asked suppliers for refunds so they can turn a profit
Tesla stock skids on reports it asked suppliers for refunds - CBS News
Maybe they should hire Baghdad Bob as their spokesman
Yeah, except that refunds on past orders can’t change the reporting on future profits. Maybe the WSJ should consider consulting an accountant before writing their stories.
WSJ is reporting what the memo said. So maybe Tesla needs better CPAs, not the WSJ?
The title of the WSJ article was entirely their spin on the memo, which was not published. The CBS News article was a little more accurate; at least they bothered to get a comment from Tesla and didn’t go with the same misleading headline. Though apparently their analysts also needed some help with the accounting.
I am continually amused at how financial news describes 3% stock drops (not just Tesla, but the company I work for over the past 20 years). Skids! Tumbles! Plummets! In freefall! Collapses! Plunges! Nosedives! I think they need a new thesaurus…
So you’re accusing the WSJ of lying about what the memo said…? On the basis that you haven’t seen the memo…?
It’s more likely that they just chose a misleading paraphrase. For example, if the memo mentioned “cash flow” and the article translated that as “profits”. Or the memo may have spoken of profitability in a very general and long-term sense whereas the article makes comparisons to near-term H2 profitability, which this change wouldn’t affect. I guess we won’t know without seeing the actual memo.
Honestly, this article isn’t even that bad compared to lots of other stuff I’ve seen. It’s just more mountain out of molehill stuff, which is pretty much expected at this point. If it were anyone but Tesla, it wouldn’t be news. “Manufacturer asks suppliers to lower prices.” Yawn.
asking for a lower price on future orders is normal. Asking for money back on orders placed going back 2 years is not according to the first CBS article on this.
The counterclaim from Tesla is that the refunds were asked on deals started in 2016 but are still ongoing. If Tesla is asking for some retroactive changes on the basis that they’ve hit their first big production milestone… meh.
Why are you starting with the presumption that the WSJ is wrong?
Because they seemingly contradict Tesla’s public statements. Unless they can provide more evidence for their claim, or offer an explanation for the apparent disparity, I’ll assume they got it wrong somewhere along the way.
Note that I am not disputing the basic facts of the article (those have been more or less confirmed by Tesla). It is the connection to short-term (H2) profitability that appears dubious.
Of course, the article does not directly say that Tesla intended to use these rebates to help with putting Q3 and Q4 in the black. But it does employ the journalistic trick of putting unrelated statements next to each other and letting the reader make the “obvious” connection.
This tendency to believe Tesla is telling the truth, and the media is frequently perpetrating unfair distortions, is positively Trumpian.
Uh huh. Unlike our dear president, Tesla is legally obligated to tell the truth about their financial affairs (“strongly worded letters” from the SEC notwithstanding). When they make a precise statement about something or other, and it is not qualified as a forward-looking statement or the like, it is very likely to be truthful.
And again, I’m not even disputing the basic facts here. It is the interpretation and presentation that appear to be misleading.
Corporations are legally obligated to tell the truth, therefore we should generally believe them more than the media.
Yeah.
No.
I will carve out an exception: when a particular fact threatens the very existence of a business model (say, tobacco farming, or oil drilling, or asbestos mining), and said fact has enough wiggle room and caveats that a false front can be put up for decades, then it is likely that the corporation is lying (although the lies do generally catch up).
On a minor point of accounting? Then they’re probably telling the truth.
You could just cut to the chase and say “fake news!”
Well, that’s a conversation-ender if I ever saw one. Moving on…
My opinion of the value of the Supercharger network has moved up a few ticks. It’s still true that I think range anxiety is a non-issue for almost all situations, and that charging speed is overrated by most people–people not used to EVs.
That said, I ran into a situation over the weekend where Supercharging came in very handy. I had a few longish trips that just happened to coincide, and even if I had fastish charging at home would have required some waiting.
But 490 mi/h charge speed from Supercharging was amazing. It made what could have been a moderate annoyance into a total irrelevance. I could not have scheduled the trips the way I did with the Bolt. There is not, as far as I know, an EV that can add range as quickly as the Model 3.
The lack of Supercharging would still not quite be at dealbreaker levels, but no Supercharging and ~200 mi range (as opposed to 300) probably would be (for my usage). I would want at least one of them.
Some short and mildly nifty videos of Model 3 internals:
Drive unit
Drive unit 2
Cooling system
High voltage system
Battery pack
The systems all seem to have simplicity as a primary design principle. Electrical/data connections are kept to a minimum. Coolant loop shares the heat pump with the main A/C and seems pretty straightforwardly routed. Battery pack has a ton of stuff integrated into it. Etc.
Tesla’s investor call is this afternoon, with details on production and losses going to be in the spotlight.
I plan on listening to the call, and hopefully there are some juicy details, but really Q3 is where it’s at. There’s no doubt that Tesla will post a big loss for Q2; although shipments were up by the end, they still spent much of the quarter at low production rates. The layoffs and other cost cutting will only have a partial effect. There will be some capex for the tent, etc.
I am curious exactly how much of all this has been written into the current price–even if I knew what Tesla was going to report I’d still be unable to predict the price movement. They may announce a bloodbath and still see a positive bump; they may do far better than expected and still see a giant sell-off.
I hope YouTube guy is back again with more interesting questions.