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Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

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Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#31

Post by ajross »

greglindahl wrote: post #20
Despegar wrote: post #14

Tesla's stock has massively under-performed over the past 5 years (will be up 8% over that period if the after hours price action holds). The opportunity cost of owning it has been huge while the rest of the market ripped up.

Yes, if you pick the most embarrassing time period for a given stock, it probably massively under-performed. Alternately, you can pick the most flattering time period.

It was a statement about a 5-year period in a stock issued just a few weeks longer than 9 years ago. Are you seriously making a cherry picking argument?

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#32

Post by ceejayoz »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #17
leesec wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a known feature unveiled, I believe, on Tesla's autonomy day. It just means they're able to test Autopilot on cars even if they aren't running autopilot.

Or, it means that the feature is running and the neural nets exercising, but not outputting actual control. The results are captured, but not acted on.

That's how I took it. They can then compare to what the human driver actually did, and find false positives (driver continued when the AI would've stopped) and false negatives (driver stopped when the AI would've continued).

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#33

Post by RandallBrown »

MegaButts wrote: post #19
leesec wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a known feature unveiled, I believe, on Tesla's autonomy day. It just means they're able to test Autopilot on cars even if they aren't running autopilot.

Disclaimer: I own no financial stake in Tesla, and while I love the goal of converting the world towards electric vehicles as whole I am not a fan of Tesla or Elon Musk. There are people much more informed than myself that believe Shadow Mode isn't real, and that Tesla is outright lying about its existence. https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1096322810694287361

How does that person know they are running the latest software with every feature turned on? Just because their car doesn't run in shadow mode doesn't seem to mean that no cars are.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#34

Post by gamblor956 »

danhak wrote: post #11

Looks like the cash situation is finally under control. They generated over $600 million in FCF in Q2. Compare this to only $200 million by Ford over the same period, also announced today: https://s22.q4cdn.com/857684434/files/doc_financials/2019/q2...

You are misreading the Ford statements and comparing the wrong numbers.

Tesla's non-GAAP "Operating cash flow less capital expenditures" is $ 613,929 [edit: in thousands, so $614 million]. Ford's same GAAP amount is $6.5 billion, or 10x Tesla's non-GAAP FCF for the same period (Q2).

Ford's "company adj. free cash flow" is a non-GAAP item that includes other items beyond capital expenditures.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#35

Post by spullara »

almost_usual wrote: post #29
Despegar wrote: post #14

Tesla's stock has massively under-performed over the past 5 years (will be up 8% over that period if the after hours price action holds). The opportunity cost of owning it has been huge while the rest of the market ripped up.

Up 8%? It's down 10%+, what made you think it would go up? Rest of the market ripped up? The S&P is up 20% this year while Tesla has gone down 20%. Edit: >The opportunity cost of owning it has been huge while the rest of the market ripped up The S&P is up over 50% in five years. TSLA could go up 20% tomorrow (and ignore today's after hours change) and the S&P would still be outperforming TSLA.

He meant up 8% over the five year period.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#36

Post by eanzenberg »

almost_usual wrote: post #29
Despegar wrote: post #14

Tesla's stock has massively under-performed over the past 5 years (will be up 8% over that period if the after hours price action holds). The opportunity cost of owning it has been huge while the rest of the market ripped up.

Up 8%? It's down 10%+, what made you think it would go up? Rest of the market ripped up? The S&P is up 20% this year while Tesla has gone down 20%. Edit: >The opportunity cost of owning it has been huge while the rest of the market ripped up The S&P is up over 50% in five years. TSLA could go up 20% tomorrow (and ignore today's after hours change) and the S&P would still be outperforming TSLA.

Sheer will-power

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#37

Post by OliverJones »

boldslogan wrote: post #12

anyone care to talk about this part "This feature is currently operating in “shadow mode” in the fleet, which compares our software algorithm to real-world driver behavior across tens of millions of instances around the world." that seems very juicy? edit: it seems people put a disclaimer on their ownership of tesla stock on hn about tesla threads. i dont own any.

They do this a lot when they're trying out new automation. It's part of the payback for all the investment they've put into field updates and telemetry. I think this data-gathering is part of the reason they continue to absorb the costs of LTE communications.

It's an excellent way to prove (or disprove) the effectiveness of new safety-related features.

As for non-safety-related features, my 3-yr-old granddaughter calls my Model S the "fartmobile" because of a recent electronic whoopee-cushion easter egg.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#39

Post by Despegar »

greglindahl wrote: post #20
Despegar wrote: post #14

Tesla's stock has massively under-performed over the past 5 years (will be up 8% over that period if the after hours price action holds). The opportunity cost of owning it has been huge while the rest of the market ripped up.

Yes, if you pick the most embarrassing time period for a given stock, it probably massively under-performed. Alternately, you can pick the most flattering time period.

Its under-performance over 2 and 5 years explains why it's been such a great short. Investors like Chanos have a basket of shorts so any one stock ripping up would hurt but wouldn't kill them. And the shorts ultimately let them be even more net-long the market.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#40

Post by rndmize »

boldslogan wrote: post #12

anyone care to talk about this part "This feature is currently operating in “shadow mode” in the fleet, which compares our software algorithm to real-world driver behavior across tens of millions of instances around the world." that seems very juicy? edit: it seems people put a disclaimer on their ownership of tesla stock on hn about tesla threads. i dont own any.

Sounds like they're running their autopilot software on some (all?) of the cars in the wild, where they can compare what the autopilot would do with the actions taken by the human driving the car, and use this to analyze/refine their model/system.

In casual talks with friends, this is something I've expected would be the competitive edge Tesla has over Waymo and the others; driving millions of "virtual miles" strikes me as far less useful than having a human baseline to compare to along with data capture from a fleet in all manner of real situations/locations.

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