The market cap is higher than GM which is a ****ing joke. Stock is way overpriced.

Untouchable or PR doesn't mean jack **** in the end, if he can't deliver. 1000 cars a week at $80K/car (while still losing vast sums of money on every car!) is a cakewalk. The volume is so low it's basically prototype manufacturing. If you **** it up you can hand fix it because there's so much fat in the price and the throughput is so low. Even with that low bar he was two years over deadline at delivering.

Mass manufacturing for high volume, low price (let alone doing so profitably) is another beast entirely and Musk has so far shown total incompetence at that.

The whole Musk pay package is such a weird incentive. Musk can just keep on hyping up his company and building up revenue, while ignoring profitability.

I agree there is merit to being annoyed by people who are like "I work in, so I know", it's the cousin of the recent graduate who says "I took a class on" that is also completely clueless. Heltok did it in here and it was super annoying.


With that said, being a corporate controller or VP at a 50+B market cap is a pretty prestigious position. People don't just get up and leave overnight and leave a huge comp plan on the table unless they have a pretty good idea it's the right financial/legal decision for them. I mean evaluating that type of stuff is literally part of their job.


To have a CFO leave after 8 months or whatever it was when wheeler left, a Controller and VP FInance leave within a week of each other, it means people are looking to get out.

You don't have to work in finance to know that when your finance team is jumping ship, something is probably up.

I agree with all of this.

It was written purely for you. You're possibly the only person here who doesn't understand this.

All of what syndrome wrote, which you now agree with, is:

a) obvious to anyone who knows anything about the world
b) obvious to anyone who trades and watches how the market reacts when multiple senior people leave in a short time.
c) exactly what he was saying from the beginning.

Despite that you went out of your way to both disagree with him and be rude about it as well. Fortunately he's a nice guy so he took the time to educate your rudeness and total ignorance.
It's not hard, bro.

1. Very senior people don't leave that often, for obvious reasons (their pay is hugely incentivized for them not to, they generally believe in the company, etc)
2. Two senior people from the same area leaving is even more unlikely.

Add to that:

3. A lot of the senior executives have left Tesla in the last 6 months, in every field from autonomous driving to production to finance. High level SolarCity executives also cashed out and left after the deal.
4. Tesla has shown some very dodgy behavior with its statements and accounting; Musk has outright committed serious securities fraud.
5. High level departures tend to precede bankruptcies and legal trouble. Nearly every company that ends up in serious trouble has a lot of high level departures as a kind of canary in the coal mine; it's perhaps even more reliable than insider selling.

Run that through Bayes Theorem and tell me what you come up with for the probabilities that:

a) Them leaving the company in the same week is a pure coincidence
b) Them leaving the company indicates major problems at Tesla

It's over 90% the latter with any kind of real world priors.

Stress levels are probably at an all-time high and people are no longer seeing the benefits of working in such an environment. Paired with the production problems, they probably see hardly any financial benefits for themselves beyond what they currently have.

Your narrative is again more rambling than anything else. You have been consistently wrong on the stock, the company and the broader market. You hope that the more words you type the more you bring down the stock. The only people you are reaching with your desperate ramblings are those that want your narrative to be true.

I don't think you've once addressed the fact that Tesla offers a product that a lot of people want. Could you bring up a few examples of companies that had products highly in demand but the company still went bankrupt?

Even if we take your alternative narratives, which are not how the world works, how is this not really bad for the stock? The guys who know the most about the business are exiting stage left just as a supposed production ramp is supposed to (if you're Musk or a bull) happen and push the company into exploding revenue, positive cash flow, and increase the value of their stock options?

