TSLA - Tesla Motors

[Walter]

Down 48% this year. Wild ride. Not far behind Bitcoin on the year.

Better than F&P healthcare in $nz terms and I'm not convinced that's not getting into buy territory soon.

[Walter]

I'm a long term investor, so hope that Dassets is correct as I'm well underweight Tesla and could do with lower prices to top up into. I give FSD, the robot, model 2, robotaxi, Cybertruck, Semi, battery improvements, HVAC, renewable production and storage an above zero chance of happening. If some of them happen profitably at scale the current share price appears cheap.

[pedro.nz]

And maybe in 2024...

"Elon Musk confirmed during the conference on the new quarterly figures that Tesla’s focus is now on the development of a new platform for smaller electric cars.
The goal with Tesla’s third platform, following those for the Model S/X and Model 3/Y, is to halve costs"

[Crypto Crude]

Tesla the most overvalued and overhyped stock in the history of the share market....

[Dassets]

I cannot see how it would be remotely possible to have a new platform anywhere near ready in 2024 which incidentally begins in 14 months. The amount of testing alone is over a year. Tesla have not been rapido when bringing new products to commercial markets. Tesla also doesn't have the plant for it and to even order it some sort of product development will have had to occur. The reality is Tesla has squandered what may have been a first mover competitor advantage on the real volume market. At a guess there will be 40 examples from other manufacturers in the space before Tesla's one sees the light of day. That is a fundamental mistake IMO.

Walter TSLA is 1.8% of the S&P 500 so it won't be hard to get to market weight in your portfolio. I, however, wouldn't invest in a company whose strategy relies on if they role out something at scale profitably. The Semi is nothing. BYD, for instance, has been selling that product for years as have others. Cybertruck's styling is just terrible. FSD is basically dead. Renewable energy is not a new concept , neither are robots, trying to make batteries outperform the laws of physics and chemistry, HVAC ok? I don't dislike Tesla at all but when I look at it with investment glasses on I don't like what I see.

[Walter]

Thanks Dassets, I appreciate your point of view.

I'm just more optimistic that Tesla will continue to grow than you are. I own BYD, but if the Tesla Semi if half as good as Elon claims, it will wipe the floor of the similar BYD trucks. Tesla say they will produce 50,000 a year in 2024. You suggest no chance, I think some possibility. There are huge tailwinds, unless the new Government post midterms smashes them. Let's see how Pepsi get on in December.

You think no work has been done on Model Q, yet there is a design studio that has been operating in Shanghai for some time. Elon has also given a timeframe for it's release. It's unlikely they will deliver on time, but it will happen.

Cybertruck reportedly has more than 2 million orders. If only 10% of them actually pony up, that is still a big market. I think it could canabalise some of Tesla's other sales. Let's see if they produce in 2023.

FSD makes steady progress, 160,000 are using Beta now. I've seen it go from often wrong, to usually right.

Renewable is ramping quickly; they now have the capacity to produce faster. Tesla has a huge backlog of orders.

Marc Raibert, Chair and founder of Bosten Dynamics, disagrees with you about Tesla's robot. The target market at AI day broadly seems to agree. Many robots are available, Tesla's goal is to reduce the cost.

On historical earnings the shareprice as gone from nose bleed to expensive. None the less I can see a path to the current price being reasonable or even cheap. Some reasonable bulls suggest the 2024 PE is in the 20s. My biggest concerns are China and Elon's mouth.

[pedro.nz]

Yes, my thanks you both for your comments - good to read and weigh up same.

Another short-term factor is that it appears Musk has not had to sell any more shares to purchase Twitter, and so the removal of that overhang should have a positive affect pretty soon methinks...

[Walter]

Today trees are being felled for the next German expansion. Tesla can't have been too put off by German bureaucracy and fake Green outrage. Part one was meant to ramp up to 500,000 cars a year, so starting on part two suggests Tesla is optimistic about Europe.

[Dassets]

Thanks Dassets, I appreciate your point of view.

I'm just more optimistic that Tesla will continue to grow than you are. I own BYD, but if the Tesla Semi if half as good as Elon claims, it will wipe the floor of the similar BYD trucks. Tesla say they will produce 50,000 a year in 2024. You suggest no chance, I think some possibility. There are huge tailwinds, unless the new Government post midterms smashes them. Let's see how Pepsi get on in December.

You think no work has been done on Model Q, yet there is a design studio that has been operating in Shanghai for some time. Elon has also given a timeframe for it's release. It's unlikely they will deliver on time, but it will happen.

Cybertruck reportedly has more than 2 million orders. If only 10% of them actually pony up, that is still a big market. I think it could canabalise some of Tesla's other sales. Let's see if they produce in 2023.

FSD makes steady progress, 160,000 are using Beta now. I've seen it go from often wrong, to usually right.

Renewable is ramping quickly; they now have the capacity to produce faster. Tesla has a huge backlog of orders.

Marc Raibert, Chair and founder of Bosten Dynamics, disagrees with you about Tesla's robot. The target market at AI day broadly seems to agree. Many robots are available, Tesla's goal is to reduce the cost.

On historical earnings the shareprice as gone from nose bleed to expensive. None the less I can see a path to the current price being reasonable or even cheap. Some reasonable bulls suggest the 2024 PE is in the 20s. My biggest concerns are China and Elon's mouth.

Incidentally I didn't expect he needed to sell any more stock. Basically he got more cash from the earlier sales than almost anyone calculates. Why? People said he needed to pay tax on any of the stock sold that came from converted employee/exec/director options. Simple? No. Elon made a disclosure in February 22 that he donated 5.044M shares to an unnamed charity 3 MONTHS EARLIER!! Yes he had already exited stock and delayed the disclosure for 3 months. I wonder whether the unnamed charity could have been the Musk Foundation, set up to invest in renewables research and space. Now that stock was almost certainly sold at the time of gifting. The gifting generated a nice tax credit for Elon.

It staggers me that investors and analysts can't even pick up these details. Average work all round. That 3 month delay between disposal and disclosure is unreal especially given Elon's direct sale into the market later. Wow, was he maybe pulling the wool over people's eyes to protect later selling? A cynic would think that was possible.

All docs supporting the disposal to the charity and timing were filed with the SEC where you can find them.

BTW analysts will need to downgrade again next year as Cybertruck is not going to meet embedded forecasts next year of circa 80,000 after the announcement that it won't be assembled in quantity until late next year.

[Walter]

Dassets, isn't part of your thesis that Cybertruck will not sell in any quantity? Who has an 80,000 Cybertruck forecast for next year? Bulls like James Stephenson forecast about 30,000 next year and expect Tesla to make a loss on them.