Investor's Corner
Tesla investor who predicted 2020 stock surge unloads shares
Tesla investor Gary Black, a former Bernstein analyst, has decided to offload his Tesla shares after accurately predicting the over 700% surge in the automaker’s stock price in 2020. Black announced this morning that the “absence of clear FY’21 delivery guidance,” and other factors were the reason for his decision.
Black posted a Tweet on Monday morning announcing that he has exited his TSLA positions after being a long-term shareholder since August 2019. In addition to Tesla’s undefined delivery guidance for 2021, “increased odds of a 1Q miss, and a more risky capital allocation policy/higher earnings variability were the primary factors,” he said.
Disclosure: I have exited my $TSLA positions after being long since August 2019. The absence of clear FY’21 delivery guidance, increased odds of a 1Q miss, and a more risky capital allocation policy/higher earnings variability were the primary factors.
— Gary Black (@garyblack00) February 8, 2021
In other tweets, Black explained his distaste of the company’s decision to invest in Bitcoin. “It’s a small risk from a valuation standpoint,” he said. “On the other hand, it adds more volatility to TSLA’s earnings stream, and may highlight a change in risk tolerance within $TSLA.”
I have to think about it and will try to speak with the company. At a $1.5B maximum loss ($1.30/share), it’s a small risk from a valuation standpoint. On the other hand, it adds more volatility to TSLA’s earnings stream, and may highlight a change in risk tolerance within $TSLA.
— Gary Black (@garyblack00) February 8, 2021
Black bought Tesla shares in August 2019 due to the expanding electric vehicle market, and Tesla had proven itself to be the most likely company to dominate the sector. With new vehicles that expanded across different segments, like the Cybertruck, Model Y crossover, and the Semi, along with the company’s expanding focus on battery production and affordability, it seemed like an ideal investment for Black to get involved with. He was right, as 2020 proved to be the company’s biggest year yet. It delivered just shy of 500,000 vehicles, produced over 509,000, and recorded profits in all four quarters.
Walking away with a tasty profit, Black says that he will look for a lower entry point to become a shareholder again. However, the lack of delivery guidance from Tesla during its Q4 2020 Earnings Call was something that didn’t sit well with some investors, Black being one of them.
Tesla is currently in the process of building two new production facilities: One in Germany and one in Texas. While both production plants are set to begin production in mid-2021, Tesla does not have a definitive start date for manufacturing or deliveries for either facility. Therefore, it is difficult for the company to outline an exact production or delivery rate.
The only concrete numbers Tesla offered during the Q4 Earnings session were located in its Shareholder Deck. It outlined Fremont and Giga Shanghai’s production of the Model S, Model 3, Model X, and Model Y, with a combined rate of 1,050,000 cars per year.
Credit: Tesla
But, this does not mean that Tesla will deliver that many cars. The production rate can be looked at as a “best-case scenario,” meaning if there are no production halts, malfunctions in equipment, or revisions to production lines, Tesla would likely produce 1,050,000 cars. Some analysts, like Bill Selesky of Argus, have estimated what Tesla will produce and deliver in 2021. Argus said in a note to investors that it expects Tesla to produce 952,000 cars this year.
Black added more comments regarding the company’s decision to invest in Bitcoin, and wrote:
“I go back to my criticism of $TSLA earnings calls, which already stood out for their vagueness, lack of detail, and non-discussion of strategic priorities. If $TSLA purchased $1.5B in #bitcoin in January, why not share the logic with shareholders on the earnings call?”
2/ I go back to my criticism of $TSLA earnings calls, which already stood out for their vagueness, lack of detail, and non-discussion of strategic priorities. If $TSLA purchased $1.5B in #bitcoin in January, why not share the logic with shareholders on the earnings call?
— Gary Black (@garyblack00) February 8, 2021
Disclosure: Joey Klender is a TSLA shareholder.
Tesla has scheduled its Earnings Call for Q4 and Full Year 2025 for next Wednesday, January 28, at 5:30 p.m. EST, and investors are already preparing to get some answers from executives regarding a wide variety of topics.
The company accepts several questions from retail investors through the platform Say, which then allows shareholders to vote on the best questions.
Tesla does not answer anything regarding future product releases, but they are willing to shed light on current timelines, progress of certain projects, and other plans.
There are five questions that range over a variety of topics, including SpaceX, Full Self-Driving, Robotaxi, and Optimus, which are currently in the lead to be asked and potentially answered by Elon Musk and other Tesla executives:
- You once said: Loyalty deserves loyalty. Will long-term Tesla shareholders still be prioritized if SpaceX does an IPO?
- Our Take – With a lot of speculation regarding an incoming SpaceX IPO, Tesla investors, especially long-term ones, should be able to benefit from an early opportunity to purchase shares. This has been discussed endlessly over the past year, and we must be getting close to it.
- When is FSD going to be 100% unsupervised?
- Our Take – Musk said today that this is essentially a solved problem, and it could be available in the U.S. by the end of this year.
- What is the current bottleneck to increase Robotaxi deployment & personal use unsupervised FSD? The safety/performance of the most recent models or people to monitor robots, robotaxis, in-car, or remotely? Or something else?
