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

Tesla Is Years Ahead Of Competitors With No Signs Of Stopping
A lot of the leading car manufacturers in the world are playing catch up with Tesla. I believe this is because many of them simply didn’t believe that Tesla could deliver. But if you look at Tesla’s volume for the Tesla Model 3, there are some significant proof points that the company has. In fact, in December, the Tesla Model 3 was the third best-selling car in all of Europe. Tesla is not just eating into European car manufacturers’ hybrid sales, but also into their gas-powered vehicles as well. The automotive industry isn’t just made up of the auto manufacturers, it also includes suppliers and their partners as well, and in Germany this ecosystem is arguably the biggest. Many of the car manufacturers simply wrote Tesla off as a company that couldn’t execute and one that would never be successful. That was especially true of the Model 3, which has long been the company’s strategy for reaching a broader market and even more important, profitability. Tesla struggled mightily to deliver the Model 3 with numerous setbacks and stumbles, but eventually the company figured things out and started shipping Model 3s in volume and has shipped 400,000 vehicles thus far. Nobody really expected that Tesla would be able to ship 400,000 Model 3s by 2020, especially the European auto manufacturers. So much so, that both Mercedes and BMW have had significant shakeups including layoffs in the case of Mercedes and replacing the CEO in the case of BMW.

Most of these impacts come from Tesla’s Model 3 and the vehicle’s success in selling into the same compact luxury sedan segments that BMW, Mercedes and Audi have the most volume in. The Model 3 is something different and something entirely faster and dramatically technologically more advanced. For example, the Tesla Model 3 Performance was put up against the BMW M3 last year by Top Gear and beat it in terms of track time and braking, which is quite unexpected for the performance version of Tesla’s ‘mainstream’ electric vehicle. The performance of the vehicle is fairly important to brand reputation and sales, but what’s even more important is the experience that the customer feels and the automated capabilities of the vehicle. That’s where Tesla is miles ahead of the competition. Many of Tesla’s competitors are still living in an era where a customer purchases a vehicle once and the only thing the manufacturer does is deal with warranty and recalls. On the other hand, with the initial introduction of centralized computing platforms based on NVIDIA, Tesla has effectively built a software-defined vehicle that is a constantly living and breathing platform evolving with the needs of users and Tesla’s roadmap over time. While Elon may have some lofty expectations for self-driving capability in Tesla vehicles, the company’s iterative approach to software is helping them inch ever closer to a self-driving vehicle beyond today’s Level2+ capabilities. The way that Tesla is able to accomplish this is through a multi-year effort to build their own high-performance custom computing architecture for FSD (Fully Self Driving) which includes multiple AI accelerators. Tesla is heavily using machine learning to accelerate what the car sees and how it can react to it while also adding features like Sentry Mode which give customers peace of mind. The system is not without its flaws, as the NTSB discovered in their investigation of a recent death in a Tesla where they blamed the company, CalTrans and the NHTSA. Tesla’s FSD computer, which to date is still not capable of ‘Fully Self Driving’, claims a compute performance of 144 trillion operations per second, a significant increase from their use of NVIDIA’s Drive PX2 in the previous version of Tesla’s compute solution. Tesla’s new FSD computer has capabilities that have dumbfounded the other auto manufacturers to the degree that they aren’t really sure what to do. A Nikkei tear-down of the Tesla Model 3 found that Tesla’s electronics are 6 years ahead of the #1 and #2 car manufacturers in the world, Toyota and VW. They even said an engineer at a major Japanese auto manufacturer was stunned, saying that, “we cannot do it.” This puts many of Tesla’s competitors at a significant disadvantage in terms of keeping up with the company’s capabilities and how close they could be to fully autonomous driving capability. With Tesla already putting the hurt on them last year, the near future doesn’t look bright for them unless they adapt, quickly. Car manufacturers are scrambling to respond to Tesla, they have been for quite some time. Some are partnering with companies like Waymo, while others are buying their own autonomous solutions like Argo.ai and Cruise. However, many of these companies still do not have access to the same hardware, software and chips that Tesla does, and while some of them have some experience in software, it’s what I would call rudimentary.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorin

In China, NIO represents innovation & is regarded as the forerunner in the Chinese premium EV market. NIO holds 23% of China’s EV SUV market share, exceeding $TSLA 17%. Although the brand is already prominent on home soil, NIO’s latest expansion into the European market is expected to broadcast its name to the global EV and automobile industry, which will help further secure their share of the growing global demand for EVs

