@wholemars is correct: $TSLA shares have huge opportunity but TSLA has to proactively manage the narrative and think longer term. My suggestions:
1/ Field a credible PR team to hold media accountable through fact checking and proactively shape overall perceptions and tell Tesla's story. Today consumers hear one voice and it belongs to TSLA’s competitors (GM, F, VOW) setting the narrative through MSM because TSLA’s voice is nowhere to be found. If MSM is biased against TSLA, blame TSLA for not fielding a team.
2/ Leverage the brand to a new more affordable TAM and launch a new TSLA hatchback that satisfies consumers’ tastes for a compact vehicle at the $25K-$30K price point after the EV credit. Abandon any ideas about cutting price funded by cutting costs as TSLA did in 2023 and destroyed earnings power and got no volume growth.
3/ Build a world class ad campaign that shows potential buyers how beautiful the new Model Y Juniper is and go on the offensive about how technologically superior Model Y and Model 3 are vs other EVs. Grow EV adoption by overcoming range anxiety, show how convenient EVs are to charge, stress EV performance over ICE, demonstrate FSD’s superior self-driving technology, and EV benefits for climate sustainability. Target all consumers (not just Repiblicans) and do not rely solely on word of mouth.
4/ Think more creatively and stop focusing on price as the only marketing lever. Price cuts are a short-term tactic used to clear inventory. TSLA mistakenly uses pricing as a long-term strategy to build volume when a world-class communications campaign would be so much more effective.
5/ Acknowledge that while TSLA is the undisputed leader to launch go anywhere unsupervised autonomy at scale, others will get there too (GOOG, AMZN, BIDU already there, $NVDA will get most others there). TSLA needs to convince consumers why TSLA’s unsupervised autonomy is better than everyone else’s (fleet, data, compute aren’t the right buzzwords). While true that TSLA is the only one who can deliver unsupervised autonomy profitably at scale, stop the nonsense that others will go bankrupt because they can’t do it profitably. All ICE auto manufacturers are committed to investing capex in EVs and unsupervised autonomy, and their cash-rich ICE franchises can fund their unprofitable EV and autonomy initiatives for years. @elonmusk@travisraxelrod
In today’s pre-mkt summary: President Trump shifts narrative to “targeted” tariffs; update on estimated TSLA deposits based on weekly and daily Bloomberg credit card data; why $TSLA continues to rally off its 3/10 bottom of $222.
A CEO’s job is to inspire their troops to greatness.
Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, emphasized that a leader’s role is to inspire and energize people, famously saying, “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.” The idea of rallying "the troops" to achieve extraordinary results is a common thread in his speeches.
Based on that criteria, @elonmusk is a great CEO for $TSLA.
$TSLA China reported 17,400 insurad registrations for the week of Mar 17-23. This was the highest week so far this year, and included ~10,600 refreshed Model Y. As new Model Y production ramps up, overall China sales continue to stabilize. Through week 12, 1Q is -0.6% YoY and -34.5% QoQ. Sources: @piloly@Tslachan
In today’s pre-mkt summary for Subscribers: $TSLA China weekly insured registrations hit 17.3K, a YTD high as refreshed Model Y production ramps higher; TSLA Europe Feb sales decline of -47% not relevant given severely limited Model Y inventory as TSLA changes over to new Model Y Juniper version; Trump invents a new economic weapon called secondary tariffs to punish any country that buys oil from Venezuela.
You are joking right? $TSLA recall costs are one-time costs and rounding error to the P&L. Even if the cost to fix was $500 per, that’s a one-time EPS hit of <$.01/share.
Top question I’m getting: Why does the $TSLA brand even matter if TSLA’s valuation is more about robotaxi and humanoid robots than Tesla EVs?
No disrespect but TSLA is in the business of selling EVs, unsupervised autonomy, and ultimately humanoid robots to consumers. Brand is critical to consumers’ trust, and if Elon’s political rhetoric and DOGE activities are hurting that brand and leading to acts of hate against owners of Tesla vehicles and stores, Elon (and Trump) need to formulate a plan to stop the hatred to protect the current EV brand. Second, TSLA needs to invest in the marketing skills needed to sell unsupervised autonomy and humanoid robots in the future.