- Our Take – The bottleneck seems to be based on data, which Musk said Tesla needs 10 billion miles of data to achieve unsupervised FSD. Once that happens, regulatory issues will be what hold things up from moving forward.
- Regarding Optimus, could you share the current number of units deployed in Tesla factories and actively performing production tasks? What specific roles or operations are they handling, and how has their integration impacted factory efficiency or output?
- Our Take – Optimus is going to have a larger role in factories moving forward, and later this year, they will have larger responsibilities.
- Can you please tie purchased FSD to our owner accounts vs. locked to the car? This will help us enjoy it in any Tesla we drive/buy and reward us for hanging in so long, some of us since 2017.
- Our Take – This is a good one and should get us some additional information on the FSD transfer plans and Subscription-only model that Tesla will adopt soon.
Tesla will have its Earnings Call on Wednesday, January 28.
Elon Musk
Tesla locks in Elon Musk’s top problem solver as it enters its most ambitious era
The generous equity award was disclosed by the electric vehicle maker in a recent regulatory filing.
Tesla has granted Senior Vice President of Automotive Tom Zhu more than 520,000 stock options, tying a significant portion of his compensation to the company’s long-term performance.
The generous equity award was disclosed by the electric vehicle maker in a recent regulatory filing.
Tesla secures top talent
According to a Form 4 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Tom Zhu received 520,021 stock options with an exercise price of $435.80 per share. Since the award will not fully vest until March 5, 2031, Zhu must remain at Tesla for more than five years to realize the award’s full benefit.
Considering that Tesla shares are currently trading at around the $445 to $450 per share level, Zhu will really only see gains in his equity award if Tesla’s stock price sees a notable rise over the years, as noted in a Sina Finance report.
Still, even at today’s prices, Zhu’s stock award is already worth over $230 million. If Tesla reaches the market cap targets set forth in Elon Musk’s 2025 CEO Performance Award, Zhu would become a billionaire from this equity award alone.
Tesla’s problem solver
Zhu joined Tesla in April 2014 and initially led the company’s Supercharger rollout in China. Later that year, he assumed the leadership of Tesla’s China business, where he played a central role in Tesla’s localization efforts, including expanding retail and service networks, and later, overseeing the development of Gigafactory Shanghai.
Zhu’s efforts helped transform China into one of Tesla’s most important markets and production hubs. In 2023, Tesla promoted Zhu to Senior Vice President of Automotive, placing him among the company’s core global executives and expanding his influence beyond China. He has since garnered a reputation as the company’s problem solver, being tapped by Elon Musk to help ramp Giga Texas’s vehicle production.
With this in mind, Tesla’s recent filing seems to suggest that the company is locking in its top talent as it enters its newest, most ambitious era to date. As could be seen in the targets of Elon Musk’s 2025 pay package, Tesla is now aiming to be the world’s largest company by market cap, and it is aiming to achieve production levels that are unheard of. Zhu’s talents would definitely be of use in this stage of the company’s growth.
Tesla analyst Andrew Percoco of Morgan Stanley teased the company’s dominance in its self-driving initiative, stating that its lead over competitors is “not even close.”
Percoco recently overtook coverage of Tesla stock from Adam Jonas, who had covered the company at Morgan Stanley for years. Percoco is handling Tesla now that Jonas is covering embodied AI stocks and no longer automotive.
His first move after grabbing coverage was to adjust the price target from $410 to $425, as well as the rating from ‘Overweight’ to ‘Equal Weight.’
Percoco’s new note regarding Tesla highlights the company’s extensive lead in self-driving and autonomy projects, something that it has plenty of competition in, but has established its prowess over the past few years.
He writes:
“It’s not even close. Tesla continues to lead in autonomous driving, even as Nvidia rolls out new technology aimed at helping other automakers build driverless systems.”
Percoco’s main point regarding Tesla’s advantage is the company’s ability to collect large amounts of training data through its massive fleet, as millions of cars are driving throughout the world and gathering millions of miles of vehicle behavior on the road.
This is the main point that Percoco makes regarding Tesla’s lead in the entire autonomy sector: data is King, and Tesla has the most of it.
One big story that has hit the news over the past week is that of NVIDIA and its own self-driving suite, called Alpamayo. NVIDIA launched this open-source AI program last week, but it differs from Tesla’s in a significant fashion, especially from a hardware perspective, as it plans to use a combination of LiDAR, Radar, and Vision (Cameras) to operate.
Percoco said that NVIDIA’s announcement does not impact Morgan Stanley’s long-term opinions on Tesla and its strength or prowess in self-driving.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang commends Tesla’s Elon Musk for early belief
And, for what it’s worth, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang even said some remarkable things about Tesla following the launch of Alpamayo:
“I think the Tesla stack is the most advanced autonomous vehicle stack in the world. I’m fairly certain they were already using end-to-end AI. Whether their AI did reasoning or not is somewhat secondary to that first part.”
Percoco reiterated both the $425 price target and the ‘Equal Weight’ rating on Tesla shares.
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