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Top 10 questions Tesla (TSLA) investors want answered in the Q1 2020 earnings call

(Photo: Andres GE)

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Tesla’s (NASDAQ:TSLA) retail and institutional investors are aggregating a number of inquiries that will potentially be addressed by the electric car maker’s executives in the upcoming Q1 2020 earnings call, which will be held tomorrow, April 29, 2020. The questions are aggregated from verified retail and institutional TSLA shareholders by Say, a startup that aims to create and develop investor communication tools.

Using the platform, Tesla’s retail and institutional investors have been submitting and voting on inquiries they wish to be discussed and clarified by the electric car maker. Here are a number of notable questions that garnered a high number of votes from the company’s retail and institutional shareholders.

RETAIL SHAREHOLDERS

  1. Elon has mentioned a 50% compound annual growth rate target for Tesla in the past. Is this still in line with Tesla’s ambitions for the next 5-10 years? This would be 4M+ vehicles in 2025, and 20M+ vehicles in 2030. Is 40% a more realistic target?
  2. What improvements have been made to the Tesla Semi since the original unveiling and is it still scheduled for 2020 limited release? Thanks.
  3. Can you give us an update on the Solar Roof ramp? How many are you currently able to install per week? What is your installations/week target for the end of 2021?
  4. When will Battery Investor Day be held? Can we do a virtual meeting so that it can be held sooner?
  5. When will you announce the next Giga? How many Gigas do you have planned for the next 5 years?

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS

  1. Given 2020 turbulence in the form of Covid-19, regulatory sales volatility (OEM push back against EU Emission laws), new product launches & GF Shanghai & Berlin ramp; could Zach walk us through a “framework” for thinking about 2020 Free Cash Flow?
  2. Can you please discuss potential demand levers in the event of a prolonged recession and sustained demand downturn?
  3. Andy Grove once said that great companies are improved by crises. In which way(s) has Tesla improved or is expected to improve coming out of Covid-19?
  4. Can you give us a brief preview of the Battery Day by generally highlighting steps Tesla is taking to improve cell energy density and timeline for introduction?
  5. China recently announced changes to its NEV subsidy program that disqualifies Tesla vehicles from benefitting from the subsidies. To what extent is there room for Tesla to lower manufacturing costs in China and pass those savings to buyers so they can qualify for the subsidy?

Tesla is yet to fully confirm if it will be entertaining questions from Say in the upcoming Q4 earnings call, though the company has regularly addressed inquiries from retail shareholders in past quarters. By doing so, Tesla is democratizing the process of communicating its earnings to shareholders and institutional investors. Such a strategy is yet another step away from convention, considering that traditional earnings calls usually feature exclusive questions from Wall Street analysts and the occasional member of the media.

Tesla’s fourth-quarter earnings call is expected to be held on Wednesday, April 29, 2020, at 3:30 p.m. Pacific Time (6:30 p.m. ET).

The full list of questions from TSLA’s retail and institutional investors listed on Say could be accessed here.

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Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

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Investor's Corner

Tesla crushes Wall Street expectations, beats delivery estimates by over 15 percent

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Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) beat Wall Street expectations of 406,000 vehicles delivered in Q2 by reporting 480,126 deliveries for the three months ending in June.

Tesla reported it delivered 467,762  Model 3 and Model Y units, while 12,364 Model S, Model X, and Cybertrucks switched hands during the quarter. The Model S and Model X were officially sunset this past quarter and will no longer be part of the company’s Production & Delivery reports moving forward.

The quarter is a pleasant surprise and a good rebound from Q1, when Tesla slightly missed the Wall Street consensus of 365,645 cars by reporting 358,023 deliveries for the first three motnhs of the year.

Energy storage deployments also provided some strength in Tesla’s delivery report, hitting 13.5 GWh for Q2. This is a particular division of Tesla’s business that has been overwhelmingly robust over the past few years, truly being a strong point of the company’s overall model.

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For the year, Tesla analysts still predict deliveries to trend in the 1.69 million unit region, a modest 3 to 5 percent increase from the 1.64 million cars the company delivered last year. Tesla will likely return to more sequential and noticeable year-over-year growth as the Cybercab project starts to ramp up considerably in the next few years.

Tesla has some other potential catalysts to spur vehicle deliveries, too. Not only is it expecting Cybercab to truly start making a change in the next few years, but other vehicles could be entering the company’s lineup.

Tesla sends production Cybercab with no steering wheel, pedals to on-road testing

The slightly longer Model Y L has been a highly speculated release candidate in the U.S. It has already done incredibly well in China, and U.S. buyers have been wanting slightly more interior space than the Model Y. Now that the Model X is gone, it is more needed than ever.

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Q2 highlights a pretty stable automotive division within Tesla, and no true concerns arise from these figures, especially considering it managed to beat expectations convincingly.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’

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Credit: MarcoRP | X

Tesla short seller Michael Burry, the subject of the film “The Big Short,” where he was portrayed by Steve Carell, has revealed he has opened a new bet against the stock.

In a new update to his Substack newsletter in a post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” Burry revealed a new set of bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, NVIDIA, Applied Materials Inc., and the iShares Semiconductor ETF.

In regard to Tesla, Burry wrote:

“And finally I shorted Tesla at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.”

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This means Burry likely opened his new short position after the company’s recent rally on Wall Street, which saw Tesla shares sink in mid-May, only to recover to well over the $400 mark. Currently, shares trade at around $427.

The company saw a big Tuesday as shares climbed considerably, over 10 percent. The size of the Tesla short was not provided, nor did Burry give any information on the position’s structure, the number of shares, dollar value, or whether options were used in the short.

The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building

Over the years, Burry has been one of the more vocal critics of Tesla, calling its share price “media inflated,” and saying it was “ridiculously overvalued” as recently as December.

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The company has largely transitioned away from being known as an automotive company and instead is much more widely regarded as an AI play, mostly due to its Full Self-Driving efforts, Optimus robot development, and data collection related to both.

This has not pulled those skeptics away from being vocal about their distaste for how Tesla is valued, but there’s no denying that the company is a global force in many things, including sustainable energy, automotive, and AI.

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Investor's Corner

SpaceX gets initial stock coverage from Tesla’s biggest bull

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SpaceX Starship V3 flight 12
SpaceX Starship V3 flight 12 (Credit: SpaceX)

Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).

Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.

“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”

Elon Musk called it Epic: The full story of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12

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Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.

It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”

Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.

There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:

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“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”

SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.

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