? Tesla Q4 2021 Earnings Call Audio Webcast Stream - Listen Here @ 5:30 Eastern / 2:30 Pacific

[anionic1]

Good thing the truck was delayed because I think the stock dip just wiped out half my down payment. Honey if you’re reading this I promise you will still get your truck one day.

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[Suskis]

I was really disappointed with yesterday's call, as almost everyone in this page. Well, today Tesla stocks have been MURDERED as a consequence of the careless words that Elon uttered yesterday. I own 535 shares... I lost the value of a Cybertruck this week! The economic results of 2021 were absolutely amazing for Tesla. If only Elon could understand what to say instead of wishful thinking out loud! Who cares about a robot that won't be real for maybe 20 more years? And its fixation with FSD is ridicolous as well. Why on Earth would I want unknown people to enter my car and go around just to earn me 20cents per mile, when I paid $70k or more to buy it?

 

[Ogre]

…I lost the value of a Cybertruck this week!…

It doesn’t work that way.

You only gain or lose money when you sell. Until then you are invested in the business.

In 6 months nobody is going to remember this earnings call. The effect of this call on the collective consciousness will be erased.

My shares are down a bunch too. Thinking about buying a few more. Fundamentally the Tesla story is the same as it’s been for the past 12 months. They have so much demand they were able to increase prices by 20% and still have a 3-12 month wait List. That is phenomenal market power. Particularly for an auto company with 30% margins.

I hear your frustration, but as far as the stock goes, just give it a little time.

Why on Earth would I want unknown people to enter my car and go around just to earn me 20cents per mile, when I paid $70k or more to buy it?

I want FSD for me. The fact that I might be able to make half my car payment lending it out is a potential bonus, not the reason I’d want it.

 

[Crissa]

Blame Elon's careless words all you want, but Tesla always goes down after an earnings call, whether he was on it or not.

-Crissa

 

[Tinker71]

With 70,000 employee and tons of cash you would think Tesla would have the resources to pursue multiple product launches......or 1 being the CT.

Optimus will have a ton of synergy with FSD and maybe the fully automated $25k car, but how many people with this really take. 100 engineers/roboticist/computer scientist? Ramping the Y and building the CT line is a different skill set anyway.

The Y lines are about copy, tweek, copy etc. The CT body is a major change which will require some talent to manufacture for sure, but they have had a team working on that for 3 years, they must be close.

I don't really buy the chip shortage either. Tesla chips are more advanced than most. If I recall there are fewer per vehicle as well. The new plants are geared towards the more advanced chips and since they are small they can make a ton of them on a wafer. Hopefully Covid is mostly behind us and the business disruptions will start to repair themselves next quarter.

Battery supply constraints - not an issue according to Elon. Hmm.

Margins - I get, especially with cannibalism. How many people that would have bought a Y would switch to a CT. Sure a CT won't work for come Y folks but the margin differential is too big to risk. The solution is to build the high margin Plaid Quad first.

I suspect there is something else going on............it's all about the batteries. I think Tesla is aware of a leap technology and they are reluctant to go all in on their current strategy.

 

[Ogre]

Blame Elon's careless words all you want, but Tesla always goes down after an earnings call, whether he was on it or not.

-Crissa

It was a solid beat.

They beat the street estimate and if you back out 1 time charges (which most analysts do) they beat the whisper number too.

More important, it suggests a super strong 2022 and they have a very high confidence that they will hit their 50% growth number for this year. In fact reading between the lines 60-70% is more likely. Extending that out to 2023, they are likely to nearly double their capacity in the next 12 months.

I do think for some odd reason Musk being on the call set a high expectation and he emphasized things which a lot of people discount. But Musk has always been the CEO who looks 10 years out rather than looking at next quarter.

 

[Ogre]

With 70,000 employee and tons of cash you would think Tesla would have the resources to pursue multiple product launches......or 1 being the CT.

There are 70,000 employees.

How many are qualified to engineer and fine tune a billion dollar Robotic Cyborg Factory?

How many giga press experts do they have?

How many battery engineers?

How many software developers?

Tesla has 69,420 people who are good at ensuring seats are bolted to the frame; showing the cars; walking people through paper work; driving cars onto car haulers; driving forklifts; etc… those people aren’t going to be able to design the Cybertruck Assembly line or troubleshoot the 4680 cell assembly line.

It’s their top-most people who are resource constrained. The 0.01% who can do next level engineering. There aren’t a ton of those people. And since Tesla works them to the bone and makes them into billionaires, they have a fair amount of attrition.

 

[electricAK]

Cause for hope:

Lying in bed awake last night thinking about Tesla and this whole fiasco...(I know, I may be a bit obsessed)

For some reason it just struck me that the reason Musk was on the call, I imagine, was not to update a product roadmap or talk about FSD or Optimus. He was there for one reason: to explain why Cybertruck production will not start in 2022. That's why they shipped the CT to Austin ahead of the call and did some show-and-tell, and he tweeted about how great the CT is. They had to prove that it does still exist and it IS coming. And then on the call you could hear from the tone in Elon's voice that he wasn't stoked about what he had to say, and he was struggling for words more than usual trying to say it the right way and not mess up. CT is delayed. Again. I think it pains Elon to do this. He knows there are loyal Tesla fans and that he is letting us down. And it sucks.

