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Tesla Financial Results 2019 Q4

ir.tesla.com

221–230 of 346 posts

Re: Tesla Financial Results 2019 Q4

#221

The bull case for Tesla is clear. Aside from Nissan with the Leaf, who recently loss their galvanizing CEO and who's market cap has tanked since, what major automaker has anywhere near the success of Tesla with EV? No doubt execution has been an issue in the past, but recent sales trends, completion of gigafactory, and Chinese expansion show that they are on the right trend. Tesla's were confined to the luxury market…

Other car manufacturers are missing what makes Tesla do so well. It's a lot of things, really. Range, performance, the hope of self-driving, the supercharging network (Which is much bigger than people think!), and of course, the fact that they look like normal cars. Most other EVs like the Leaf are either incredibly lacking in range and performance, or they're incredibly ugly like the BMW i3. Then you've got cars lik…

Yes and other car manufacturers capital is tied to a return on manufacturing lines of petrol and diesel vehicles so if BMW were to release 7e tomorrow what would happen to the 7 sales.

This is while Telsa is building out a charging network and fighting for a direct to consumer sales model and also possessing a knowledge base of every fault that's ever occurred in it's entire fleet and every Tesla Sale increases the return on Tesla's deployed capital plus a highly dedicated creative resilient workforce that are at the point of smoothing variability and product refinement.

So for BMW to win they have to bet the factory that they will take enough market share while Tesla's quality and brand strengthen. Hence the current share valuation.

Now a lot of people say Elon is a manipulative exaggerator but the fact remains he has built car sensor database company with a carbon advantage that has BMW on the ropes while reigniting a space race. If machine learning can sort the data and it seems to be improving year on year then alot of people who haven't built nearly as much will probably be taking a Tesla to work.

Why do people want Tesla to fail. Economies of scale, improving battery technology and a global charging network and everyone eventually has a cheaper travel option. How revered the founder was is a quite irrelevant.

Re: Tesla Financial Results 2019 Q4

#222
post #72
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that you can only have such high leverage if you bought super meta products that expose risk, meaning you borrow money for that bet and which you‘d have to pay back if the hoped-for increase doesn’t come.

not with buying options - your max loss is just what you buy it for.

For example the $500 call options on TSLA which expire on Friday. They were on-sale all month, giving you the option to buy a share of TSLA at $500 up until this Friday.

Today they were selling for ~$85/share. But on Jan 1 they were selling for ~$5/share, and tomorrow morning it looks like they will be worth maybe $150/share.

30x in a month for a True Believer -- sure wish I had done it!

[1] - https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/tsla/option/TSLA...

Re: Tesla Financial Results 2019 Q4

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would be a mild negative at the current level of self-driving tech maturity Tesla's more or less take over on the freeway. They are also on their way to mastering traffic lights. > center mounted tablet console dashboard Yeah, that's a little weird. > the Bolt had some useful driver assist packages for safety, though they are upgrades Tesla's are the safest cars on the road now.

> Tesla's are the safest cars on the road now. Eh, I imagine that depends on how actively you use the autopilot and auto unpark features. I know they don't want to cede the frontrunner status of that technology, but it still feels like a risky gambit for tesla and for its customers.

The IIHS rates TM3 it's top tier aware of Top Safety Pick+ which is a higher rating than the Bolt (noted in the article)[0]. This doesn't factor in autopilot although it does evaluate collision avoidance systems, which must rate advanced to superior.

[0]https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/tesla-earns-its-first-ever-...

Re: Tesla Financial Results 2019 Q4

#224
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you describe would be the “bull case” dozens of billions in valuation ago. Right now we are quite disconnected from that, in my analysis. To justify their current valuation, the “bull case” is for them to dominate the entire automative industry (not just the EV segment) and do an Amazon-like turnaround of losses into profitability. Anything short of that, their valuation is ludicrous.

