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Tesla Accounting Chief, HR Head Resign on the Same Day; Stock Plunges

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Re: Tesla Accounting Chief, HR Head Resign on the Same Day; Stock Plunges

#41

Post by mschuster91 »

dasil003 wrote: post #21
spiderfarmer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they should fire him, but he should most definately do the un-american thing: work a sane amount of hours and go on vacation every now and then.

I don't care how much he works, but he's gotta do something about his thin skin and incompetence with the media.

> I don't care how much he works, but he's gotta do something about his thin skin and incompetence with the media.

This sort of thing usually comes from a severe lack of sleep and recreation.

Re: Tesla Accounting Chief, HR Head Resign on the Same Day; Stock Plunges

#42

Post by OscarCunningham »

api wrote: post #18
chollida1 wrote: post #3

And their Chief People Officer, is not coming back from her leave. From the outside it looks like Telsa is about going to go into a tough winter like moment. They are almost losing by winning. They are at capacity in their Fremont factory but still not making a profit. They need to start designing and building out manufacturing facilities for their next car and the help bolster Model X manufacturing. Stop and think f…

I have a friend who bought a Tesla and is now asking for a buy-back. His experience has convinced me the negative hype isn't all just shorts propagandizing and "Musk fatigue." This company has huge, huge problems. When he first got the Tesla it had huge body panel alignment problems. Eventually these were fixed, but it took too long and was difficult to get Tesla to fully acknowledge them. After that he had a range o…

Sorry to take things off-topic but

>Needless to say we will not be uploading consciousness anytime soon

I'd say that uploading consciousness is an entirely orthogonal problem to AI. Uploading a consciousness is all about scanning the brain and simulating it accurately. It doesn't involve any AI since the intelligence already exists. Conversely if you succeeded with uploading it wouldn't necessarily help with AI, since it would still be hard to see how the brain was working.

So I don't think progress in one field can tell you anything about the other.

Re: Tesla Accounting Chief, HR Head Resign on the Same Day; Stock Plunges

#43

Post by SmallDeadGuy »

covercash wrote: post #13
chollida1 wrote: post #3

And their Chief People Officer, is not coming back from her leave. From the outside it looks like Telsa is about going to go into a tough winter like moment. They are almost losing by winning. They are at capacity in their Fremont factory but still not making a profit. They need to start designing and building out manufacturing facilities for their next car and the help bolster Model X manufacturing. Stop and think f…

Maybe that’s his backup plan if it doesn’t work out... use a BoringCo drill to “accidentally” trigger an earthquake, collect insurance money, funnel it all into SpaceX and launch himself to Mars.

Taking the meaning of "playing the long game" further than anyone else ever has.

Re: Tesla Accounting Chief, HR Head Resign on the Same Day; Stock Plunges

#44

Post by chooseaname »

wyldfire wrote: post #36
sophistication wrote: post #16

I'm not losing optimism because of this. Musk fits right into the current political & cultural trajectory and the Tesla brand is sleek & timeless. The media is framing Musk's flaws (Twitter insults, weed & booze) as a bad thing, but outside of the media, people do not care about such things nearly as much. It just requires a few years of optimization and the cars are going to be en par with established brands.

Musk is truly visionary. But that doesn't dictate success. > It just requires a few years of optimization and the cars are going to be en par with established brands. The world is littered with visionary companies that paved the way for new technology but ultimately failed themselves. "A few years of optimization" gravely undervalues the complexity of modern auto manufacturing. I will concede that it's astonishing th…

I don't think he's visionary. We all want to play with rockets and electric cars. He just happens to have enough money to go out and do it.

Re: Tesla Accounting Chief, HR Head Resign on the Same Day; Stock Plunges

#45

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F »

cecja wrote: post #28
sophistication wrote: post #16

I'm not losing optimism because of this. Musk fits right into the current political & cultural trajectory and the Tesla brand is sleek & timeless. The media is framing Musk's flaws (Twitter insults, weed & booze) as a bad thing, but outside of the media, people do not care about such things nearly as much. It just requires a few years of optimization and the cars are going to be en par with established brands.

Talk about gaslighting yourself. If you are not recoginizing that something fishy is going on at tesla you are not reading the same articles as the rest of us.

What's fishy? I've been following Tesla since 2010 and the main changes since then isn't what appears to be fishy but what the media are making of it.

Do you realize that Tesla sold more cars in the US that Mercedes and BMW this summer? How many media reported that?

