Tesla, Inc. (TSLA) stock forum & discussion – Yahoo Finance (2024)

Well this was certainly an interesting day. Tesla stock was up $7.00 with over 2.3 million shares traded in the first 35 minutes. This obviously was due to shorts covering. After the initial up swing, the stock started heading back down. Fortunately it only was off .49 for the day.

Elon made an interesting comment stating Tesla had enough orders to break the 4th quarter record but was unsure the sales could be completed by the end of the quarter. This creates an interesting question, while previously he stated they had received 50,000 new orders, what ever happened to the 400,000 orders Tesla had previously been reporting? Since Tesla recently announced the pricing for model 3's in China and supposedly started taking orders for them, how many of those new orders were for the as yet producing Chinese Model 3's?

There have been some postings on this board that basically highlighted Tesla's technological lead in battery technology. Well that's interesting since Tesla doesn't have any. There was a recent article stating that Tesla was interested in being able to produce their own batteries. The Reno factory is a joint venture between Tesla and Panasonic and based upon Panasonic's decision NOT to invest to expand the Reno factory one could surely speculate that all is not right with the arrangement. In addition, since Tesla has reportedly signed contracts to have a Chinese manufacturer provide them with the batteries for that plant it would appear that they have some serious concerns with Tesla.

Anyway, my projections for Tesla's 2nd quarter results and sells of 84,000 vehicles and total revenue of $5.8 billion. The bigger question has got to be how big of a loss is Tesla going to report? They raised $2.7 billion in May from selling additional stock and bonds. However, it cost them $400 million in expenses to raise that additional capital. So another question has got to be how are they going to expense the costs of raising that additional capital? If they just expense it, then their loss for the second quarter is going to be close to 1 billion dollars.

From Tesla.com: (after spending a weekend actually thinking through the consequences of our last announcement, it dawned to us that we cannot simply cancel the store leases without significant penalty. So here it is....

Last month, we announced that we would be winding down many of our stores and moving to online-only sales in order to pass the savings along to our customers.

Over the past two weeks we have been closely evaluating every single Tesla retail location, and we have decided to keep significantly more stores open than previously announced as we continue to evaluate them over the course of several months. When we recently closed 10% of sales locations, we selected stores that didn’t invite the natural foot traffic our stores have always been designed for. These are stores that we would have closed anyway, even if in-store sales made up our entire sales model. A few stores in high visibility locations that were closed due to low throughput will be reopened, but with a smaller Tesla crew. In addition, there are another 20% of locations that are under review, and depending on their effectiveness over the next few months, some will be closed and some will remain open.

As a result of keeping significantly more stores open, Tesla will need to raise vehicle prices by about 3% on average worldwide. In other words, we will only close about half as many stores, but the cost savings are therefore only about half.

Potential Tesla owners will have a week to place their order before prices rise, so current prices are valid until March 18th. There will be no price increase to the $35,000 Model 3. The price increases will only apply to the more expensive variants of Model 3, as well as Model S and X.

To be clear, all sales worldwide will still be done online, in that potential Tesla owners coming in to stores will simply be shown how to order a Tesla on their phone in a few minutes. And the generous return policy of 1000 miles or 7 days, whichever comes first, should alleviate the need for most test drives. However, cars will still be available for test drives at stores at the potential Tesla owner’s request. Stores will also carry a small number of cars in inventory for customers who wish to drive away with a Tesla immediately.

Say what you want Shorts but reality speaks for itself.

When I drive around I see about 10 Tesla to 1 other EV like Toyota Prius. I have not seen Ford or VW EV yet.

I try to put in order for model Y last Sunday and the wait list for delivery is 3 months out. Also, everyone I talked to is waiting for infrastructure bill to pass so they can leverage $10k EV credits. My friends are on long waiting list for the Truck and that will be a bonus when it comes out.

That’s the reality and what we can expect Q2 numbers will look like.
It’s going to be a huge year for Tesla.

Tesla headwinds - I have been talking about China and autopilot for many months now.
- China, were Tesla expected to sell 30-40% of global sales, has turned sour. Govt doesn't need Tesla any more and is squeezing it out. Q1 - Q2 saw a sales drop 69k-61k. Will plummet further in Q3.
- Autopilot regulatory oversight is increasing with new NHTSA rules and as deaths increase will be forced to act. Like in China expect more challenges, especially with Vision only, radar removal.
- remember Tesla has charged customers over $1B for autopilot over last 4years with nothing to show for it. SEC could act.
- Design corner cutting is coming up with Plaid fire. Lack of 4680 forced a quick switch to small cells pack. Bag of potatoes - causing fire.
- 4680 issues - puts cybertruck in jeopardy unless Tesla does a quick change to large format $GM, $F, $VWAG style batteries.
Continues misteps by $TSLA give competition including $NIO and $XPEV a chance to do better.

Negative Q2 and poor Q3-Q4 sales is likely.

I just must respond to FLAFA who keeps mindlessly posting Tesla's PR talking points:

1. Tesla - 12 startup companies in one. Blah, blah, blah.. every car company has multiple revenue streams - car sales, service, warranties, financing, partnerships, parts, paints, etc. BMW makes everything from boats to wheelchairs. Honda makes motorcycles and jets. Hyundai makes trains, ships and subway cars. The list goes on. Tesla is not somehow unique for being a production "conglomerate".

2. Tesla is in the energy market.... blah, blah, blah... so are 100 other companies, producing everything from dams, wind, solar, solar panels, roofs, batteries, oil, gas, blah, blah, blah. Highly competitive market.

3. Solar roof not just panels. blah, blah, blah... .VERY EXPENSIVE... VERY, VERY, VERY expensive. Solar panels are cheaper to install, easier to replace and much, much cheaper to insure.

4. Tesla home HVAC. blah, blah, blah... no shortage of HVAC companies whose solutions can plug right into conventional or renewable energy source.

5. Robotaxi - a concept at this time at most. We can't even seriously talk about this unti Telsa's on FSD stop crashing into stop vehicles at high speed.

6. FSD. A $11,000+ option that even most Tesla car buyers can't afford. The subscription service is just the "$1 bargin bin" to find another way to sell something most buyers can't afford. On top of all that, again - it keeps crashing into things. Still a long way to go on this.

7. 4 modern giga factories with more to come. This is actually Tesla's disadvantage - lack of manufacturing facilities. GM, VW, Toyota and other companies have way more facilities. As far as "more to come" - Tesla has the money but chose to put it into bitcoin rather than more gigafactories... so apparently at this time there is no need for more gigafactories.

8. Multi year product road-map. Every successful company has

9. Best engineering work force in the world. Meh - totally subjective.

10. Projected 50% growth for forseeable future. blah, blah, blah... maybe - but that is already priced into the stock.

11. Profitable last 5 quarters. HA - only because of carbon credits and bitcoin.

12. Strong product roadmap. This is just another way of saying they don't currently have an affordable car, or a truck. Personally I think an affordable sedan should have been placed before the semi and roadster.

13. Laser focused. Really?? I'll say that again, really??? Flamethrowers, bitcoin, hover jets for the roadster... a semi that is years behind schedule?

14.

Yes, Musk is a genius and a motivated, clever business person. Yes, Tesla is a good company with great products. But it's just blah, blah, blah to parrot back their talking points - all of which are currently why the company has an insane PE ratio. Everything, including the kitchen sink are priced in. Now it is time for Tesla to PERFORM - to make money on real products, not just carbon credits. Blah, blah, blah...