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Tesla lost $38M in third quarter, stock tumbles over 12 percent

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Re: Tesla lost $38M in third quarter, stock tumbles over 12 percent

#71

Post by Tarang »

If you think about it, the largest typical object people would buy in terms of value is a car. A house can last a last time but less so a car.

I think the reason for investor's optimism in Tesla is their vision is to get everyone a car.

If you look at the design of the Model S it can allow for a very cheap & safe car (The Tata Nano had issues with safety at first).

I would say this is still a baby as a company even now. If you saw GM's size before the financial crisis things would get more into perspective of what the potential is here. I think investors get that and this is why the premium is so high.

This is a company that can outdo GM because of the different structure. Tesla is very robotic/automated in its manufacturing & the car's drive system is just the floor. When GM wasn't so much under attack as it is now it used to regularly get under the record annual profit for a publicly traded corporation.

These crazy volatile drops are because there are lots of speculators trying to get in on the action (options, leverage.. etc). These volatile moves keep everything in balance.

Re: Tesla lost $38M in third quarter, stock tumbles over 12 percent

#72

Post by VladRussian2 »

derekp7 wrote: post #47
rdl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scary thing for me with Tesla stock is primarily the risks in going to large scale mass market cars, as well as the risk of another car company, or another startup, emerging to win the mass market EV space.

If another company came up with a dual-powered version of the Tesla, then I would definitely buy that. The current round of plugin hybrids don't offer enough battery-only range for me. I'd like to see about 100 mile battery only (in case I forget to plug it in), plus a small engine and 10-gallon tank. I wouldn't think the gas engine would have to be that large, especially if it were designed to use the battery as a b…

>I'd like to see about 100 mile battery only

electric/batteries works great for start/stops. For highway cruising, which 100 miles range would probably include a lot, internal combustion engine isn't that bad. I'd expect that there isn't much practical difference efficiency-wise between 20-30 miles battery range hybrid and a 100-miles range one, especially considering that the latter would be carrying additional at least 200kg of batteries.

I think we will start to see cars' internal combustion engines which are specifically targeted to work only as generators, i.e. highest efficiency only for specific rpm value - current ICEs available are "wide rpm and load range" designed to be a primary engine of a car. Volt (and Karma) as far as i understand have such generic engine, not a "generator" one. Dropping a lot of old requirements and having the ability to match generator to the engine, we may see very different engine types coming in which would match new requirements much better.

Re: Tesla lost $38M in third quarter, stock tumbles over 12 percent

#73

Post by tsenkov »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #67
tvladeck wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your first sentence were true, then the stock shouldn't have been affected much by today's news. Instead, it fell significantly. The price of the stock has to do with how much money it might make in the future, and where they are on their growth trajectory. The news today signifies that the trajectory might be lower overall, or they might be further behind than investors thought.

[I don't currently own any stock or options in TSLA] Sort of and sorta not. There is a tremendous amount of speculation in Tesla stock. That came about from a number of people making very large bets against and for the company (option trading is quite active for such a 'young' company). The stock is "priced for perfection" which is to say it is priced at a value that only makes sense if Tesla meets every objective, h…

Disclaimer: I have no idea how a stock is prised.

Is the stock prise directly related to the revenue/losses of the company? If this is true, couldn't the losses be explained by this:

>"Production in the quarter significantly exceeded deliveries in order to fill the pipeline of vehicles in transit to Europe and provide cars for service and marketing uses."

Probably by a long shot (considering so many uncertainties in my logic), but it seems to me that they simply loss money, because they needed to fill the stores in unexplored markets, which resulted in stock prise decline and not that significant one (as already pointed, the stock went up 460% just this year).

Edit: 38M is roughly equal to 470 Model S cars on average of $81k. If their production cost is 50%, this means about a 1000 cars could make up for the losses. And when you include the Supercharger network (do they make any money of that? and how much does it cost to build these stations?) and shipping of all extra production (without an order) to Europe it kind of seems reasonable.

