Makes no sense that a car manufacturer is speculating on exotic financial investments. You buy shares of an automaker expecting cars and related stuff.
It's the same that Tesla betting its capital in the Super Bowl.
Most of the other car manufacturers make a majority of their money on financing services rather than making and selling cars. How is Tesla parking money in Bitcoin much different when most of them are essentially atttempting to make money outside their specialty?
> How is Tesla parking money in Bitcoin much different when most of them are essentially atttempting to make money outside their specialty?
Car manufacturing is cash intensive. When car companies finance car purchases, they’re rarely doing so off balance sheet. They aren’t parking money; when they felt the need to they historically returned it to shareholders.
Tesla financed its Bitcoin wager off balance sheet. It lost cash on the adventure, cash which could have financed operations.
Financing services as in gambling on market? Or making their products more easily bought? After all we are talking about products in most expensive things average buyer owns.
Some TSLA investors are in it for the car manufacturing and others are there for the lulz / meme stock value. Elon and bitcoin provide a lot of value and fun for the latter class of investor.
Matt Levine (bloomberg) has some amusing but also thought provoking takes on this.
However its not like this move risked the company or anything. So it was not that concerning at all.
Actually I think they should have done smaller investment in bitcoin earlier. When they did it was pretty late already.
That said, as an investor it actually took about 1000x more media attention then it actually mattered in the actual investment thesis. It made the Q end results a bit wonky but that's about it.
Elon pumped and dumped Bitcoin which is a scam in itself. His factories are bleeding money. His autonomous vehicle project is in shambles. All of the other car companies in world are going long on EVs (factories that don't bleed money). And the stock is up 10%. I don't understand it at all.
? Tesla just posted another quarter with billions in profits. The Model 3 is in the top ten selling cars, globally. They’re still selling far more than they can make.
Would they be posting billions in profits without subsidies? My understanding is that for several years, they were only profitable because they were selling fuel efficiency credits to Ford and GM so they could continue selling tons of trucks and SUVs. But those subsidies are going to be phased out and there will also be less demand for them as the big makers sell more EVs.
> Would they be posting billions in profits without subsidies?
Yes. You information is very out of date.
Its the information that Tesla critics had to fall back to once they became profitable. To anybody with even minimal understanding of the buissness knew that this was just temporary and Tesla was heading toward profitability very fast.
But for a few quarters one could right good articles saying 'only profitable because credits'.
This has been over for a while, fuel credits have dropped of a huge amount and every quarter they are a fall smaller part of revenue.
> My understanding is that for several years, they were only profitable because they were selling fuel efficiency credits
First of all, fuel credits are not subsidies. They are punishment for companies that don't comply to regulation.
> But those subsidies are going to be phased out and there will also be less demand for them as the big makers sell more EVs.
Tesla has not received the tax subsidies for many years now. Those Subsidies getting removed would actually benefit Tesla.
Fuel credits will not be phased out, in fact they might increase more in the future. And they will continue to exist in Europe as well.
People that since 2014 have been arguing that fuel credits are almost gone because every company is gone do EV soon have miscalculated. Fuel credits are gone continue to be a part of the story for EV companies but as Tesla continues to grow its an ever smaller part.
Tesla has industry leading operational margin will growing around 50% YoY.
> And the stock is up 10%. I don't understand it at all.
Stock price movement is driven by expectations about the future, not past results. Now, past results can form a foundation for modeling the future, but a stock price is really about future expectations.
This, very sadly. But this alternative-facts mindset about Musk seems to run deep, and be all too common. One of my friends is a career engineer / engineering consultant...who simply refuses to admit that there is anything even a bit special about Elan Musk, or how he took SpaceX from founding the company to their current routine Falcon 9 capabilities and operations. Somehow, in his worldview, everything that happened along that road was government subsidies, other people's work, "trivial to do", or just plain denial.
Financial Engineering might be a good reason. Most of the buy side analysts and fund managers rely on financial metrics and Elon is very good at cooking books. Also, stock price has nothing to do with performance of company as we have seen in GameStop and other companies. My bet is that TSLA stock is moving up by forcing short sellers and call writers to force close their positions by some private market force most probably fueled by Elon tweet farm. In turn creating momentum upwards.
It is very contradictory, but I feel TSLA stock will fall if the short sellers stop shorting and call writers stop writing this stock. And stop being bag holders of this stock.
Suppose there are 1Billion shares free float in a company. Out of that 500million stocks are locked by Founders and true believers. So only 500million stocks that is liquid.
Suppose, I have $10Billion with me. Current price of stock is $1000.