As of 2024 4Q, 81% of TSLA profits came from the EV business, with just 2% of that 81% from FSD purchase and rentals. By 2030, assuming a 25% take rate, we estimate 78% of TSLA profits from EVs with 10% from FSD purchase and rentals. So persuading and delighting consumers is as critical as manufacturing and operational expertise.
$TSLA brand may be tainted until unsupervised autonomy goes live, given lack of PR to change the narrative. In the end, the best product will win. Refreshed Model Y production ramp should boost TSLA brand equity - understated and gorgeous, 327 mile range, superior technology, great value for the money. Cybertruck brand may be history given its impossible-to-miss presence and an obvious target for haters. @elonmusk needs to finish at DOGE and return to TSLA.
$TSLA now up +4% in a down market following last night’s @elonmusk X live stream to TSLA employees. Investors roundly cheered Elon’s vision, confidence, spirit, and calmness in praising employees for their efforts during the current media storm.
From my Subscribers’ feed last night:
In Musk’s speech to employees, he covered a myriad of topics: Model Y this year will repeat last year’s accomplishment of being the world's best-selling vehicle. He talked of significant improvements in FSD unsupervised autonomy and his vision that FSD will be ultimately 10 times safer than a human driver.
Musk painted a vision of a future he called sustainable abundance, which is likely to become TSLA’s mission statement. “A future where you can have any good or service you want at will.” He reiterated that TSLA would build 5,000 Optimus humanoid robots this year; and 50,000 in 2026, and increasing 10x per year after that. He said that Optimus will be the biggest product of all time by far: “10 times bigger than the next biggest product ever made.” He insisted that Tesla is the only company that can build intelligent humanoid robots at scale.
Elon told employees to "hang onto their stock" and empathized what it must feel like to be a Tesla employee: “If you read the news, it feels like Armageddon. I can't walk past a TV without seeing a Tesla on fire…. I understand if you don't want to buy our product, but you don't have to burn it down, that's a bit unreasonable.” Musk painted a picture of Tesla as the company of choice for people to work for, with lots of opportunity for upward mobility. He ended with “One thing is for sure - the future is going to be very interesting."
We continue to believe $TSLA bottomed last Monday at $222, and will move higher once Elon gives up his DOGE responsibilities and returns as TSLA CEO full-time. Other positive catalysts include the continued ramp of refreshed Model Y, the new $25K-30K EV due out at end of 2Q, and Austin unsupervised autonomy test market in 3Q. We believe the reduction of 1Q deliv ests (now 400K vs 468K at year-end) is fully discounted in TSLA’s stock price.
$TSLA still not showing much degradation in order flow despite the recent spate of bad PR. Third party credit card data sourced from Bloomberg shows that daily YoY orders through 3/13 have not changed much from a quarter earlier and weekly orders through 3/9 are actually higher. While true that consumers pay cash (or finance with loans) to take delivery of new Teslas, credit cards are commonly used for the down payments.
Model 3 shipments still seem steady YoY even after normalizing for last year’s 1Q shipments by using the average over the year for the 2024/1Q period. If brand damage was severe as the MSM implies, wouldn’t Model 3 deliveries show deterioration? Our thesis remains that the drop off in TSLA 1Q YoY deliveries is due to limited Model Y inventories, which has caused buyers to delay taking deliveries until the new refreshed ModelY is available. We normalize M-3 shipments for last year’s 1Q because 2024/1Q M-3 shipments were low due to the M-3 Highland transition that started in China and Europe in 2023 4Q and impacted U.S. M-3 delivs in 2024 1Q.
Finally, TSLA China insured registrations show just a -4% 1Q YoY decline through 3/16, despite limited refreshed Model Y inventory in China and customers waiting for the updated version. We will get new TSLA China weekly registrations data through 3/23 on Monday night. We expect a weekly registrations of 16-18K after a quarterly best 15.3K registrations last week.