Have you thought this through, bro? I don't think you have.
This is false; I have been consistently correct on the stock. A remarkable record in fact. My first post is saying not to short TSLA at $90 and it's more than a short squeeze. Only the Trump rip surprised me, but even during that period I net made money, recommending shorts at $380, $350 and $270.
WTF man? What weird alternative reality do you live in. I have an amazing record on everything to do with Tesla as a company. Take my claims:

- Musk is a liar and a fraudster. That's been conclusively proven as of the last conference call.
- They are far behind on autonomous driving and have no chance of catching up. I scrupulously laid this out in rational detail at a time when every analyst, journalist and even heltok working in the field was believing they were ahead.
- 100K+ reservation for M3 in the first week being likely (against even bulls who rubbished that idea as too high)
- The Model 3 will be a production failure and Musk is going to miss deadlines badly because he didn't beta test
- Production on the Model S is likely to be above estimates
- That the stock will probably go up 30+% from $150.

Things I've been wrong on:

- Apple making their own car (as widely reported) is the end of Tesla (It would have been, but Apple abandoned those plans a few months later, and the stock was still down).

Yep, didn't see the extent of the record set low vol Trump bull.

This is a weird take.

You thought syndr0me was rambling too, and "hilarious", until he laid out for you in baby steps what everyone else implicitly understands, and then you fully agreed. You legit have no clue at all how the world works, how businesses work, what is common knowledge among stock traders. You're completely lost and are here because you're a Musk fan and he's a hero.
Enron? Huge demand for its products.
American Airlines
Valeant (not bankrupt, but I called it short at $100, and it had a similar run).
PG&E
Thornberg mortgage
Worldcom
Chrysler

These were all hugely successful companies with lots of sales and demand. In fact most companies that have had large scale bankruptcies looked unstoppable, and their stock soared way past fundamentals not long before the crash and bankruptcy.

You also do understand that this "demand" is manufactured by artificially cheap prices? If someone was selling $50K BMWs for $35K, demand would be through the roof. It would be insatiable. They'd also go bankrupt. This is basically what Tesla is doing. No one thinks their truck can be made for $150K for example, at anywhere near its claimed specs. But if Tesla is willing to sell those specs far below cost, who wouldn't buy? It's free money and a kind of deposit ponzi.

I did you the courtesy...so can you name a company that started with a balance sheet and income statement like Tesla (accelerating losses for over a decade since inception, negative cash flow a decade after startup, increasingly negative net equity) that ended well? Since I did for you:

yeah its traded sideways since may which has absolutely printed money if youre short vol. when it gets above 350 its been a great opportunity to add some short delta. with the market ripping higher tsla has been great to trade with sideways movement and higher vol.

moving forward its going to be extremely interesting to see if it can get back to 350 again. maybe musk is going to need to send his accounting department to mars. i wouldnt be surprised if the selling day after day was smart money making an orderly exit leaving the fanboy types (see posts itt) holding the bag. with the QQQ near all time highs and tsla being high beta, the down side could be violent for multiple reasons here. adding some short delta to any short vol here seems like right the play

pull the trigger

TS,

you conveniently left out all the times where you called it a short and the stock exploded. Last time for example when someone mentioned his trade idea of going short when the stock was a bit under $300. Also, your entire narrative is to short TSLA, yet the stock has actually gone up since you started posting ITT. You live in a universe where you are absolutely correct, yet the reality does not reflect that.

Enron as an example of an in-demand company. Do you even know what Enron's product was? You have to be ****ing kidding me. Worldcom is another hilarious example, do you even know what those companies sell? I won't bother to check AA but I assume they had less demand than the other airlines.

syndr0me's posting history has been terrible that's why I congratulated him on a senseful post. The post itself does not at all reflect what you took away from it. But it doesn't matter. The CFO in a car company is not an important role. In fact, it's never an important role and so few CFOs have legitimate impact. You will go ballistic at this and call it bull**** and what not. The CFO function is an overblown function that only minimally serves the business need. That's why so many CFOs are terrible CEOs.

What is wrong with you?
It's literally right there in the post.
Again, WTF is wrong with you? My first post in this thread is strongly recommending NOT to short Tesla as I think it has upside. I've recommended both longs and shorts. Some people seem incapable of understanding different time frames. For example when I wrote the above (not to short it), I did so with the belief that Tesla is $0 long term. Short term I've been both a bear and a bull, but long term Tesla is dead. The company is ****ed. I even explained why - massive competition once batteries become viable for mainstream EV producing, which is here in the next two years. Musk had an outside shot if he wasn't so incompetent and slow.

