The update to Russ Mitchell's story clues us in on what actually helped drive TSLA's miracle quarter...
Tesla spokesman told The Times that a large receivable from one of its partner banks for loans issued to US customers is the 10% entity noted in the 10-Q
2/n 1) We know it's 1 entity. So this has to a lease partner for whom TSLA is providing a residual value guarantee (RVG).
2) The increase in AR must be due to TSLA accepting Model SX from customers who leased w this bank. It's likely vehicles were turned in early.
3/n 3) TSLA would have received some cash from the customer and accepted the used model SX for the rest of the purchase price.
4) The partner bank still has a loan out to the vehicle buyer that must be paid. They can either take the used car and sell themselves OR
4/n 4) Get cash FROM tesla for the balancelet TSLA deal with selling the car.
This has important implications for Tesla and addresses a few questions ....
5/n We now know what drove the spike in AR, But we can also infer why finished goods did NOT go down despite selling far more cars than produced in the quarter. Tesla INCLUDES used vehicles in finished goods. Boom! They are now sitting on a bigger pile of used Model S and X
6/n
The bank either took the cars to sell on their own, or more likely, stuckTesla w the cars. Either way, once the decision is made, The AR would be "settled".
If Tesla gets stuck w the cars, we'd never know and losses on those sales likely get booked in Services segment
7/n Why did Tesla choose to book these sales in 3q?? It seems that the accounts were not settled, cash had not been delivered (may never be actually); wouldn't it make more sense to wait for 4q?
But shorts must be punished, so into 3q it goes....
One more interesting tidbit
8/n Reconciliation of recent accnting change shows tesla booked far more RVG related sales this quarter than last.... (its complicated to explain on Twitter) For the financially minded, I've attached the numbers. Bottom line, 113m (roughly 10% of AR..... hmm) was RVG related.
I should have said a partner for whom TSLA provided an RVG instead of saying just leasing. Hard to get everything in.
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Reader's digest version: There is nothing wrong with the accounting applied, it's just there was no gain. Roughly 100m of $TSLAs reported income in the quarter never happened.
If you want the details, continue....
2/11
$TSLA's FX balance at the end of 2q was about 600m, it grew to 616 in 3q. Over that time, FX moved adversely in each of their major currencies. The moves implied an impact of about negative 25m.
This was knowable prior to the 3q report, and most were estimating a negative
3/11
hit to other income. Makes sense. Hard to argue with.
$tsla, being tsla, instead showed an 85m GAIN in other income. So, WTF?!
Well, IMO, there is only one explanation that fits the available information.
$TSLA may be allocating higher costs to existing inventory and artificially lowering reported COGs to sales in the current period.
This would overstate gross margin and massively inflate profitability this quarter.
(more)
we saw similar in q3 '18 and to a lesser extent q4 '18.
A reconciliation of reported inventory levels since the start of last year shows an unexplained increase in inventory values for just 3 quarters.
The last 2q's of '18 and now the 3rd q of '19
Stated differently, if the COGs per unit shown in these 3 quarters were applied to production recorded as inventory in the period, the reported inventory balance would be far lower at the end of each. Other quarters balanced reasonably well.
$TSLA 1/n Going to ramble a bit, but wanted to share my thoughts and hopefully hear feedback from rational investors / skeptics / traders. I'm struggling with this situation. Nothing I say regarding trading is advice, everything I say is my opinion.
Quick background
2/n I was a professional investor (retired now), ran money for a long time at the biggest and best. I loved the people and i loved the meritocracy. Results were/are all that matters. BUT, as an analyst becoming a PM, i also learned there is a difference between conviction and
3/n making money. Being smart, sounding smart, count for ZEROOOOO. Making money does. Getting lucky doesn't hurt either (looking at you @GerberKawasaki ). I wasn't as cocky as Elon, not even close, but you can't lie to the market gods, they don't care, it won't matter. So I