with premium package that they purchased for well over $50,000 and not at this stage to the $35,000 short range RWD version that hasn't yet been released. No way to be sure without purchasing his report! Also revealing that the BOM cost was far lower than the Chevy Bolt and the BMW i3 he compares it with.

 

I imagine, however, that the percentage margin with a much smaller battery and lighter car could be similar for the $35,000 but when you're capacity limited for production and not battery-supply limited, the dollar profit per car is likely to be lower for the cheaper one, so there's no sense in producing it until the backlog of high price orders is pretty much cleared.

 

Also interesting was the performance of the new battery cells. Apparently a 20% increase in size (does this mean volume or a linear dimension measure?) yet a 50% increase in power (I think power output, rather than energy density) and he was highly impressed, more so than his previous favorites from LG Chem and was it Samsung? One things Tesla does have going for it is control over the battery cell supply, ensuring it isn't supplier limited as the Bolt and Hyundai Ioniq seem to be.

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Is it just me, or does Elon Musk seem to be losing it?

 

The conference call. The Twitter battles with people short Tesla stock. The Thai Rescuer pedophile comment. The building cars in a tent in the parking lot.

 

It just seems that every time I've heard about him in the news in the last four months, his behavior/decisions seem bizarre and erratic. If I had to guess, I'd probably be willing to bet the wheels are coming off at the company and placing him under an immense amount of stress.

 

Maybe the signal to short?

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Is it just me, or does Elon Musk seem to be losing it?

 

The conference call. The Twitter battles with people short Tesla stock. The Thai Rescuer pedophile comment. The building cars in a tent in the parking lot.

 

It just seems that every time I've heard about him in the news in the last four months, his behavior/decisions seem bizarre and erratic. If I had to guess, I'd probably be willing to bet the wheels are coming off at the company and placing him under an immense amount of stress.

 

Maybe the signal to short?

 

It's not just you.  I've noticed the same thing.  I wouldn't short a stock like this (price driven by hype can kill you), but it was my signal to sell.  I'm completely out of TSLA now.

 

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It's not just you.  I've noticed the same thing.  I wouldn't short a stock like this (price driven by hype can kill you), but it was my signal to sell.  I'm completely out of TSLA now.

 

It's flat over the past year and down 20% from its highs. Meanwhile, momentum stocks have been crushing it this year. I think it's safe to say this isn't like shorting AMZN or NFLX anymore.

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It's not just you.  I've noticed the same thing.  I wouldn't short a stock like this (price driven by hype can kill you), but it was my signal to sell.  I'm completely out of TSLA now.

 

It's flat over the past year and down 20% from its highs. Meanwhile, momentum stocks have been crushing it this year. I think it's safe to say this isn't like shorting AMZN or NFLX anymore.

 

You can say it, but I'm not entirely sure it is safe to say it.  Not safe enough for me anyway.  People still like Musk, hell I still like the guy and hope he succeeds.  This could rally bigtime on even a tiny bit of good news.

 

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