Re: Tesla lost $38M in third quarter, stock tumbles over 12 percent

#74

Post by rjtavares »

tsenkov wrote: post #73
ChuckMcM wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[I don't currently own any stock or options in TSLA] Sort of and sorta not. There is a tremendous amount of speculation in Tesla stock. That came about from a number of people making very large bets against and for the company (option trading is quite active for such a 'young' company). The stock is "priced for perfection" which is to say it is priced at a value that only makes sense if Tesla meets every objective, h…

Disclaimer: I have no idea how a stock is prised. Is the stock prise directly related to the revenue/losses of the company? If this is true, couldn't the losses be explained by this: >"Production in the quarter significantly exceeded deliveries in order to fill the pipeline of vehicles in transit to Europe and provide cars for service and marketing uses." Probably by a long shot (considering so many uncertainties in…

> Is the stock prise directly related to the revenue/losses of the company?

Yes. However, expectations are more important than past behaviour, especially in new businesses. People buying Tesla stock are guessing their growth/earnings trajectory, and if reality deviates from that they'll sell (simplifying here, obviously).

Re: Tesla lost $38M in third quarter, stock tumbles over 12 percent

#77

Post by marvin »

codex wrote: post #27
001sky wrote: post #19

They note that the reason bulls are expecting deliveries of 6,000 or more vehicles is because of issued VINs, but they believe that many of the vehicles which have been produced were used for showrooms or loaner vehicles at Tesla’s service centers or are still in transit en route to delivery. People are really reading into things here. Expecting a company to beat guidance by 20% per quarter is alot to ask, but i supp…

There's a worry Tesla is hiding softening sales. They had the capacity to produce 7150 cars this quarter but only sold 5550, a difference of 1650. Some of those cars are en route to Europe, but still, the number seems high. Talking about producing vehicles for internal use and marketing purposes, along with increased investment in new models and versions, can be interpreted as "our U.S. sales are softening unexpected…

Musk specifically covered this in the earnings call. They are production constrained and had to hold back deliveries in the US to ensure that people who made reservations in Europe two years ago would get their car.

Re: Tesla lost $38M in third quarter, stock tumbles over 12 percent

#78

Post by arprocter »

triplesec wrote: post #65
SwellJoe wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the danger is in the big automakers getting EV right, before Tesla reaches the middle and low end of the market. Nissan has the Leaf, which is by most accounts, a great little car. The Chevy Volt is the best-selling in my neck of the woods, it seems. Tesla makes better electric cars...as far as the reviews indicate. But, they're also much more expensive. But, here's the reason I just placed a limit order for…

I do believe the volt makes Chevrolet a loss for every unit sold. If this is a deliberate loss leader to put Tesla out of business, then it is an issue. They're all looking for market share, but Tesla has less capital backing. OTOH it has less crummy baacklog and infrastructure, so it may be nimble eough to survive

Tesla is aiming for the M5 end of the market, Volt is more of a Prius

Re: Tesla lost $38M in third quarter, stock tumbles over 12 percent

#79

Post by marvin »

codex wrote: post #39
wooster wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some market caps from Google Finance: TM, Toyota 203.72B VLKAY, Volkswagen AG 114.33B DDAIF, Daimler AG (USA) 85.52B HMC, Honda Motor Co 71.86B BAMXF, BMW 68.69B F, Ford Motor Company 67.33B GM, General Motors 51.52B NSANY, Nissan Motor 36.86B AUDVF, Audi 36.42B TSLA, Tesla Motors Inc 21.47B FIATY, Fiat 9.35B So, no, I don't think Tesla is quite at those levels of expectations yet. (As full disclosure, I own some Tes…

What complicates this analysis is the fact that these other companies sell in the millions--hundreds of times more cars than Tesla does in a year. Tesla's market cap is one million dollars per car to be sold in 2013.

And of course, the part which you neglected to mention: None of these companies have growth prospects which are anywhere near those of Tesla. Added in the potential disruptive potential of an all-electric car future once battery technology gets only slightly better than it is today.

I agree with you up to the point that this is a complicated analysis which can't really be done, but no further. This earnings call was really very positive, but the delivery was pretty lackluster.

Re: Tesla lost $38M in third quarter, stock tumbles over 12 percent

#80

Post by arethuza »

arprocter wrote: post #78
triplesec wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do believe the volt makes Chevrolet a loss for every unit sold. If this is a deliberate loss leader to put Tesla out of business, then it is an issue. They're all looking for market share, but Tesla has less capital backing. OTOH it has less crummy baacklog and infrastructure, so it may be nimble eough to survive

Tesla is aiming for the M5 end of the market, Volt is more of a Prius

That's a pretty small market - BMW only makes about 4000 M5s a year and I'd be surprised if the sales of equivalent models from other manufacturers were much higher.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_M5

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