33 ms·
Since, things are slow, my notes.... Misc: - Fremont plant idle since March 23rd - raised 2.3B in February, which seems really well timed now - Musk venting
by chollida1 7y ago
Since, things are slow, my notes....
Misc:
- Fremont plant idle since March 23rd
- raised 2.3B in February, which seems really well timed now
- Musk venting with "FREE AMERICA NOW" tweet makes him seem almost crazy
- can see why Elon is going crazy on twitter, he'd almost turned around Telsa and now they may be in the worst cash crunch of their long life
- Shanghai Giga reopened on Feb 10th, showing the importance of multiple factories around the world( around 150,000 in capacity once they get going for Model 3, Model Y not yet and should be incremental on top of Model 3 number)
- Berlin Giga scheduled to start producing Model Y's in 2021, so capex drain for rest of year and probably into 2021
- TSLA trying to run an amazon HQ2 like process for Truck and Model Y factories, look for small, southern, and poor cities to bid and probably win
Numbers:
- 1Q Revenue $5.99B vs Estimate $5.81B
- 1Q Free Cash Flow ($895M) vs Estimate ($604.4M)
- GAAP net income of $16M for 1Q
- sale of ZEV in 1Q $354 million vs $133 million from Q4, not going to have this to bail out their quater in 2Q
- 35 Megawatts of solar( down by about a third Q/Q)
- sitting on $8.1B of cash, sweet!! but burn rate is approx ($3-4B) a year
After:
- semi not until 2021
- not reaffirming numbers, will check in again in 2Q, makes sense
Want to know:
- Solar roof? give up or start committing, hard to sell to consumer during shutdown
- battery storage for energy, growth area or sign of lack of focus and minor distraction to core business?
inventory growth? Building cars no one is buying or still not able to keep up with growth or finally found balance between the two?
- Will Elon stop with tweets that hurt Tesla? Appoint a CEO, or COO to run things to take pressure of Elon?
- applecrazy 7y agoAlso want to point out that TSLA is up about ~6-7% in after-hours trading Edit: accuracy
- TravisSc6tt 7y agoI've noticed that companies' stock prices don't always correlate to the performance of their past quarter. Wonder why
- gruglife 7y agoStock price is forward looking, not past.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- formercoder 7y agoSome combination of momentum with the market or sector, pricing in future growth, an earnings call that does a good job explaining the bad quarter.
- asdff 7y agoIf the news is expected to be bad, but is actually less bad than anticipated, then the stock goes up, even if it's bad. There's been a lot of that lately.
- vikramkr 7y agoIn what sense do you mean they don't correlate to performance? Overperforming or underperforming expectations will correlate very highly to the way the stock moves on the news
- tempestn 7y agoChange in stock price on earnings news tends to correlate to the performance relative to expectations. The estimated performance is already priced in, so the movement will be based on how much better or worse the actual results were than the estimated/anticipated ones. In this case, it was obviously a bad quarter for Tesla, but the bump suggests that traders expected it to be even worse.
- AmericanChopper 7y agoTo add something to this, traders have their own expectations of how companies will perform relative to their published estimates. I used to work at a unicorn that would consistently exceed its published estimates, and the stock price took a non-trivial hit the first time it ever met them.
- 7y ago
- hcnews 7y agoAfter-hours trading doesn't necessarily mean much due to low liquidity and volume. You can get high swing for reasonably low volume in a single after-market trade.
- robmerki 7y agoHe's probably tweeting MAGA adjacent memes to market the Cybertruck
- pa7ch 7y agoHonestly think this is an interesting topic. It seems that today there are marketing advantages to being a public figure that comes off as a bit of a buffoon. Of course its impossible to know if this is being intentionally done unless they are caught talking about it or something.
- fullshark 7y agoOr perhaps he’s sincere, not sure why that is so unbelievable and everyone is imagining ulterior motives.
- guardiangod 7y agoSomeone _please_ hire someone to follow EM with a phone jammer on. I can't take his BS anymore. Why do smart people like to have strong opinions on subjects they are not expert in? (Disclosure: I own TSLA stocks.)