Again, you're ignorant of the world. Enron had huge demand. They were the largest producer of various energy products in a number of states and countries, growing as fast as they could build out capacity (demand was endless). They created risk management products based on derivatives which sold better than subprime CDOs, something also hugely in demand. Goldman Sachs couldn't package those quickly enough to sell.

Again, if I sold a BMW that cost $50K to build for $35K, I'd be swamped with demand and "production limited". I'd also be guaranteed to go bankrupt. That's what Tesla has done. They made performance electric cars before batteries were ready to do so without huge losses, and sold them at an enormous loss per car, which is why they had no competition - no one else was interested in paying consumers $15K/car in losses. Those days are over. EVs are crossing the line into profitability (for the majors - Tesla are too incompetent and inexperienced to mass manufacture profitably). There will be 50+ new mainstream EV cars on the market in the next two years. 150+ within four years.

It reflects exactly that. Again, you're completely ignorant of how anything works.

For your average profitable car company, sure.

Companies that are nearly drowning and need debt to survive like Tesla does, who need to fudge figures like Tesla does and do creative accounting so their stock doesn't tank, who have already mortgaged all of their assets (including all of their equipment, all of their future lease revenue and deposits + full payments for future products) need quality financial people pretty badly. Tesla has $31 billion in contractual obligations, including $6 billion due this year alone.

In terms of staff losses, Tesla has lost a long time battery executive, a head of production, a number of key engineers, a VP of finance, both of its SolarCity founders, head of globals sales, and twice the head of autonomous driving in six months. This is not what happens in healthy companies on the verge of doing well.

These departures are very meaningful things. Apart from the throwing the company into chaos - it takes new people time to learn the ropes, and is terrible for consistency - it indicates that there is a poor future outlook. Your head of autonomous driving doesn't leave if Tesla has a shot of beating others (and look what happened - utter failure in autonomous driving). You head of battery tech doesn't leave if battery production is going to do well (and look what happened - major failures which are now holding up the M3).

You live in lala land, in love with your wannabe boyfriend Musk, where nothing is a bad sign for Tesla. I think you have had little contact with the real world, such that your thoughts have excessive prominence, and whether you can rationalize something away is what matters, no what real-world probabilities are. Anyone who trades or invests is laughing at you, man. The loss of two senior executives on top of tons more last year is a VERY bad sign for Tesla in any rational analysis. Seriously, pick your priors and run it through Bayes and come up with a probability that the departures are because the company is distressed. You'll come up with over 90% for any range of priors based on real world data.

1. You didn't mention the occurrence that I was referring to.

2. Enron sold energy and various products related to energy. What they explicitly didn't have was the demand to cover their capacity. So they went ahead and borrowed against that fictional capacity and in the process omitted that they were overstating the revenues they were generating from said capacity. It would be the equivalent of TSLA stating 400k+ in pre-orders while no one has pre-ordered. If that happens to be the case, I will call TSLA and Musk a fraud.

3. TSLA is - according to the financial statements - EBITDA profitable which contradicts what you are saying about a deficit per car of $15k. You cannot repeat this multiple times and hope it'll end up being true.

4. The CFO function does not matter at TSLA. The company has no financial stability and I don't know if the CFO there does more than prepare PowerPoint slides for the next capital raise.

5. Those departures are certainly not ideal but they are not the end you proclaim. The core of people - by the way including the CFO - have been at the company forever. This is a lot more important than the positions you have been listing.

6. I don't live in lala land, I live in a world in which TSLA's stock has risen to new high after new high. Your entire narrative has been wrong and you are so mad about this that you type more and more words. Whereas your posts before the gigantic rise were mostly 2-3 paragraphs, we now see 6-7. You desperately want your narrative to be true that's why you try and try to write it true. This is not how the world works.