The Chinese EV market is expected to grow by more than 50% in 2021 & NIO will capture a large share of this growth. NIO’s entry into the European market, which represents 42% of global EV sales, with their first store to open in Oslo in Q3 2021 is expected to further bolster their sales and earnings performance. Forecasts predict deliveries of more than 84,000 vehicles in both China & Norway by the EOY, generating total revenues of more than RMB 34 billion which represents growth of more than double of 2020’s

No need to scoreboard watch, just have patience

Your Tesla Stock Price Great-News Checklist (UPDATE #22)

$555? ✅ (Elon's initial price target -- his first options tranche vests at $100B market cap)
$555? ✅ (Exane PNB Paribas price target)
$600? ✅ (Jefferies price target)
$650? ✅ (Morgan Stanley bull-case price target)
$684? (Oppenheimer price target)
$710? (Wedbush price target)
$729? (Piper Sandler price target)
$750? (Canaccord Genuity price target)
$772? (Roberta's estimate for June 30, 2020)
$800? (New Street Research price target)
$815? (Credit Suisse bull-case price target)
$900? (Analyst Gene Munster says he "can build a case" for Tesla "$900 stock" price)
$960? (New Street Research bull-case price target for "early 2021")
$1,000? (Wedbush bull-case price target)
$1,000? (Greatly-respected analyst Ron Baron's Tesla estimate for "2020")
$1,700? (New Street Research bull-case price target for "2025")
$2,000? (Highly-regarded Cathie's present-value estimate of Tesla stock)
$3,611? (Elon's ultimate price target - all of his options vest at $650B market cap)
$3,850? (Roberta's estimate within the same time-frame as Cathie & Ron's)
$4,000? (Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry's price target)
$5,000? (Baillie Gifford bull-case "scenario" for Tesla stock)
$5,584? (Ron Baron's estimate of what Tesla stock will be worth)
$6,000? (JMP Securities bull-case price target)
$6,000? (Highly-regarded Cathie's Tesla stock estimate by 2023)

[Update 01/30/20: Added Credit Suisse bull-case PT (removed old PT).]

An ESPECIALLY Loving Message (regarding PTs) to the ESPECIALLY bearish Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Bank of America/Merrill Lynch: "You snooze, You LOSE." So, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Merrill Lynch, you better start rapidly raising your Tesla PTs ... and while you're at it, take a look at the Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas who is at least somewhat trying to "keep up" with Tesla's rapid global growth and financial success with Jonas's recently-increased $650 PT. But as you can see, even Jonas himself needs to rapidly increase his PT once again ... and VERY soon!

As sluggish Wall Street analysts continue wisely upgrading Tesla stock and smartly increasing their Tesla stock price targets, I will provide further updates to this checklist.

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.

"We have to deliver 30,000 more cars in next 15 days," urges Senior VP Sanjay Shah to department heads

why 30k? I was looking at the numbers just this morning... Tesla needs to sell 75k Model 3s on average per quarter in order to even MATCH last year's revenues... so, for Q1 it could be 15k US and 30k in EU/China... totaling 45k... that seems very plausible... those were the numbers I was guessing at this morning... and now... low and behold... they push for 30k... which fills the gap in my math.

so it's simple... just double sales for the Q in the last 15 days... not a problem... right?

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.

Tesla Plans to Build 'World's Largest' Battery Plant Near Berlin
The factory is Tesla's first in Europe and is expected to churn out 5,00,000 Model 3 sedans and Model Y SUVs per year.

https://gadgets.ndtv.com/transportation/news/tesla-elon-musk-plans-to-build-worlds-largest-battery-plant-gigafactory-gruenheide-berlin-germany-2329862

Good luck and GOD bless,

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...

"Shifting all sales online, combined with other ongoing cost efficiencies ..."

Companies don't worry about "ongoing cost efficiencies" when they are in a high growth state. They worry about them when they have already matured and trying to maintain steady growth. Likewise, companies that are experiencing high growth do not cut jobs; they create them. All of the recent moves by this company indicate that demand for their current products has peaked. They also don't currently have the capital needed to produce the products that could help them accelerate their growth: the Model Y, a pickup truck, and a semi. Forget about the energy storage section of their business. Even 100% YoY growth would still just be a fraction of their overall revenues.