- madengr 7y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
- Zenbit_UX 7y agoThat's the opposite, dumb people believing their smart at everything, OP said smart people.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y agoThat's how democratic societies are typically intended to work; on issues of great social importance, everyone's encouraged to think about them and decide what they'd like to happen.
- mcv 7y agoI think it's also how genius works. When you're really good at one thing, there's the risk of thinking you're good at everything.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoIs that genius? Because it seems to be common in the unintelligent as well.
- mcv 7y agoBut without having the one thing they're really good at, then.
- 7y ago
- the_cat_kittles 7y agothis kinda comment makes me lol so hard at HN- passing mention of any tech, but loads of stats on financials and personality of the ceo.
- slg 7y ago>- Musk venting with "FREE AMERICA NOW" tweet makes him seem almost crazy Musk is on the verge of a three quarter of billion dollar windfall if Tesla's six month average market cap exceeds $100b. I would guess that motivates his desire to open as soon as possible. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-stocks-musk/teslas-musk-nears-750-million-options-payday-ahead-of-results-idUSKCN22A16B https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-stocks-musk/teslas-...
- adventured 7y agoI doubt it. He's worth $38.5 billion; $26b of that is in Tesla. He can shave off hundreds of millions of dollars from that any day of the week - if he cared to do so. The compensation package is relatively small compared to his existing wealth already contained in Tesla. Wanting the company to succeed is what most likely motivates him, not the compensation package (which is aligned with his existing interests, even if you think he's primarily in it for the $26b (little evidence to support that, he's personally loaded with debt because he refuses to sell, that's called being all in; any good financial advisor would call it dangerous concentration and a poor choice to take on debt instead of selling)).
- jonny_eh 7y agoThen why have a compensation package like that if it's just a rounding error for him? Maybe people like him can't stand to lose out on a dollar, especially when they believe they deserve it.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoGoing to Mars isn't cheap.
- gamblor956 7y agoMusk is worth $38.5 billion based on his current Tesla stock holdings at their current valuation. If he hits the trigger in his compensation package, he gets even more Tesla stock which will vastly increase his net worth on paper Also, Musk is loaded with debt because he leveraged his stock holdings to live a very lavish lifestyle, including multiple residential properties, vehicles, and very expensive dining choices.
- xiphias2 7y ago- Will Elon stop with tweets that hurt Tesla? Appoint a CEO, or COO to run things to take pressure of Elon? I have read this from so many people for the last 5 years all the time. Sure, the tweets show that Elon wants faster growth, and frustrated, and I didn't like that tweet either, but if you want a conservative CEO, buy IBM or Oracle stocks, please leave Tesla alone.
- xvf22 7y agoI think they may have been referring to more of a SpaceX leadership situation.
- Touche 7y agoI just don't want a batshit crazy person running a company I invest in.
- aantix 7y agoThe batshit crazy person that managed to turn the company around?
- kortilla 7y agoBut he’s the reason it’s a company worth investing in...
- _eht 7y agoPretty easy to miss investing in TSLA. FYI.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dnautics 7y agoThen don't invest?
- bigyikes 7y agoSeems like that would be a good personal indicator to not invest in Tesla then? A lot of people invest in Tesla in part because it is run by a “batshit crazy” person, though I’m sure those investors might phrase it differently.
- tejohnso 7y ago> can see why Elon is going crazy on twitter, he'd almost turned around Telsa and now they may be in the worst cash crunch of their long life With 8 billion in cash, and 3-4 billion per year burn rate, that's a two year buffer assuming no improvement. That doesn't seem like the worst cash crunch of their long life. What am I missing?
- cloudwalking 7y agoIncreasing capex for new products.
- xkjkls 7y agoPlus there CapEx hasn't even met depreciation for years, indicating that they have been underinvesting in repairs and retooling.
- save_ferris 7y agoHe might be more concerned about the sales prospects instead of operational expenses. Automakers are getting hit really hard by this pandemic, and they need a healthy economy to sell cars. Many economic forecasts are saying that a full recovery is 2-4 years away, although there are many different opinions.
- xur17 7y agoPlus, the price of gas has gone down significantly, hurting one of the benefits of electric cars.
- agumonkey 7y agoIf only he had time to finish them fully robotic assembly lines ..
