It's time for another Sunday GF3 update. Lots of concrete floor has been poured. I don't know how much is left but it will be little to none. Lots of overhead doors have been installed (Estimate 40% complete). Window installation has picked up pace (estimated 15% complete). The real progress has taken place on the interior. I don't understand it well enough to know how near it is to completion but there are a lot of production components assembled into massive production lines. There is a lot of power and HVAC in place. I speculate that it's pretty far along. Meanwhile, at the substation, the walls have been poured and they are nearing completion of the roof forms. I still can't see what components have been installed but it must be populated with all of the crane-in devices because it will not be accessible in the future. I suspect the substation will be externally complete in about a month. Overall, things look on track for September production line testing. It's time to start considering about battery production to keep this line going. Management has indicated they are about to turn up production considerably. That must also mean battery production will increase, since Tesla is battery constrained. My view into Tesla battery production is rather limited but I will do my best to assess.
There is a somewhat interesting article on Teslarati, regarding a Tesla attack article that was published by CNBC. The article featured two named sources, as well as unnamed sources. It turned out, the two named sources are a husband and wife who were receiving money from the anti-Tesla group: $TSLAQ. https://cleantechnica.com/2019/07/21/were-cnbc-sources-tesla-employees-funded-by-tslaq/ It should be pointed out that Teslarati are Tesla fanboys but, unlike CNBC, I don't know them to be liars. A couple of years ago, I realized Tesla was receiving arbitrarily negative news coverage. It's created two universes: One in which Tesla is worshipped like a god and the other universe where people think the company is about to fail, despite having several billion in cash reserves and essentially breaking even while hyper-scaling.
Maybe you are right. However, indicators provide more information. I do not rely solely on price and volume, and do not work with volumes at all. Because volumes of excess information for me. I do not believe that the result will improve, but analysis will complicate it.
To summarize previous comments, I think it will go like this (I don't generally predict stock price trends but this is an exception): - strong earning report, somewhere around break even - 3 exciting new announcements (production increase, confirmation of GF3 production in 2019Q4, - stock price perhaps a bit higher on Thursday and Friday - next week, there will be several attack articles which will bring the stock back down to about this range or slightly lower - also next week, it seems likely we will see GS, MS, and a couple of other major players drop ratings to where they were two weeks ago before the earning call bump I don't know what goes through the mind of the average retail investor, probably nothing in many cases, but I speculate it goes something like this, "CNBC has been wrong 100% of the time but they are predicting gloom and maybe they are right this time...."
By the way, consensus earning prediction at my brokerage is $-0.41. I did some crude estimates based on guesswork and speculation to arrive at $-0.15. A couple of credible sources are predicting profit of over $1. We will know tomorrow. Does anyone else have predictions they would share? I can't be the only one tracking Tesla with more than just stock price and volume data.
A quick note about the Ford BEV F-150. I watched a segment on CNBC that showed the truck hauling a train with a nylon strap, and then they began talking about how Ford can build 1M trucks per year and will handily blow Tesla into bankruptcy. Thinking people should be able to spot lies and morons who are this blatant but I will shine a quick light onto this issue and why Ford will not be even close to challenging Tesla for a while, if at all. Tesla has more than half of the global battery production capacity. If you want to out-build Tesla, you have to ramp up your battery production, not your automotive assembly lines. Tesla is on the cusp of a big battery ramp. We're going to find out who can keep up, if anyone. Tesla could produce a lot more cars, right now, if they had enough batteries. They have extra car production capability. They have extra battery pack production capacity. They are constrained by their ability to production of cells. After pitching a no-hitter, Tesla has dry anode technology warming up in the bull pen. With dry anodes, battery production should go up exponentially. I've heard numbers that are all over the map but time will tell. Meanwhile, Tesla is looking at buying a mine in Indonesia. That sounds like a good idea to me. Tesla currently has the most efficient motors in the business. Ford will either have less range or a bigger battery (and, therefore, lower production). The cell limitation is going to force Ford to balance range with production capability. If they want to lead the class, they are going to have less production capability than if they sacrifice range.
Tesla reports earnings after hours today. Here's the whisper, since I know some people like to see those:
The quarterly report was just released. It's a pretty big miss. EPS $-2.31. [Note: EPS figure edited to correct info from a source that was incorrect]
Income was what I expected. Expenses went far beyond my expectations. This was disappointing, however, it does stimulate some thought. Tesla has several programs in active development. A few of those are cash intensive. - Semi (probably not a huge cost, at this time) - Truck (probably not a huge cost, at this time) - Model Y (probably a significant cost) - Model 3 revisions (new castings of rear frame and other platform changes that will likely precede Model Y production) (ongoing cost) - in-house battery production (probably a significant cost) - GF3 (significant cost) - Supercharger expansion and upgrades (significant cost) - Autopilot development - 3rd generation energy storage (this is my speculation) $400M doesn't go as far as it used to. It's easy to imagine the money went to any number of worthy investments and it should, given the company's need to bring these projects online and it's $5B of cash. I also think Tesla held back an array of announcements so they have some ammunition to beat down the onslaught of media negativity that is about to come down on them like election propaganda. It's an interesting time. I believe trading just got a whole lot more lucrative.
This would be very interesting. Not that electric bills are crazy for the average person, but there is really no reason with the dropping costs of energy storage that we all can't have our own energy collection and storage built into every house.
One of the most exciting aspects of Tesla, that I've never heard anyone discuss, is their energy management software and API. I believe they have an MV-90 gateway, but don't quote me on that. A power company in Vermont is trialing PowerWalls on 250 homes to provide battery backup and track energy usage. This allows them to shed load quickly, when necessary, by shifting this load to battery fulfillment. In that sense, it is a distributed PowerPack but without the land lease cost or any transmission and distribution overhead. The battery also replaces the power meter, as the utility has management control of the device. There are several situations in which this design makes a lot of sense. https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-powerwall-vermont-battery-power-meter-solution/
Tesla is down $37.50, at the moment. Quick epilog: I didn't have the courage to go through with buying puts so I made out well on the calls but I'm getting nothing out of this downside.
The volume of equipment and material flowing into GF3 is astounding. A bunch of new people have been added to the crew in the last few days. I can't judge the numbers but it appears to be in the dozens. I'm watching some video from last night and it's pretty crazy. A lot of things are happening. I particularly enjoy the way Shanghai drivers don't slow down for speed bumps. Bunch of maniacs. lol!
Elon Tweeted the truck is 2~3 months away from an announcement. That's October or November. Volume production is intended for 2021.
