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James Stephenson

1 Nov, 19 tweets, 16 min read

Here is my latest $TSLA forecast thread. Many numbers for those who like numbers & many charts for those who like charts.

Where does Tesla have left to go, after breaking all the records in Q3 2020?? They're just going to keep setting higher records. 🔌🔋⚡️🚗🚀📈

After Elon's stock-based compensation expense hit a record high in Q3, I saw some people worry that the expense will just keep rising every quarter. Fear not, $TSLA owner: that non-cash expense a) isn't real and b) has probably peaked (see 4th slide).

These charts are just different ways of showing Tesla's revenue growth and improving cost efficiencies which together lead to increasing profitability.

Wrapping up the charts section, a few showing production, deliveries, and finished goods inventory, unit sales by model and site, and my historical forecast accuracy. Sometimes people ask.

My revenue and earnings have been within ~2% in 3 of the last 4 quarters.

The next 48 slides over 12 tweets will show my detailed forecast model. The 4 slides at the top of this thread are just the summary tab.

Detailed forecast model slides 1-4:

Detailed forecast model slides 5-8:

Detailed forecast model slides 9-12:

Detailed forecast model slides 13-16:

Detailed forecast model slides 17-20:

Detailed forecast model slides 21-24:

Detailed forecast model slides 25-28:

Detailed forecast model slides 29-32:

Detailed forecast model slides 33-36:

Detailed forecast model slides 37-40:

Detailed forecast model slides 41-44:

Detailed forecast model slides 45-48:

The 4th slide starts a different tab just for forecasting Elon's 2018 CEO Performance Award bonus expense. Important to note: this is a non-cash expense required by GAAP accounting. Elon actually pays Tesla when he buys the stock.

Detailed forecast model slides 49-52:

The other 4 slides for estimating Elon's SBC expense. The max expense that can be declared over the 10-yr plan is $2.283B, with about half of that expensed already.

Estimating this accurately is hard: I don't recommend anyone else try it.

... and I had to add one more slide, because how ashamed would Elon be of me if I tweeted a *68-slide* deck?

4 slides of summary +
12 slides of charts +
52 slides of detail =
68

So I decided to show 1 more: the data table for the production, deliveries, and inventory chart. 🤓

Just realized I tweeted commentary about slides 45-48 but then forgot to actually attach the slides above. 🤣

And then nobody noticed for 24 hours.🤔

Anyhow, here they are (totals and per dollar tables for the "penny" charts and the first 2018 CEO Performance Award slide):

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More from @ICannot_Enough

James Stephenson

@ICannot_Enough

25 Oct

I tweet a lot of charts showing how $TSLA has grown delivery volume and revenue dollars exponentially over the years, but here's a different way of slicing the data completely:

How does Tesla's average dollar of revenue break down by source? How does that change over time?

As you can see, Leasing, Energy, and Services & Other have had a hard time keeping up with the explosive growth in Automotive Sales and thus Regulatory Credit sales.

You may now be wondering how Tesla *spends* its average dollar of revenue. I was wondering the same thing...

When Tesla spent more than the whole dollar, it posted Non-GAAP losses; when it spent less than the whole dollar, it posed Non-GAAP profits.

Revenue growth levers against fixed costs.

Read 4 tweets

James Stephenson

@ICannot_Enough

11 Oct

Earlier this month, Tesla reported Q3 deliveries smashing the previous quarterly record by more than 24%.

Tesla has broken such records frequently for many years, and I’m projecting they’ll continue doing so (see S3XY chart):
$TSLA

@TESLACharts

But reality doesn’t fit the short sellers’ narrative, so @TESLACharts responded exactly as you’d expect: by picking cherries.

The best he could do is this chart. It shows 2020 sales in a country that’s home to less than 0.1% of the world’s population: Norway.

What’s misleading about that chart? Context.

Here’s how those 2 vehicles are selling in the context of other models, years, and nearby countries.

Note that Tesla sold more than 5x as many Model 3s in Norway last year (its first year of availability) as the ID.3 has sold so far.

Read 4 tweets

James Stephenson

@ICannot_Enough

3 Oct

Here is my latest $TSLA forecast, updated with this morning's delivery report.

I cannot underscore enough: EVs are the future of transportation and- so far- only Tesla has figured out how to make them profitably.

Tesla's Adjusted EBITDA (profit) will rise as quarterly deliveries increase.

Here's how Tesla S3XY deliveries have grown and will continue to grow. Since Tesla no longer reports deliveries of S separately from X or 3 separately from Y, I have to make educated guesses in my forecast model.

Read 5 tweets

James Stephenson

@ICannot_Enough

27 Sep

@elonmusk

I'd wager Steve's more or less right about "Project Roadrunner" (Tesla's ground-up rethink of how to make batteries better):

@elonmusk 's favorite airplane, the A-12 Archangel, carried zero defensive countermeasures because it flew so high, so fast, nothing could shoot it down.

https://twitter.com/SteveHamel16/status/1310168979684687873

That aircraft later developed into the SR-71 Blackbird, but the original designer, Clarence "Kelly" Johnson at Lockheed's Skunkworks, called it the A-12... so that's what Elon calls it.

He also says, "the best process is no process; the best part is no part."

The SR-71 Blackbird‘s strategy for evading danger was the same as mine is in my Tesla: punch it and watch the threat disappear in the rearview mirror.

Read 4 tweets

James Stephenson

@ICannot_Enough

17 Sep

@orthereaboot

Some people convinced themselves so well years ago that was going bankrupt, they can’t shake the belief, no matter how much the situation has changed.

One of them, @orthereaboot , was so sure, he unblocked me this morning to try to convince me. He blocked me again after 👇

https://twitter.com/ICannot_Enough/status/1306620252822929408

Screenshots of the thread, for others Luis blocked (and for my own reference):
/2

(thread screenshots 5 & 6)
/3

Read 4 tweets

James Stephenson

@ICannot_Enough

10 Sep

@elonmusk

@elonmusk will be footing the bill, Charley, as he has since the beginning.

If Elon succeeds in growing $TSLA by >10x for all shareholders as of the date he agreed to this compensation package, he will earn the right to pay Tesla $7.1B cash to purchase these stock options.
/1

https://twitter.com/CGrantWSJ/status/1304084217412845569

Under GAAP guidelines (using Black-Scholes), Tesla will expense a maximum of $2.283 billion against the income statement over the 10 years covered by the agreement which began March 21, 2018.

$0.7B has already hit as Elon made progress towards achieving the plan’s milestones.
/2

If it costs shareholders anything, it’s a maximum of:

12% dilution of a company whose market cap he will have grown enormously
+$2.283 billion over 10 years in imaginary SBC GAAP expense on the P&L

... paired with $7.1B in real cash Elon will pay Tesla for his shares.
/3

Read 7 tweets

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