TSLA - Tesla Motors

[CorpRaider]

My only strong conclusions are that there is a ton of irrationality on both sides of this stock and that I have a lot more respect for Andrew Left/Citron than basically any other career/reputed short seller; except for the hot/fierce indian-american lady in that netflix documentary "dirty money."

I would love to buy a model 3, $39,500 seems pretty reasonable, but it seems like such a PITA to get one right now.  Also wonder what the dynamics would be if China factory actually comes online soon and gets around tarrifs/transport costs.  I could also see there being a lot of capital available in China is he's moving ops/building an ecosystem and knowhow there. 

Executive turnover is very troubling.  Promotional antics around products and execution sound a lot like Edison and even Tesla, TBH.  Maybe he needs to find his westinghouse/j.p. morgan.

[walt373]

Here are a couple things I've learned over the past year.

1. CRCL ("can't raise can't leave") theory was debunked. We might never know why they didn't raise at $350 but I think they could have if they really wanted to. I'm guessing Tesla overestimated their TAM and Q1 sales falling off a cliff really caught them by surprise. My theory is that Musk thought they had more time and was trying to get the converts in the money by squeezing shorts, and a raise would have put that at risk. The mistake was making a conclusion (can't raise) based on the assumption that Musk wouldn't put the company at risk by not raising if he could. He had already demonstrated the extent of his hubris and irrationality before, so in hindsight this was an unsafe assumption. Short stock and high strike puts worked well. OTM bankruptcy puts got killed.

2. If you have 70% q/q revenue growth and negative working capital, your FCF will look amazing. And vice versa when your sales drop. Bears saw the big spike in sales coming but didn't make the connection to FCF, still projecting high cash burn in Q3. Knowing this, shorts could have spared a few months of pain and pressed the short in Q1.

[A Dhandho Investor]

Wanted to check in with a question(s):

Curious if any negative folks / shorts / haters, etc have a materially changed opinion in the last year or so?

Curious if any positive folks about the company / Musk, etc have a materially changed opinion in the last year or so?

For those long or at least open to the idea of getting long - what price would you be interested in stepping in (don't need to explain why)?

To share my view, my opinion hasn't dramatically changed - probably a little bit more negative than before, but broadly feel the same about Musk and the company's financial prospects.

Same directional position as before on the stock.

I am still so short my balls can touch the ground. Was thinking about taking some money of the table next week when reading that the Marina Del Ray delivery center was again open 7/7 and running at a monthly sales pace of about 500 Model 3's in May.

Historically it has accounted for about 2,5% of US deliveries, so would result in about 20k US Model 3 deliveries in May. However, word is out that Tesla has consolidated all its LA deliveries through Marina Del Ray, so it should account for a bigger percentage of US sales going forward. Let's assume the percentage increased to 4%, which would lead to about 14k US Model 3 deliveries in May.

Overall, I don't see them do more than 75k deliveries in Q2 versus Musk his 90-100k guidance...

[A Dhandho Investor]

My only strong conclusions are that there is a ton of irrationality on both sides of this stock and that I have a lot more respect for Andrew Left/Citron than basically any other career/reputed short seller; except for the hot/fierce indian-american lady in that netflix documentary "dirty money."

I would love to buy a model 3, $39,500 seems pretty reasonable, but it seems like such a PITA to get one right now.  Also wonder what the dynamics would be if China factory actually comes online soon and gets around tarrifs/transport costs.  I could also see there being a lot of capital available in China is he's moving ops/building an ecosystem and knowhow there. 

Executive turnover is very troubling.  Promotional antics around products and execution sound a lot like Edison and even Tesla, TBH.  Maybe he needs to find his westinghouse/j.p. morgan.

