The imminent TSLA Implosion - Beware Monolithic Financial NewsOne of the biggest red flags when it comes to investing is a monolithic/singular message reverberated ad nauseum throughout the financial news media. Lately, everything about Tesla has been nothing but positive with almost no analysts commenting on the 800-lb gorilla in the room. Just months ago, Musk was threatening to move production out of California due to what he referred to as 'fascist' government orders to shelter in place - shutting down Tesla's largest production facilities for both its vehicles in the bay area and its battery production in Nevada. Those production stoppages from March to May are going to severely impact Tesla's Q3 financials and is likely a HUGE reason behind Tesla both being rejected by the S&P 500 AND Tesla raising $5B in cash from common stock sales - diluting its shares by more than 1%.
Now the hype is all around 'Battery Day', with Musk himself hyping it just yesterday on Twitter saying it's going to be exciting. Everyone already knows about the million mile battery, so while it's interesting tech, it's not something that isn't already priced into the stock and what's more, it's provided by a source outside Tesla through their chinese partner, Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd. - so despite it being good news for EVs everywhere - VW can buy the same 'million mile battery' that's going into the future Teslas.
Just last year, TSLA was struggling to keep up with demand - so much so that Tesla had to walk back from earlier statements that it's gigafactory would be putting out 3,000 model Y's a week by 6 months. Now, the fallout from COVID-19 is coming home to roost. Tesla produced 110k cars in Q1, 82k cars in Q2. In 2019, Q2, Q3, & Q4 churned out 87k, 97k, and 105k respectively. With the massive amount of debt Tesla has taken on to build new gigaFactories in China and Germany - they can't afford to be shut down. This was confirmed by musk in a tweet after he told employees that every unit that produced was incredibly important. It was also confirmed by Musks actions to force workers to return to work or forfeit unemployment benefits defying the Shelter in Place order. More than 130 confirmed cases of COVID-19 would pop up at Tesla and another 20 at their suppliers. Adding to production troubles, many Tesla clients cited quality issues with new deliveries - a clear sign of an overstressed, undermanned workforce.
Expect TSLA to try to fill the gap left by last week's S&P snub of 15% in premarket trading this morning. I think it's almost inevitable that shortly thereafter, many of the big inst's will sell off their shares into retail traders waiting arms who are all excited about battery day. TSLA will see a big correction before Battery Day as news of the inevitably bad financial news and Q3 deliveries start to circulate.
Perhaps the most telling sign of coming fundamental troubles for TSLA is the company's decision to combine it's shareholder meeting with it's Battery Day pep rally. While everyone is OOO'ing and AWWW'ing the million mile battery, TSLA will also be discussing the substantial losses the company took from the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing competition in the marketplace.
The fact that TSLA is overvalued is no longer relevant to the argument - despite being completely true. Tesla's cash on hand is the real issue. The real value of TSLA was just revealed by the most recent common stock offering the company used to raise $5B if you were smart enough to see it.
The shares that TSLA sold diluted the market cap by roughly 1.2%, and the market handed TSLA a 35% stock price drop because of it. An over-reaction? Perhaps, but with a price to book ratio of 32.39, while the average auto & truck manufacturer price to book ratio is a paltry 1.9 - and that INCLUDES Tesla. Clearly, if we removed tsla from that average, we would be looking at something closer to 1 (note: anything less than 1 is considered good by value investor standards, and anything less than 3 is preferred). 32.39 to 1 and 35 to 1.2 are practically identical ratios. If a 1% dilution causes this type of sell off, there's no better indication that the stock is incredibly overpriced.
To avert a flash crash due to the abysmal numbers we're expecting during the shareholder meeting, Elon is going to be doing the song and dance for battery day on the 22nd. I'm a big fan of Tesla, and have made most of my trading income by buying long calls on TSLA. At least for the short term, TSLA is about to turn into a pumpkin. They'll no doubt rebound, but I don't think we'll ever see a 2500 stock price again - or anything near it. TSLA is the #1 market cap right now for 2 reasons: they were first in the EV market and their autopilot tech is super cool and a competitive advantage that other manufacturers will have a tough time emulating. However, both of those strengths have temporary ramifications - nobody thinks about whether ford or gm was first to market and it's just a matter of time before every other car manufacturer has some type of autopilot feature. But the infrastructure to build up production capacity to the levels of the Big 3 takes decades - and that's time that Tesla unfortunately just doesn't have.
Summary:
*BEWARE THE BULL TRAP set by an elevated premarket price.
*TSLA is estimated to be ~40k units behind production forecasts. This will decimate financials as one of their largest costs - labor - saw no downturn despite the pandemic.
*Battery Day was combined with the shareholder's meeting to distract from what will undoubtedly be horrific financials because of COVID-19
*There has been a severe divergence between volume and price - which indicates a high probability of trend reversal
*There's evidence of big institutions selling off their positions by block sizes, erratic price action, and low liquidity based on the bid/ask gaps.
*TSLA's stock has been on a tear, but reality will set in fairly soon. The shareholder meeting will reveal the cash position of the company - which is likely to be terrifying to many investors and reveal the company's reason for the recent $5B stock offering and S&P rejection. The company will likely only have a few months of reserves at best.
*Tesla will undoubtedly survive the coming big drop, but getting back to profitable on a consistent quarterly basis is going to take time. However, we likely saw the top of TSLA's stock price over the last few weeks. Expect some more big steps down in the week to come and around Q3 earnings as well.
*RSI shows the stock is severely overbought on the daily, and every time TSLA has run into this high a level on RSI, the following day was almost always negative or at best, flat.