Ideally, I could buy 10million shares. Instead, I buy long dated call options to buy 50million shares at a price $1200 probably with $1Billion.
And use rest $9Billion in open market to get 9million stock during a decent positive surprise of earnings release. The option writers will scramble to buy stocks in open market for even higher price to cover the options they have written.
> Elon pumped and dumped Bitcoin which is a scam in itself.
The government doesn't agree with you and you can't prove it.
> His factories are bleeding money.
The factories that were just finished and beginning to scale are losing money, like they would for literally any company. The factories that are fully working are amazingly profitable.
> His autonomous vehicle project is in shambles.
Its not actually in shambles, its continues on as it has.
> All of the other car companies in world are going long on EVs (factories that don't bleed money).
In fact Tesla has a far, far better profit margin on EVs and its not even remotely close.
> I don't understand it at all.
The reason it seems you don't understand is because you just made up a bunch of information that is not factually accurate.
Tesla is a pure EV company and despite that, they have industry leading automotive and operational margin while at the same time continuing with insane growth at the same time. Not sure what is hard to understand.
>The government doesn't agree with you and you can't prove it.
There is no way I trust the US government's ability to regulate financial markets at this moment. Bitcoin is not a regulated security so I am not even sure if there was any law broken to be honest. Still a scam though.
Here is an Elon quote for you to chew on:
"If the price of bitcoin goes down, I lose money. I might pump, but I don't dump. I definitely do not believe in getting the price high and selling or anything like that" (2021)
Well he just dumped. I am not holding my breath for the government to do anything.
On the other side of the government: The NTSB is investigating Models Y, X, S and 3 currently.
> The factories that were just finished and beginning to scale are losing money, like they would for literally any company. The factories that are fully working are amazingly profitable.
Perhaps if he is able to actually release new vehicles in time to deal with onslaught of every auto manufacturer on earth vying for EV dominance. Everything in his pipeline is late.
>Its not actually in shambles, its continues on as it has.
It continues to kill drivers and cyclists and lose AI execs. His unethical claims on what the system can do also causes drivers to inappropriately use the technology.
> The reason it seems you don't understand is because you just made up a bunch of information that is not factually accurate.
There is nothing I said that was made up. His factories are bleeding money. He stated that not me. His autonomous vehicle is not autonomous by any definition at all leading to deaths. Almost every car company on earth has entered the EV market and many of them have pioneered factory efficiency for decades (Toyota (production system and quality is legendary)/Ford (invented the assembly line)).
I understand that there are many Elon fans who have staked their reputations on boosting this conman and it is hard to accept that they have been conned.
The biggest con is that Elon musk is committed to environmental sustainability and he is running a space company that emits tons of carbon into the atmosphere. He wants to run a space travel company that will output orders of magnitude more carbon than the existing wasteful air industry. Why is he in such a hurry to leave Earth? It is because he does not care about anybody but himself.
Scams are acceptable if the right palms get greased.
A promise is a comfort to a fool.
It's never a horrible tragedy if it can't be explained in simple terms on TV news.
No matter how hard I warned friends and family, many of them invested and lost on crypto, some even put money up for EV pick up trucks that will never arrive.
We had DeLoreans, We had the Titanic, We had Water World (The Movie)... Normal cycle of history repeating itself I guess...
And how much did they lose? Not sure, why NPR couldn't spell that out. So in January 2021 when bitcoin was about $33k, Tesla bought bitcoin for the song of some $1.5e9, now they sold 75% of it when bitcoin in $23k. Guess they needed to save on taxes ...
The reason NPR didn't spell it out is because Tesla has not spelled out what exactly their prices were for acquiring and for selling their Bitcoin. We are left to guess.
In their earnings call they said they sold for a "realized gain" but then said something about "impairment charges".
26 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 72.5 ms ] threadIt's the same that Tesla betting its capital in the Super Bowl.
Car manufacturing is cash intensive. When car companies finance car purchases, they’re rarely doing so off balance sheet. They aren’t parking money; when they felt the need to they historically returned it to shareholders.
Tesla financed its Bitcoin wager off balance sheet. It lost cash on the adventure, cash which could have financed operations.
Matt Levine (bloomberg) has some amusing but also thought provoking takes on this.
However its not like this move risked the company or anything. So it was not that concerning at all.
Actually I think they should have done smaller investment in bitcoin earlier. When they did it was pretty late already.
That said, as an investor it actually took about 1000x more media attention then it actually mattered in the actual investment thesis. It made the Q end results a bit wonky but that's about it.
Yes. You information is very out of date.