Do you know that the most trusted car analysts who tear-down the car said it's expected to be the most profitable car produced in high volume?

Do you know that all data analyses about turnover in top positions at Tesla indicated that they are average? How many reports about such moves (at legacy automakers) make headlines?

They've only increased their coverage of the company and try their best to make every thing more clickbait. It's worked great so far, for sure.

Re: Tesla Accounting Chief, HR Head Resign on the Same Day; Stock Plunges

#46

Post by matwood »

fencepost wrote: post #35

As someone who's not obsessively following Tesla, I'm a bit jaded by these. I'm sure there are problems, but what feels like massive PR efforts by the "shorts" has effectively poisoned the well for negative news. As a casual observer I can't tell what's actual bad news and what's well-orchestrated market-manipulation "OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE" by people trying to drop the price, and I don't actually care enough about…

> I'm sure there are problems, but what feels like massive PR efforts by the "shorts" has effectively poisoned the well for negative news.

What kind of PR effort do you need when every CFO you hire keeps leaving? Think about it. The person in the company who completely knows the financials stays for a month and bounces? Why? Could it be that the financials are so bad they are unfixable? Could it be that that person is being pushed to stretch things a bit here and there to make them look better?

Re: Tesla Accounting Chief, HR Head Resign on the Same Day; Stock Plunges

#47

Post by scottkduncan »

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #24
martinald wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't afford any capex on new factories though. They are extremely close to breaching covenants on their debt and personally can't understand why they are not raising equity money as their stock price, despite Musk's crazy antics, is holding up well.

Management said they don't need to raise funds to cover the capex needed to ramp up Model 3 sales to 7/week, which is (as confirmed multiple times by Musk) more than needed to turn a profit. They just need to turn a profit in Q3 to get the stock price back up and then, they might raise funds to finance the next products (Model Y, truck and Semi). Why raise funds when Wall Street bet on the company to go bankrupt? Rai…

"Wall Street" is not betting on them to go bankrupt. Collectively, investors value this company that produces, at best, 7K cars a week at $45 billion. The idea that one quarter of profitability achieved through slashing capex to the bone fundamentally would fundamentally change their valuation doesn't carry much water in my view.

Re: Tesla Accounting Chief, HR Head Resign on the Same Day; Stock Plunges

#48

Post by mikeash »

Filligree wrote: post #4

A while ago I considered reserving a model 3, but I eventually decided against it. Feel like I dodged a bullet, there. There was a time where Tesla had a genuine advantage over the incumbents, but it never was enough of an advantage to overcome their lack of experience. That's only obvious in retrospect, I suppose.

I’ve had a Model S for about 3.5 years and it’s been wonderful. It’s not perfect and there have been some dumb issues, but nothing severe. I’ll probably be ordering a Model 3 soon as a second car, whenever the standard range version becomes available, or possibly sooner if the standard range isn’t available this year. There is still no real competition.

Re: Tesla Accounting Chief, HR Head Resign on the Same Day; Stock Plunges

#49

Post by this_user »

chollida1 wrote: post #3

And their Chief People Officer, is not coming back from her leave. From the outside it looks like Telsa is about going to go into a tough winter like moment. They are almost losing by winning. They are at capacity in their Fremont factory but still not making a profit. They need to start designing and building out manufacturing facilities for their next car and the help bolster Model X manufacturing. Stop and think f…

> they have about a year of cash runway left( optimistically)

Much less than that actually. At their current burn rate they won't even be making it to the end of this year without either selling enough M3 to generate some real cash, or by raising some new money from the market. Also, they have a lot of debt come due next year (and even more over the following years) while yields are up to over 8%.

However, M3 production numbers are actually looking good now, and they are hitting their targets for the first time. And their cash burn for Q2 came in lower than expected after some cost cutting. So they might be able to turn the corner just in time. Musk has repeatedly stated that the company will not need to raise new money, but had also done that before some previous financing rounds, so the market does not put that much faith in his words at this point.

It all hinges on the M3 now. Can they get production (and sales) numbers to where they need to be in order to become cash flow positive?

Re: Tesla Accounting Chief, HR Head Resign on the Same Day; Stock Plunges

#50

Post by rohit89 »

empath75 wrote: post #7

IMO, they should fire musk, slow down their blue-sky research projects, rip autopilot out of the cars, and just build "boring" luxury electric cars with huge profit margins and rake in cash.

Tesla's goal was to accelerate EV adoption. They either succeed or they die. I don't think they have any interest in being some niche luxury electric car manufacturer.
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