- hinkley 7y agoIt has been said before and should be said again: Elon needs an assistant who shuts his fucking phone off at midnight. It's like the moon comes out and he turns into a werewolf. There was a theory that he's Ambien-tweeting, but I suspect he just never learned in college like many of us that any idea that sounds really good at 1 am is probably really stupid.
- maxharris 7y agoElon has done well by me. Every company he runs turns to gold. I wouldn't have him change a thing. Seriously, given his performance over the long-term, I hope he tweets even more. It enrages people that can't think past the next quarter, and that's good for long-term shareholders like me!
- aguyfromnb 7y agoYou're claiming victory a bit early.
- maxharris 7y agoI have 108 shares. I'm not selling TSLA. In fact, I'm going to pick up more the next time it drops! TSLA is going to make me a millionaire, but it will take a few more years before that happens.
- dangrossman 7y agoX.com was a bust that pivoted into a PayPal clone and merged with them when both companies were nearly out of runway from buying each other's users. He was CEO of PayPal for just months before a mass revolt of the engineering team over his incompetence lead the board of directors to fire him. Tesla has been structurally bankrupt for most of its existence, burning billions of investors' cash and still making no profit selling cars after 12 years [1]. SolarCity was on the verge of bankruptcy so he bailed it out with his other company and is still being sued for that. He's been having Tesla sell car parts to SpaceX (a private company so you can't look at its financials), more shuffling of money around from one company to another to paper over losses. His side gigs -- The Boring Company to build unusable tunnels, Neuralink, etc -- have accomplished nothing. What exactly has he "turned to gold"? 1: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-burns-cash/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-burns-cash/
- artursapek 7y ago> - can see why Elon is going crazy on twitter, he'd almost turned around Telsa and now they may be in the worst cash crunch of their long life That's probably why he's going crazy. I bet the guy is stressed out. His baby is slowly bleeding after he has worked so hard to build it up and crush it in Q4.
- axguscbklp 7y agoMusk might just be venting on Twitter, as another commenter has suggested, but one way or another these tweets might turn out to benefit him. From what I can tell based on both personal and online interactions, it seems to me that U.S. public sentiment has been shifting against the lockdowns recently - and not just among some fringe protester groups, but among all kinds of demographically and ideologically different groups. Musk's tweets might appeal to those people and make him more popular. I'm no fan of, for example, Musk's lies about self-driving technology being just around the corner. But say what you will about Musk, he has a powerful talent when it comes to publicity.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- marvin 7y agoAlso, if there should be any trouble at all getting a dirt cheap bailout loan from the government, a solid history of holding the party line will be a guarantee for success. I don't know if Musk deliberately plays this strategy, but it would certainly be on my mind if I were in his shoes. I'm not at all shameless enough to do that kind of thing, thankfully. If Tesla's able to survive through the current macroeconomic slowdown, this situation plays strongly to their advantage. They'll keep being capital constrained for another decade or so. Their ambition is to build 20 million cars per year. Need ten more factories to do that. Zero interest bailout loans would be a godsend, as long as they can stay profitable and still have a healthy customer base. They're a growth company still. Nowhere near the ceiling of their potential market. Although it's still a super uncertain and scary situation, it's much better place to be than being an established, no-growth automaker with thin margins falling to zero on a 10% sales decline.
- chrisjc 7y ago> it seems to me that U.S. public sentiment has been shifting against the lockdowns recently - and not just among some fringe protester groups, but among all kinds of demographically and ideologically different groups Unfortunately, I've noticed the same thing.
- mullingitover 7y ago
- aguyfromnb 7y agoSolar City installed 10x the megawatt capacity in 2016 as they did in 2019, with this quarter installed capacity down again. The business is non-existent.
- Reedx 7y ago> Will Elon stop with tweets that hurt Tesla? Appoint a CEO, or COO to run things People have been saying that for years and years. It's beyond stale. Meanwhile Tesla and SpaceX have continued to succeed beyond expectations for over a decade now. If there's occasional twitter volatility in-between simultaneously landing two rockets returning from space... so be it. Besides, if it bothers you that much, you don't have to buy their cars or invest or even pay attention to it. The constant handwringing, mind reading and speech policing is ridiculous. That's how we end up with nothing but layers upon layers of focus tested marketing speak and people afraid to challenge orthodoxy.
