Tesla shares tumble as analyst decries 'train wreck' investor call | Hacker News Reader

Tesla shares tumble as analyst decries 'train wreck' investor call

washingtonpost.com

34 pointsphilk1029 comments

They are reducing profits to be competitive with Chinese EV companies. This was always going to happen.

I predict it will drop until Tesla releases Optimus, the $25k EV, or something else and then we'll see it go back up.

>This was always going to happen.

Did Tesla say this in their forecasts?

Edit: For clarity share prices don't go down because results were 'bad'. Share prices go down because results are worse than expected

Please could the downvoter explain why they think I'm wrong?

Not the downvoter, but I can probably explain - Tesla forecasts are usually completely bullshit. This time they did not provide guidance, only stating than the growth will be substantially lower in 2024.

Results were 'not that bad' if it was for a normally priced car maker. Tesla shares are down not because they were 'worse than expected' - keep in mind the expectations were already slashed by WS this year.

They are down, because it's becoming clear that a lot of extremely optimistic scenarios included in the valuations are nowhere near the realm of possible. Dojo, Optimus, next gen car, FSD...

The cold truth which is becoming very apparent, is that Tesla has nothing new to show for at least the next 2 years. What they do have however, is the crushing competition coming, overcapacity, compressing margins, several serious investigations by authorities and a CEO who is showing the world what drugs can do to one's brain.

Yeah, Optimus isn't something they'll release this decade. See FSD for why.

They really effed up with the Cybertruck - that could've been the $25K EV or an EV bus or something useful.

> They

Wasn't the cybertruck mostly an Elon project?

Yes, unfortunately, apparently one of his kids wanted a cool looking future truck to exist.

He’s blown a gigantic amount of money on making this thing.

I predict Tesla will never release Optimus, or at the very least nothing similar to it within ten years. They will not release a starting new $25k proper EV ever, and we'll only see it go back up at the exponential rate it was when Musk is removed.

> I predict it will drop until Tesla releases Optimus, the $25k EV

Ha ha. Sub $30K EV is the longest running con ever out of Musk. Notice the 2008: https://www.engadget.com/2008-06-30-tesla-motors-elon-musk-p...

> Sub $30K EV is the longest running con ever out of Musk

$25,000 of 2008 dollars is about $35,000 today. That’s a base Model 3.

A base Model 3 is $39,000.

Also, you should be using 2012 dollars, not 2008 dollars. A forward looking statement like "I'll do X for less than $Y dollars next year" should already be accounting for inflation in that $Y.

> with Chinese EV companies.

No Chinese EV competition exists in the US.

Many Polestar and Volvo EVs are made in China. BYD has also set up a EV bus manufacturing center in the US (so technically Chinese, even if assembled in America to get around tariffs).

Tesla definitely competes with Chinese EV companies in China as well as many non-American markets.

As the US is only the third-largest electric car market, that is probably cold comfort for their shareholders.

> I predict it will drop until Tesla releases Optimus, the $25k EV, or something else and then we'll see it go back up.

Heh. I love the optimism. It reminds me of the too-far-gone political folks who think they're always *this close* to some devastating political maneuver from their side that is going to make everything right again. It's always "once the McJohnson report comes out..."

These guys are always on the edge of their seats waiting for Musk himself to come down from on high and deliver the long-overpromised things he's been telling us about for a decade now.

A lot of people are heavily invested and bought in at high valuation so the “copium” takes are going to be littering the internet for a while.

Wouldn't a $25k EV be even lower-margin than their current offerings? It sounds like shares are dropping because investors think margins are too low because of price cuts--hard to see how an even-lower-cost model would help this.

https://archive.is/r4XBX

"Train wreck" according to one analyst, where analysts are reactive, frequently wrong, and only adjust their price targets to stay in line with everyone else.

They confirmed that they were ahead on 4680 ramp progress, announced that they'd be shipping their next-gen $25k "iPhone SE" by end of 2025, announced that they would be opening another factory, announce that FSD v12 is going wide in the next month, announced that energy storage deployments (which print money) are hitting the exponential part of the S-curve, etc.

The issue is that analysts misquote Tesla that they promised 50% CAGR every year. That's not true. Their target is 50% CAGR on average, across years.

Another issue is that analysts only see Tesla as a car company.

spoken like a true Tesla investor.

I love the "Tesla is not a car company" defense. Makes everything possible. Tesla is actually an autonomous robot company. Tesla is actually a robotaxi company. Tesla is actually an energy storage company.

Ok but where is their revenue coming from, today?

Today's revenue is not tomorrow's, and companies are valued based off of the future. Where did Amazon's revenue come from (and still primarily, afaik) for most of its life?

> For the entirety of 2023, total revenues stood at $96.8 billion, of which $82.4 billion came from automotive revenues, a 15 percent increase compared to 2022. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/01/tesla-publishes-its-fin...

Yes, and 85% of Tesla's revenues came from cars, and it is increasing. It is part of why their profit margins have returned to auto industry norms. Tesla has two items that make them significant money: Model Y and Model 3. Nothing else is big enough to really move the revenue needle.

Tesla investors have been fed on this diet of “actually Tesla is a XYZ company” and they’ve learnt to copy it without thinking about it too much.

IMO from my viewpoint it’s obvious that Musk has made bets in places where he deliberately thought it would inflate the stock price - self driving and robots being two.

Tesla stans are great, they keep Tesla stocks high. But their conceptions of stock valuation reminds me of crypto.

Then something has happened for investors to not have much confidence Tesla is capable to avoid becoming just another auto/battery/solar manufacturer, and instead be some kind of dreamy corporation providing other "tech" products with much higher value based on the commodified products as a platform.

It looks like the commodified products are actually the products, the dreams are slowly fading.

I don't think anyone who is paid to listen to these calls is ready to believe statements by Elon Musk about the imminent relevance of FSD. You only have to speak to literally anyone else to find out that Tesla has no legitimate self-driving technology whatsoever. The mere fact that Musk tried to hype FSD on the earnings call is a huge red flag. It means the core business is weak.

They talk about FSD because each release allows them to write down more of it as more features come online, its not a huge red flag its a fact the NN release is currently happening first release to customers finally went out..

The funny part is how much the growth in their fixed battery storage and production got overlooked by the investors.

I don't see it as a positive. There are a zillion established players, including LG and Tesla's own major partner, Panasonic, in the BESS market and going head-to-head with them just results in commodification. Moving capacity into zero-margin lines of business is not a growth story.

> the growth in their fixed battery storage and production

This isn’t a 50+x earnings business, though. It’s a great business. But not a high-margin high-scale big-ass moat one.

Tesla isn’t a car company, it’s a conglomerate?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com