And I had another thought. I'm no economist, nor supply chain expert, but it seems to me that there's a time lag between efforts to improve the supply chain and the effects propagating through. This should lead to an overcompensation that I'm guessing will create an over supply of goods and transport in general. For the last year, demand has been through the roof, and supply was hobbled and can't keep up. Now we are entering a phase where the opposite could happen: demand will start to decrease, but supply will increase heavily (this would cause a strong chilling effect on inflation, BTW). There are billions of dollars to be made in moving parts through the supply chain and getting things moving. This problem will be solved, and then some.

So, perhaps, optimistically speaking, Tesla ends up with plenty of the parts they need later this year. And the model Y backlog could shrink pretty fast with Giga Austin and Berlin online. The whole situation could change fast.

Of course, none of this may happen. Why am I such an optimist? Honestly I believe Elon is a laser-focused, mission-driven person. And I know Tesla has been planning ahead for years to acquire the contracts and resources they need to supply these new factories.

 

[Ogre]

I definitely believe the big reason Musk was on the call was to deliver the news about the Cybertruck and other products in person.

He said he would only be on calls for important matters.

I think a lot of people (self included) misread some signals regarding timelines over the past month or so. Or perhaps the signals were clumsy. Who knows.

 

[JJ_Tex]

Tesla has 69,420 people who are good at ensuring seats are bolted to the frame; showing the cars; walking people through paper work; driving cars onto car haulers; driving forklifts; etc… those people aren’t going to be able to design the Cybertruck Assembly line or troubleshoot the 4680 cell assembly line.

 

[anionic1]

You hit the nail on the head here. They are trying to build a Martian rover instead of just making a great truck. Ford, GM, Chevy and maybe Dodge are going to have all these great simpler options out there and the CT, a truck that was already polarizing, is going to be harder to sell and profit off. If it came to market this year the sales would match all the other vehicles and the other manufacturers would be gappy with a fraction of the sales the CT saw. A lot of profit on innovation isn’t about how great the product is but more about who made it successful first.

 

[Ogre]

Now that Q4 is pass tense with all the bad news. What next on the agenda? I know one thing; I am not paying over $75k for the CT. I reserved the single for $47k but the way this is going single not been an option anymore, I can settle for dual at $75K and wait three years if I have to. I'll be 68y/o by then and it will be this time when I really needed, with that hardcore body, windows and FSD etc. but I know there will be a lot of change specially the price. I don't want to drop out of the race, but I know I am not too motivated after Q4.

Just a reminder, the only prices released for the the Cybertruck are square in the middle of regular truck pricing.

Musk has said keeping it affordable is their biggest challenge. He also re-iterated that they are targeting at least 250k trucks/ year. You can’t sell 250,000 trucks per year at $120k.

They wouldn’t be struggling with keeping it affordable if their price target were $120k. Hell GM made the Hummer $120k.

There might be a Plaid in that price range, but there are certain to be actually affordable trucks coming too.

 

[CT fan]

How do you get dismissive from Elon about a truck he just tweeted the day before 'drives great'?

He wasn't able to make the balance sheets work. The machines to make the machines aren't ready yet. They have the 4680 for the ramp in Austin and starting to assemble equipment and validate it for Austin batteries.

So the roadmap became, 'dammit, we have to finish this other errand, first'. And traffic is kinda heavy.

-Crissa

Crissa, bottom line is, he barely mentioned much about it at all. I, like a lot, have been waiting patiently, for nearly 3 years. The frustrating part is there is very little information or time spent from EM explaining things. In the meantime, others are surpassing him. Surely, they have the similar/same issues yet they have found solutions. Again, I want to see this succeed, and feedback helps optimism. It also justifies loyalty. I tried to keep my post sincere and positive. Just read some of the other sites and comments. There are a lot of people losing faith. He can fix that with a little more communication. Just my take....

 

[Ogre]

Crissa, bottom line is, he barely mentioned much about it at all. I, like a lot, have been waiting patiently, for nearly 3 years. The frustrating part is there is very little information or time spent from EM explaining things. In the meantime, others are surpassing him. Surely, they have the similar/same issues yet they have found solutions. Again, I want to see this succeed, and feedback helps optimism. It also justifies loyalty. I tried to keep my post sincere and positive. Just read some of the other sites and comments. There are a lot of people losing faith. He can fix that with a little more communication. Just my take....

If this is eating at you, probably the best thing you could do for your mental health is step away from it for a while. Just pretend you didn’t order one and stop following the news on it.

Whether you obsess over it or just chill and get on with your life, the truck isn’t coming any faster or slower.

 

[Crissa]

Crissa, bottom line is, he barely mentioned much about it at all. I, like a lot, have been waiting patiently, for nearly 3 years. The frustrating part is ...

...reminding yourself that the Cybertruck is only a month late at this point. I'm right here with you, I reserved at the night of the reveal. I know it's tough. I want my truck.

-Crissa

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