Go get em tiger. TSLA and AAPL "my 2 favorite stocks" have blown my mind this year. ELON is a genius, like it or not.
Now over $490. lol! I'm starting to wonder if the relentless negative articles and narrative may not be entirely correct.
It peaked out at 498.49. Currently trading around $478. I sold my cars at $464 so I missed out on more than half of the money to be made on that hysteria. Back to reality... I'm getting conflicting reports out of GF1. My snitches are unreliable. A couple of days ago, I started hearing that Panasonic has been doing much better. I don't know how close they came to the contracted 35GWh/yr production rate but they are now going to attempt scaling to the new contracted output of 54GWh/yr. I don't know the ramp period but I assume it's ASAP, given Tesla is involved. This capacity will take them to 600K annual unit production rate (48GWh/yr for cars, 6GWh for energy storage). The 35GWh/yr production rate is tough to verify because Tesla has been bringing in cells from LG. The Panasonic expansion makes a world of sense to me. Tesla needs batteries right now, more than they need the cost saving of their own program. In the future, when they are producing 5M units annually, they will need 1TWh/yr of production. At that time, carrying 54GWh of higher cost components won't be a big issue. The contract might well expire by then, anyway. Hibar is still in play. They just have some breathing room to ramp production and test their own battery platform before risking their reputation on it in the wild. This is ramping up to be a *very* interesting summer. There may be more calls to buy, yet. In the mean time, I'm a happy long.
Tom's Tesla thought of the day. Tesla has been a circus. They have been working like Asian doctoral students on their facilities, battery tech, vehicle designs, production automation, production automation systems design, battery pack automation design, battery chemistry evolution, battery cell production, FSD hardware, FSD software, automotive software platform, energy storage, grid management software, and on and on. Today, Tesla is a world juggernaut of technology, patents, manufacturing, and software management. Yesterday, it wasn't. It doesn't make sense that amount of development would be possible, particularly with one company, but here we are. They just brought the GF3 production line up to 3K cars per week in a matter of weeks from initial commissioning. This is a game changer. This makes it very easy to predict the future at Tesla. When GF4 comes online, Tesla will have cells, packs, and car platforms ready to go. This is the software that will program GF4 for production. GF4 will hit the ground running. It appears there is some possibility of significant GF4 delays. Perhaps by a year. If this happens, Tesla can ramp up the US and Shanghai plants a lot in a year. They will produce 1M cars by 2022. It's just a matter of where. Tesla have proven amazing at logistics. Their ability to scale is now 10x better than it was 6 months ago. Once they have cell production under their belt, other companies that can't compete with them today will be even less able to compete with them. Conclusions - the ludicrous production ramp is going to get plaid - the ability to make money on Tesla is going to get even easier
A week ago, I sold 1/3 of my Tesla stock and used the money to expand another position. The other company announced a dividend increase on the 7th and that brought a nice bump to the market cap. That company is doing great. .. but it is a horrible investment, when compared to Tesla. Lol.
At this valuation, many billions of Tesla debt will convert to equity. I think this will put three bond series in the money for conversion. That removes a mountain of debt service. Meanwhile, they are growing into the market cap at breakneck speed. Semi now about 6 months out from small scale production. Tesla is investment porn.
I was hoping to mature when I passed 50. Unfortunately, no signs to this point. Trolling up some folks on StockTwits.
Freemont Ga5 construction is well under way. This tells me Tesla has or will soon have their cell program into the 40 GWh/yr level. The best way to value Tesla that I know is to consider market cap per GWh/yr. [Edit - I guestimate Panasonic is producing batteries at a rate of 32-35GWh/yr. That puts Tesla's lg contract at 5-8GWh/yr. Tesla must be one of lg's biggest customers. That puts Tesla 450 well overunit/yr run rate.]
If you thought Tesla is doing great now, wait until they advance their autonomous car game. We all know its in the works, and just like all the reports were against tesla's sales until the previous quarter, that is going to be the same way with their autonomous car technology. Reportedly they are far behind their competitors, but we all know thats gonna change. "Mark my words" -E Musk
Great points, zuko. I would suggest any narrative on full self driving that does not put Tesla in the lead is political hackery. Tesla may not have the best autonomous driving but they are at the top and their solution does not require highly detailed data specific to a geographic area. Their tech would work on Mars. Google and gm both need a big database of groomed information and they both struggle with changes, as far as I know. Meanwhile, Tesla topped $540 today and settled just below.
I believe a 400k unit/yr run rate requires 30-32 GWh of cells. Tesla seems to be organizing production for about 60GWh per year. I break that down as 54GWh from Panasonic and 6 from LG. Relevant factors are a Chinese model 3 are toward the lower end of the storage scale while new models seem to push up the storage per car average. Tough to say how that will balance but I would guess it will be a wash. So, I speculate Tesla is planning on producing at a rate of 800K annual units, by the end of this year. I would say Tesla has far, far more value now than it did in 2017 and that doesn't include fsd speculation. It does seem a little high, though. I don't know many more bullish than me and I find it too high for entry.
I don't know what this means but there is a major shipment of Tesla's leaving pier 80. This, when both Fremont and gf3 are shut down to retool for the model y. Tesla had been telling customers 4-5 week delivery on a model 3. They are now saying 3 months.
