Tesla: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

seekingalpha2021-04-28

Summary Tesla's Q1 results beat on the top line and the bottom line. But what does a more in-depth look tell us about Tesla's business? There are positive surprises, but also major issues that ...

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Comments

maerc19
2021-05-16
maerc19
Haha
Soonkiat
2021-05-12
Soonkiat
Holdddd
Xperia85
2021-05-07
Xperia85
So is it a buy?
OkayWhyy
2021-05-01
OkayWhyy
Go tesla!
TerenceD
2021-05-01
TerenceD
That’s ??
SauChan
2021-04-30
SauChan
Good

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But what does a more in-depth look tell us about Tesla's business?\nThere are positive surprises, but also major issues that ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4421799-tesla-earnings-good-bad-and-ugly\">Source Link</a>\n\n</div>\n","source":"seekingalpha","html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Tesla: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nTesla: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-28 12:00 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4421799-tesla-earnings-good-bad-and-ugly><strong>seekingalpha</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Summary\n\nTesla's Q1 results beat on the top line and the bottom line. But what does a more in-depth look tell us about Tesla's business?\nThere are positive surprises, but also major issues that ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4421799-tesla-earnings-good-bad-and-ugly\">Source Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","isBrief":false,"type":0,"news_type":1,"symbol":"TSLA","symbol_name":"特斯拉","start_time":0,"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4421799-tesla-earnings-good-bad-and-ugly","article_id":"1155904518","we_media_id":null,"thumbnails":[],"rights":null,"url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1155904518","pubTimestamp":1619582445,"sourceInfo":{"source_id":"seekingalpha","name":"Seeking Alpha"},"weMediaInfo":null,"summary":"Summary\n\nTesla's Q1 results beat on the top line and the bottom line. But what does a more in-depth ","collect":0,"end_time":0,"defaultTopTitle":"seekingalpha.com","property":[],"viewcount":null,"language":"en","relate_stocks":{"TSLA":"特斯拉"},"translate_title":"特斯拉：好的，坏的，丑的","themeId":null,"isJumpTheme":false,"ttsUrl":null,"symbols_score_info":{"TSLA":0.9},"content_text":"Summary\n\nTesla's Q1 results beat on the top line and the bottom line. But what does a more in-depth look tell us about Tesla's business?\nThere are positive surprises, but also major issues that materialize once we delve into the numbers.\nWe highlight the major reasons for concern and what we believe should be done with Tesla's stock.\n\nPhoto by Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images News via Getty Images\nArticle Thesis\nTesla (TSLA) reported its first-quarter results that beat on both the top line and the bottom line, showcasing healthy growth versus the previous year's quarter. A more in-depth look shows that not everything was rosy. In this article, I'll take a deeper look at the good things and the bad things investors should keep an eye on when considering an investment in Tesla, or when thinking about what to do with an existing Tesla investment.\nThe Good\nOutperforming ASP Estimates\nTesla had already announced that it grew its deliveries massively year over year, but the company nevertheless managed to beat revenue estimates, if only slightly. Revenues rose 74% year over year, which was a strong showing, even for a growth stock. The fact that Tesla was able to beat revenue estimates despite already having announced delivery numbers for the quarter shows that the company was able to outperform analyst estimates when it comes to average sales prices. It thus seems that the company was less impacted by some price adjustments compared to what analysts had expected. This is good news for Tesla, after all a higher average sales price is great for its margins.\nHealthy Cash Flows And Balance Sheet\nTesla was, in previous years, oftentimes criticized for its lack of durable cash flows. More bearish analysts had oftentimes commented that the company's inability to finance capital expenditures from operating cash flows alone was a major issue. This has changed in the recent past, and in Q1, Tesla again showed that it was able to generate all the cash that the company needs to pay its factory capex:\nSource: Tesla presentation\nTesla's operating cash flows were $300 million higher than its capital expenditures, resulting in a small positive free cash flow for the quarter. That was less compared to the previous quarter, but we should consider that Tesla's business is seasonal to some degree - sales are usually the lowest in Q1, which is why that is a weaker quarter cash-flow-wise. Comparing this year's Q1 to the previous year's Q1 shows an encouraging improvement in Tesla's cash generation ability.\nWe can also take a look at how Tesla's balance sheet is doing. With $17 billion in cash and equivalents, Tesla has ample liquidity to finance its near-term cash needs, e.g. for the buildout of its factories in Austin and Berlin. I don't see any basis for claims that Tesla was in financial trouble or anything like that - the combination of a sizeable cash position and positive, albeit small, free cash flows is looking healthy. In case Tesla needs additional cash for whatever reason, the company could also most likely easily do another secondary - 2020's secondary didn't hurt the stock price at all.