- threeseed 7y agoOf course what Musk does matters. He's the CEO. And his erratic and reprehensible behaviour is degrading the Tesla brand as well as reaffirming the long held idea amongst shareholders that he is too unstable to be running the company.
- llsf 7y agoNobody is perfect. Mr. Musk shown that he could build from the ground up and manage several large companies. Could he be even better ? Maybe. But until Tesla and SpaceX can find someone unequivocally better than Mr. Musk, those companies will have to do (and maybe fail) with him.
- woodandsteel 7y agoI can think of no important way in which Tesla or SpaceX would be significantly more successful today if Musk had publicly communicated more like a standard CEO.
- forgotmylogin2 7y agoIt's not degrading the Tesla brand though. Tesla is the second largest automaker in the world by market cap. Toyota, the only company larger than Tesla, was founded 65 years before Tesla. What Musk (and all Tesla employees) have built so far is nothing short of astounding. To imply he's leading them to ruin with his unfiltered twitter account could not be farther from the truth.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 7y agoSo they have 2 years of cash reserves, which will take them over to the Cybertruck release and the Berlin Gigafactory being complete? Was the "cash crunch" statement already including this?
- ramblerman 7y ago> Musk venting with "FREE AMERICA NOW" tweet makes him seem almost crazy Why. Personally I do think we should stay inside, but it's not an invalid argument to say that locking people in their homes on penalty of fine is a weird thing. Too much economic damage could cause deaths well beyond COVID-19 so there is a balance to be found. But to go a step further and invalidate any criticism of locking people up inside their homes as 'crazy' is out of the playbook of 1984
- anoncareer0212 7y agoNo, what's 'crazy' is having to read a mind-numbing comment claiming anyone is 'locking up people in their homes', in service of defending an out-of-touch billionaire who flies twice a day on his private jet, 200,000 miles in just the last 3 months. https://twitter.com/evdefender/status/1252352769605791744?s=20 https://twitter.com/evdefender/status/1252352769605791744?s=... Why out of touch? Because 74% of Americans support the quarantine https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/489535-poll-majority-of-voters-support-national https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-c... Why is this all particularly insane? Musk went on to praise China's reaction, which _actually locked people into their homes_ and their "opening" is our "locking up people in their homes". https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/29/asia/wuhan-coronavirus-lockdown-analysis-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/29/asia/wuhan-coronavirus-lockdo...
- ramblerman 7y agoThis isn't your typicial political argument where you pick a side and dig in your heels. It's more like a goldilocks situation where we need "just enough" measures. In that vein I don't think we should just silence the opposite side and dismiss people wanting to open up as "crazy".
- anoncareer0212 7y agoOkay, but that conflicts directly with the idea we need to avoid labelling someone ranting about facism, locking people in their homes, and The Meaning Of America.
- paganel 7y ago> multiple factories around the world They'll also need not economically stressed out customers around the world, which right now isn't really happening. If the low oil-prices won't halt the electric cars industry then the fact that they still have comparatively high prices will most certainly will. A few months ago I was saying that the industry needs cars worth 25,000-30,000 euros/dollars in order to really take off, i.e. that it needs its mass-produced electric Honda Civcs and VW Golfs, with this depression-like crisis that is about to commence I'd say that it needs its Mitsubishi Colts/Mirages, Dacia Sanderos or Nissan Versas, i.e. electric cars that will cost at most 10,000-12,000 euros/dollars.
- marvin 7y agoTheir potential market will certainly be _lower_ while the pandemic is ongoing, but there's plenty of high-income folks who haven't been materially effected by the epidemic and might still want a luxury car. Most people I know are in the work-from-home crowd. There is the possibility that this might not be that big of a deal, given that they're a growth company. Depends how production-constrained they really are without trying to induce additional demand through advertising and so on.
- xkjkls 7y agoEconomic uncertainty, even with financial security, is almost certainly going to delay many car purchases. If you don't know whether we're going into 2021 with 20% unemployment, its pretty easy to decide to hold off a year. Also cars are being used close to 70% less during the lockdown.
- imtringued 7y agoI seriously hope nobody gets fooled into believing that those oil prices will last more than two years and consequently buy a gas guzzler.