Tesla is not just a car manufacturer though right? They are a solar company and battery company too. They could conceivably have astronomical growth in both of those segments.

Other car manufacturers would be smart to source their batteries from Tesla.

Re: Tesla Financial Results 2019 Q4

#225
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

simple back of the envelope calculation: in 3 years time, they will have 3 giga factories (+1 in upstate new york), each of which should be scale to 500k cars. at an average resale price of $50k (might be a little lower, but let's keep it simple), that's $75B in revenue. at a 10% profit margin, that's $7.5B profit. let's presume a 20x factor as a growth stock, you have an evaluation of $150B, which it's currently tre…

This also assumes that there's demand for all of these $50,000 cars, which isn't necessarily the case.

Currently, the demand is still strong enough that the wait time on a new TM3 is 4-8 weeks. That may decrease, but right now Tesla can't make them fast enough.

Re: Tesla Financial Results 2019 Q4

#226
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you describe would be the “bull case” dozens of billions in valuation ago. Right now we are quite disconnected from that, in my analysis. To justify their current valuation, the “bull case” is for them to dominate the entire automative industry (not just the EV segment) and do an Amazon-like turnaround of losses into profitability. Anything short of that, their valuation is ludicrous.

> To justify their current valuation, the “bull case” is for them to dominate the entire automative industry (not just the EV segment) Toyota has over twice the market cap that Tesla has (230 billion vs 105 billion) and considering how big the auto industry is outside of just these 2 companies, I don't know how you think an automotive company at 105 billion is vastly overvalued.

The argument is not that no car maker deserves to be valued at $XXX billion. It's that Tesla, which produced around ~1/30th the number of autos as Toyota last year, probably shouldn't have a market cap that's anywhere near Toyota's.

Re: Tesla Financial Results 2019 Q4

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I preferred the Bolt because it had similar and adequate range, adequate recharge capability, better drive, felt substantially roomier in the interior, and I preferred the higher seating. I have no use for an infotainment system in any vehicle (give me a hotspot and I'll bring my own devices). I disliked the Tesla center mounted tablet console dashboard, though that's subjective. I don't think the Tesla drives itself…

> would be a mild negative at the current level of self-driving tech maturity Tesla's more or less take over on the freeway. They are also on their way to mastering traffic lights. > center mounted tablet console dashboard Yeah, that's a little weird. > the Bolt had some useful driver assist packages for safety, though they are upgrades Tesla's are the safest cars on the road now.

> They are also on their way to mastering traffic lights.

Sure and I’m on my way to mastering Russian Roulette. Until I actually get there though you might not want to sell me life insurance.

There are some things where being “on the way” to mastery is worse than nothing, and propelling a two ton object at a red light is one of those things.

Re: Tesla Financial Results 2019 Q4

#228
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re energy business (SolarCity) has declined every year since they bought it. They’ve lost significant market share in the rooftop Solar market, and the market has started to move away from rooftop solar in favor of large Solar farms in general. There is nothing to indicate any advantage in the energy space

Except if I want to lower my power bills

There are many other residential solar companies with more competitive products

Re: Tesla Financial Results 2019 Q4

#230
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why were they able to meet a run rate or 500k cars a year in Q4 of last year and not sustain it if their factory was maxed out? And why would they claim in projections that their factory was capable of producing that if they didn’t meet that? Companies are rarely production constrained. Many claim they are, but the fact that Tesla sales in their two largest markets declined doesn’t indicate to me that production is t…

At 500k per year they were still nowhere near meeting global demand, and they decided to move sales away from markets they were already well-established in, and into new ones. The nice thing about this disagreement we are having is it will be settled by what happens in the next year. I say Tesla's sales will go up strongly now that it has another factory. I take it you think they won't, and all that new capacity will…

Again they produced 367k, not 500k, like they claimed they could. If they could produce 500k, why claim they could, and why didn’t they?

And I would say Tesla’s revenue growth will start to flatline, yes, as the last two quarters have shown.

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