\nThe Bad\nHigh Dependence On Regulatory Credit Sales\nLooking at Tesla's income statement, we see that Tesla has, despite showing healthy business growth, not yet managed to become profitable (to a significant degree) on the auto sales side when regulatory credit sales are backed out:\nSource: Tesla presentation\nDuring the first quarter, regulatory credit sales of $520 million outpaced Tesla's net income by $80 million. When we assume that Tesla has likely paid taxes of around 20%, then we get to a pre-tax profit estimate of $550 million. In other words, once regulatory credit sales are backed out, Tesla more or less managed to break even (we can't say for sure until we see the 10-Q and the taxes Tesla paid). No matter what, it seems clear that profitability without regulatory credit sales was weak. This is a problem due to two reasons.\nFirst, regulatory credit sales will likely not be an ever-lasting source of revenue. If EVs will continue to make big gains in the automobile market, there will be more and more regulatory credit sales that can be sold, and there will be fewer and fewer legacy auto companies that need them. This should eventually make this market dry up, thus this part of Tesla's business will likely not be long-lasting.\nSecond, the weak profitability without regulatory credit sales shows that the theory that Tesla's profitability will improve massively with scale seems a little adventurous. Tesla's operating profits ex regulatory credit sales improved by just $140 million between Q1 2020 and Q1 2021. If growing delivery numbers by more than 100% year over year and adding $4.4 billion in sales adds just $140 million in operating profits, then that doesn't tell a great story about how Tesla's auto business will become widely profitable with increasing scale. Instead, it looks like profitability (ex regulatory credit sales) improved only marginally, despite a huge increase in Tesla's deliveries and revenues. Operating leverage doesn't seem to be a huge driver of profitability here - unlike, for example, with many highly-valued software stocks, where additional revenues have an outsized impact on profits.\nEx-Auto Businesses Are Losing More Money\nIn my view, Tesla is a car company - after all, that is where most of its revenues are generated, at about 90%. Some bulls, however, think that Tesla should be seen as an integrated energy company, a tech company, etc. One can make arguments for that, although I still believe that the high dependency on regular auto sales clearly qualifies Tesla as a car company primarily.\nNo matter what you think about how Tesla should be qualified, one thing seems pretty clear: The non-auto ventures are money-burning activities:\nSource: Tesla presentation\nFrom the above slide, we can deduct that the non-auto ventures contributed about $1.4 billion in revenues during the quarter. That was up from $0.9 billion during the previous year's quarter, and flat on a sequential basis. The non-auto ventures, such as batteries for energy storage and solar panels, thus delivered some business growth on a year-over-year basis. At the same time, however, these businesses seem to be structurally unprofitable. They generatednegative gross profits of $170 millionduring the first quarter, up from a negative gross profit of $80 million during the previous year's quarter.\nIn other words, Tesla's non-auto businesses grew, but lost more money - even before operating expenses and attributable interest expenses are accounted for. I don't see any reason to believe that a business that is regularly losing money on a gross profit basis - i.e. even before R&D, sales, administrative expenses, etc. could become widely profitable in the foreseeable future. On top of that, the fact that gross profits got even further into negative territory despite the added scale shows that this isn't an issue that can be easily solved by growing the business to profitability - at least so far, more growth has led to more losses.\nIt is possible that Tesla is able to eventually turn these businesses around, but the path to that seems quite hard from what we can tell. So far, it looks like these businesses are structurally unprofitable, and it is thus not easy to argue that they should be worth a lot.\nThe Ugly\nTesla isn't a bad company - it has turned from a startup to a market leader in EVs, surpassing many legacy auto companies on the way. The company also managed to build a valuable brand (although some others are still way more valuable). The company should be complemented for these achievements, and I don't think there's a good reason to trash the company.\nWhen we look at Tesla's valuation, however, it seems pretty clear to me that this stock is way overvalued. Tesla is valued at $700+ billion, despite being only marginally profitable without regulatory credit sales. The company, with annual sales of about 800,000 vehicles, is valued at several times as much as Toyota (TM) or Volkswagen (OTCPK:VWAGY), which sell about 10 million vehicles a year each - and they are massively more profitable than Tesla at the same time.