Its the information that Tesla critics had to fall back to once they became profitable. To anybody with even minimal understanding of the buissness knew that this was just temporary and Tesla was heading toward profitability very fast.
But for a few quarters one could right good articles saying 'only profitable because credits'.
This has been over for a while, fuel credits have dropped of a huge amount and every quarter they are a fall smaller part of revenue.
> My understanding is that for several years, they were only profitable because they were selling fuel efficiency credits
First of all, fuel credits are not subsidies. They are punishment for companies that don't comply to regulation.
> But those subsidies are going to be phased out and there will also be less demand for them as the big makers sell more EVs.
Tesla has not received the tax subsidies for many years now. Those Subsidies getting removed would actually benefit Tesla.
Fuel credits will not be phased out, in fact they might increase more in the future. And they will continue to exist in Europe as well.
People that since 2014 have been arguing that fuel credits are almost gone because every company is gone do EV soon have miscalculated. Fuel credits are gone continue to be a part of the story for EV companies but as Tesla continues to grow its an ever smaller part.
Tesla has industry leading operational margin will growing around 50% YoY.
Stock price movement is driven by expectations about the future, not past results. Now, past results can form a foundation for modeling the future, but a stock price is really about future expectations.
Suppose, I have $10Billion with me. Current price of stock is $1000. Ideally, I could buy 10million shares. Instead, I buy long dated call options to buy 50million shares at a price $1200 probably with $1Billion. And use rest $9Billion in open market to get 9million stock during a decent positive surprise of earnings release. The option writers will scramble to buy stocks in open market for even higher price to cover the options they have written.
Example company doing this https://m.holdingschannel.com/all/stocks-held-by-susquehanna...
> Elon pumped and dumped Bitcoin which is a scam in itself.
The government doesn't agree with you and you can't prove it.
> His factories are bleeding money.
The factories that were just finished and beginning to scale are losing money, like they would for literally any company. The factories that are fully working are amazingly profitable.
> His autonomous vehicle project is in shambles.
Its not actually in shambles, its continues on as it has.
> All of the other car companies in world are going long on EVs (factories that don't bleed money).
In fact Tesla has a far, far better profit margin on EVs and its not even remotely close.
> I don't understand it at all.
The reason it seems you don't understand is because you just made up a bunch of information that is not factually accurate.
Tesla is a pure EV company and despite that, they have industry leading automotive and operational margin while at the same time continuing with insane growth at the same time. Not sure what is hard to understand.
There is no way I trust the US government's ability to regulate financial markets at this moment. Bitcoin is not a regulated security so I am not even sure if there was any law broken to be honest. Still a scam though.
Here is an Elon quote for you to chew on: "If the price of bitcoin goes down, I lose money. I might pump, but I don't dump. I definitely do not believe in getting the price high and selling or anything like that" (2021)
Well he just dumped. I am not holding my breath for the government to do anything.
On the other side of the government: The NTSB is investigating Models Y, X, S and 3 currently.
> The factories that were just finished and beginning to scale are losing money, like they would for literally any company. The factories that are fully working are amazingly profitable.
Perhaps if he is able to actually release new vehicles in time to deal with onslaught of every auto manufacturer on earth vying for EV dominance. Everything in his pipeline is late.
>Its not actually in shambles, its continues on as it has.
It continues to kill drivers and cyclists and lose AI execs. His unethical claims on what the system can do also causes drivers to inappropriately use the technology.
> The reason it seems you don't understand is because you just made up a bunch of information that is not factually accurate.
There is nothing I said that was made up. His factories are bleeding money. He stated that not me. His autonomous vehicle is not autonomous by any definition at all leading to deaths. Almost every car company on earth has entered the EV market and many of them have pioneered factory efficiency for decades (Toyota (production system and quality is legendary)/Ford (invented the assembly line)).
I understand that there are many Elon fans who have staked their reputations on boosting this conman and it is hard to accept that they have been conned.
The biggest con is that Elon musk is committed to environmental sustainability and he is running a space company that emits tons of carbon into the atmosphere. He wants to run a space travel company that will output orders of magnitude more carbon than the existing wasteful air industry. Why is he in such a hurry to leave Earth? It is because he does not care about anybody but himself.
Scams are acceptable if the right palms get greased.
A promise is a comfort to a fool.
It's never a horrible tragedy if it can't be explained in simple terms on TV news.
No matter how hard I warned friends and family, many of them invested and lost on crypto, some even put money up for EV pick up trucks that will never arrive.
We had DeLoreans, We had the Titanic, We had Water World (The Movie)... Normal cycle of history repeating itself I guess...
In their earnings call they said they sold for a "realized gain" but then said something about "impairment charges".