How can you say the CFO position doesn't matter while simultaneously saying you don't know what he does?

The purpose of the post was to politely highlight what a moron you are. I did it politely because simpletons are just happy when people talk nice to them and usually don't realize it's meant in a demeaning way.


Everything in the post is common sense, and u disagreed with it at first, then agreed when I said it nicely.


It appears you struggle to string together logic in any manner. This will never improve unless u become more self aware. I have no idea how TS tries to teach u so much, it seems hopeless.

I do appreciate your posting and what appears to be attempts to debate topics, but I feel like u struggle to ever admit u are wrong at any point, everyone is wrong, I was wrong when I shorted in the low 200s, I exited and now have OTM puts and might be wrong there too.

It's literally not what I've said. It's right in the quote, read again.

With Tesla being the topic, that is exactly what you said.

Sigh spurious, ebitda profitable in a capital intensive industry ebitda means nothing, if it was a software development company it would mean something

I said that I don't know what the CFO does beyond preparing the slides for Wall Street. It's implying that the CFO does nothing but the bare minimum. The "I don't know" should stress the fact that I don't think his position matters.

EBITDA profitability is the closest we can get to judge their per car profitability. What you are implying is still true but I wasn't referring to them being a profitable operation per se. TS made the point that Tesla lost money per car which the facts don't reflect. You can't just make up your own facts and present them as reality. I hope you agree with this.

thats exactly what i have been and i am doing. unfortunately it hasn't plunged to 250 or lower but as long as it stays below 385 i will keep collecting money

No, it isn't. Why would you think EBITDA is the closest? The closest estimate of cost per car is the non-reusbale cost of producing that car, including capital costs that aren't reusable. How the **** can you exclude depreciation?? You must be high as a kite, bro.

Let me give you an example. If you have to tool robots and assembly lines for the Model S, or make special battery production lines and research for the Model S packs, tools which will have a working life of 5 years before they're finished, the cost of that non-reusable planning and tooling MUST be included in the cost of that car.

Take the Model S battery packs. They're useless for the Model 3. That's one reason why Tesla is ****ing up right now - they're having to design completely new battery packs and production lines for those battery packs, and the Model S/X are no longer useful. Thus the cost of the Model S/X battery pack tools and lines must be included in profitability of the S/X, depreciated over the lifespan. Yet you want to exclude this because....?

The cost of making a car is cost of parts + cost of labor + cost of factory depreciation + cost of non-reusable components and research + cost of reusable component depreciation, spread out over the life of that car. You want to figure it as cost of car + cost of labor and claim Tesla are profitable per car. That's a) completely ****ing irrelevant to my point and b) absolutely ridiculous. No car company except Tesla does accounting like that, for good reason.

Seriously, what is wrong with you?
Wat.
The facts absolutely reflect this. Tesla have been losing a fortune. If they stopped making new cars and spending capital right now, and just pushed out S/X for as long as the lines could product them, they would go bankrupt rapidly. That means they are no profitable per car.

Here's what I said:
And you ramble on about EBITDA, get corrected by an actual accountant, double down on your point, then say he's right anyway?

Simple question Spurious: Does net EBIDTA account for the expenditure required to manufacture the things being manufactured?

Let's take the end of 2016 as a snapshot, before M3 costs were substantial

1) Borrow $17 billion to build S/X, with a lifespan of seven years
2) Generate $2 billion/year in gross profit (after parts + labor, excluding depreciation, interest) for seven years, for a total of $14 billion gross profit
3) Have the world's biggest moron claim you're profitable per car despite the fact that you're now bankrupt.

Do you see what you did there?

You're just digging the hole deeper here. You acting like the CFO is just some hot-swappable accountant that they keep on board for regulatory reasons/to file papers and do a few powerpoints is one of the highlights of this thread.

And here you laid out in plain and simple terms why you are a ****** on business matters. You wrote in coherent terms why it's obvious that you don't understand even the simplest business logic.

That's exactly what I am saying.