\nData by YCharts\nComparing Tesla and Toyota, we see that the latter is valued at roughly 1/20th of how Tesla is valued, relative to the revenues these two companies generate. Massive growth is already priced into Tesla's shares, but it isn't clear whether Tesla will indeed sell many millions of cars in the foreseeable future.\nDue to growing competition from all sides, including legacy auto, new startups, and tech mega-corps such as Apple (AAPL), Tesla's growth could easily slow down in coming years. When we also factor in the weak profitability of Tesla's business once regulatory credit sales have run their course, I don't see any good reason why this company should be valued at anywhere close to $700 billion. I thus believe that Tesla isn't a bad company - but a very overvalued one for sure.\nTakeaway\nTesla's Q1 wasn't outright bad - there were positives, such as average sales prices that beat expectations. There also were negatives, however, that shouldn't be ignored by bulls, such as weak profitability without regulatory credit sales, or the issues in Tesla's non-auto businesses.\nWhen we factor in Tesla's extremely high valuation - the stock trades for more than 1000 times trailing earnings - it seems to me that Tesla is a stock that should be avoided at current prices. If I held a position, I'd lock in gains, as downside risk seems quite pronounced here.","kind":null,"is_publish_news":true,"is_publish_highlight":false,"is_publish_live":false,"is_publish_wemedia":null,"editions":null,"column":"","sentiment":"0","news_tag":"","news_rank":0,"symbols":[],"gpt_button":1},"commentList":[{"id":196455099,"gmtCreate":1621098544311,"gmtModify":1704352885643,"author":{"id":"3582760231576582","authorId":"3582760231576582","name":"maerc19","avatar":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/a6caff6f7936a83f9173ff2f7faf37f7","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":1,"idStr":"3582760231576582","authorIdStr":"3582760231576582"},"htmlText":"Haha&nbsp;","listText":"Haha&nbsp;","text":"Haha","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/196455099","repostId":1155904518,"repostType":2,"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":193255024,"gmtCreate":1620793538668,"gmtModify":1704348506326,"author":{"id":"3576107337296322","authorId":"3576107337296322","name":"Soonkiat","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/56bb09391dc31a746c7679fd89893536","vip":1,"crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3576107337296322","authorIdStr":"3576107337296322"},"htmlText":"Holdddd","listText":"Holdddd","text":"Holdddd","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/193255024","repostId":1155904518,"repostType":2,"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":104609174,"gmtCreate":1620380015198,"gmtModify":1704342831410,"author":{"id":"3581413511126130","authorId":"3581413511126130","name":"Xperia85","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","vip":1,"crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3581413511126130","authorIdStr":"3581413511126130"},"htmlText":"So is it a buy?","listText":"So is it a buy?","text":"So is it a buy?","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/104609174","repostId":1155904518,"repostType":2,"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":101019552,"gmtCreate":1619830079776,"gmtModify":1704335418256,"author":{"id":"3581671543489529","authorId":"3581671543489529","name":"OkayWhyy","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/46032ad705fdd90f8d2b6202e622a1f3","vip":1,"crmLevel":1,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3581671543489529","authorIdStr":"3581671543489529"},"htmlText":"Go tesla!","listText":"Go tesla!","text":"Go tesla!","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/101019552","repostId":1155904518,"repostType":2,"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":101031817,"gmtCreate":1619829573039,"gmtModify":1704335405858,"author":{"id":"3573966231987456","authorId":"3573966231987456","name":"TerenceD","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/046d570a2a5c6793332b041c7628d5c3","vip":1,"hat":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b073a07f77dbe6b3bec6b12311fde6bd","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":1,"idStr":"3573966231987456","authorIdStr":"3573966231987456"},"htmlText":"That’s ??&nbsp;","listText":"That’s ??&nbsp;","text":"That’s ??","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/101031817","repostId":1155904518,"repostType":2,"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":103213415,"gmtCreate":1619786062537,"gmtModify":1704272338542,"author":{"id":"3582204393024693","authorId":"3582204393024693","name":"SauChan","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","vip":1,"crmLevel":1,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3582204393024693","authorIdStr":"3582204393024693"},"htmlText":"Good&nbsp;","listText":"Good&nbsp;","text":"Good","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/103213415","repostId":1155904518,"repostType":2,"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"}],"isCommentEnd":false,"newsSizeData":{"likeSize":203,"commentSize":88,"repostSize":0,"favoriteSize":13,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false},"APP":{"userAgent":"Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; 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