Of all people, you chose Andrew Left... He was able to move the market around the announcement of the Q3 results when suddenly turning bullish on the stock, but he just got played by Elon like all other institutional longs. I really invite you to read his latest fluff piece: https://citronresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Citron-Expects-Tesla-Rebound-to-320.pdf

Great research, huh? In the end, he managed to lose money on both sides of the trade and after writing that last piece he declined to do a podcast with Mark Spiegel, apparently indicating that "Elon is the worst communicator ever".

Then I have more respect for guys like Mark Spiegel, who stood by their ground when calling Elon for what he is, a gigantic fraud.

[Ahab]

https://www.reddit.com/r/teslainvestorsclub/comments/bq3sv4/the_smartest_guys_in_the_room_eerily_describes/?ref=readnext

Lengthy post summarizing the Enron saga. It is remarkable how many similarities there are between Enron then and Tesla now. Among them: this company is changing the world (is not like stodgy old economy businesses), analysts heaping on aggressive revenue, profit, and stock price estimates, frequent wars of words between shortsellers and management, shorts introducing new information that only slowly trickles into the adoring mainstream press, lack of skepticism due to the brilliant and visionary nature of management, disillusionment with an increasingly erratic CEO, margin loans of management, aggressive insider selling, aggressive promises about new business lines (shiny object syndrome), murky & opaque accounting, unwillingness to do capital raises for fear of collapsing the stock, using customer deposits as de facto loans, rapidly growing businesses that incinerate rather than produce cash, stated goals of management to be the largest company in the world, dismissive of reporters and analysts that dare to ask questions.

[DTEJD1997]

hey all:

Looks like TSLA is going to get VERY interesting now.

As I type, TSLA is at $197/share.  I've heard many reports discuss how Mr. Musk will face a margin call at about $225/share.  We seem to be substantially below that now.  Does anybody know if Musk is having his position liquidated?

There are also some "reputable" analysts who are downgrading TSLA price target.  One of them has put it at $10/share in a bearish case.

CITI has also now moved TSLA to the sell column with a price target of $191.

Perhaps most important of all...TSLA's bonds are now distressed.  I've heard that they are selling in the 80's.

I've got a funny feeling that if there is another bad quarter, bad news story, crazy act by Musk, or some other bad news, the stock will go down substantially.

[5xEBITDA]

Perhaps most important of all...TSLA's bonds are now distressed.  I've heard that they are selling in the 80's.

No, they are very far from distressed. I'd hardly even call them stressed. They're trading ~700bps wide of their treasury reference which is arguably too tight still given the credit profile of TSLA. I know tons of stuff trading at 700bps where the underlying credit is miles better than TSLA.

[sleepydragon]

hey all:

Looks like TSLA is going to get VERY interesting now.

As I type, TSLA is at $197/share.  I've heard many reports discuss how Mr. Musk will face a margin call at about $225/share.  We seem to be substantially below that now.  Does anybody know if Musk is having his position liquidated?

There are also some "reputable" analysts who are downgrading TSLA price target.  One of them has put it at $10/share in a bearish case.

CITI has also now moved TSLA to the sell column with a price target of $191.

Perhaps most important of all...TSLA's bonds are now distressed.  I've heard that they are selling in the 80's.

I've got a funny feeling that if there is another bad quarter, bad news story, crazy act by Musk, or some other bad news, the stock will go down substantially.

Did you the Form 4 he filed a couple days ago? He exercised 175k options. These options won't expire till 2022, but he had to exercise them now. why? I think he need the stocks to meet his margin calls.

[Ahab]

I'm firmly betting on zero at this point through a range of puts and call spreads. Maybe they get taken out-sub 50, but I doubt it. It'll take $15 billion or more to make creditors whole so the stock is probably a donut...

[aws]

It's remarkable to me how fat the tails are in the options pricing curves.  I can't remember another case of such a large company, especially where the debt to market cap is this low, is being priced as though bankruptcy is a real possibility.  You can make a 2% return by shorting Jan 2020 $10 puts - a 95% fall in just 8 months is needed for those to be in the money.  Seems a little crazy, but I don't know enough about the company to want to take either side of that bet.