I always laugh at people who are so sure that Tesla is just a car company and their PE will reflect this. If this is what you are so adamant about, then you should short this stock because I completely agree they should be about 1/10th their value if they were just a car company.

There have been many in the past 10+ years who thought Tesla as "just" a car company, shorted them, and then went bankrupt. I at least have respect for them as they put their money where their mouth is.

I think Tesla is a tech/energy/manufacturing company and have mid 6 figure stocks in them. They are building a top 5 Supercomputer spending billions on it. They build cars 3x faster than other car companies. They are a major player in battery storage and have a 2 year wait time for installation. They are working on Robotics.

EVs suck

Why would Tesla be any different?

I guess that was meant for me I'd never short TESLA because
"the market can stay irrational longer than a person can stay solvent" If the movie " The Big Short " is accurate the guy that originally spotted the bubble almost got wiped out because he start betting against it too early

I am glad you made a good stock investment in an emerging technology. I am not sure if you were in the greater Austin area in the 90's and people had the same opinion and conviction about Dell Computers

If by energy company you mean Solar panel and Batteries that is another crap business that like computers will become commodities which usually results in loss of pricing power.
Maybe AI & self driving technology becomes a dominant contributor to earnings then TESLA would not be a car company

techno-ag said:

---

This guy thinks so.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/facebook-cofounder-says-tesla-committed-135001013.html

Quote:

---

Amidst a chaotic month for Tesla - even by its continuously plunging standards - Facebook cofounder and multi-billionaire Dustin Moskovitz has made some pretty dire predictions for the automaker, accusing it of committing "consumer fraud on a massive scale."

"This is Enron now, folks," Moskovitz wrote on Threads, referring to the corporation that went bankrupt in 2001 after it was exposed for one of the biggest accounting frauds in history. "It may keep going, but people are going to jail at the end."
…
The point of the side-by-side is this: according to Moskovitz, the automaker is wrongly recognizing its deferred revenue - revenue for a product that hasn't been delivered, like an annual subscription fee - as earned revenue through the wider release of its Autopark feature last month. This is a sketchy move, Moskovitz claims, because an earlier version of Autopark was already released with FSD years ago, resulting in inflated numbers.

---

Yeah, another attack on the company. But this one has some legs maybe. It's generating a lot of attention. If their accounting is way off, it could have serious consequences.

OTOH they hate Elon so hard to tell if the charges are as bad as they make them out to be.

---

When will Musk sue guys like this for hundreds of billions for slander?

I could be wrong but am confident about their business model to put a good amount in their stocks.

I think energy storage is not a commodity. I can see Tesla buying energy when its cheap and then deploying when its expensive. I see this helping to fix surge capacity problems. Those rolling blackouts in Cali could be fixed if they have enough mega packs

Medaggie said:

---

I could be wrong but am confident about their business model to put a good amount in their stocks.

I think energy storage is not a commodity. I can see Tesla buying energy when its cheap and then deploying when its expensive. I see this helping to fix surge capacity problems. Those rolling blackouts in Cali could be fixed if they have enough mega packs

---

What is their business model that you are confident in?

Fightin_Aggie said:

---

Enron took expenses and capitalized them as assets.

Then pumped up their expenses.

Is Tesla doing that?

The way they are recognizing revenue doesn't seem the same

---

Didn't Enron allow employees to put their 401k money only Enron as well, or was that an ESPP plan?

Batteries are definitely a commodity afaik TESLA makes a very good near top of the line Lithium Battery but it is still just a Lithium Battery with tthe benefits and limitations of a Lithium Battery

if you can arbitrage the spread between low priced energy and high priced energy through storage then until the market catches up you can literally print money
Best of luck

If this is a legit question then

1. They are leading edge in car manufacturing. They build cars 2-3x faster than others, vertically integrated, thus able to be profitable in the EV space which is only rivaled by BYD that barely makes anything. They have 20B in cash and profitable.
2. Their plan is to use cars as the source of data collection. They have more real driving data by far and data is king.
3. They use data to feed their supercomputer and will solve self driving using camera only while other self driving companies use a complex and expensive array of sensors with geo fencing. Pull videos of a waymo vs tesla FSD on the same route.
4. Once they solve FSD, they can license this to all car manufacturers or just run robotaxis. Car companies would either license it or go bankrupt as most drivers will want FSD.

This is on top of their projects on Optimus robot, energy storage. I can see them eventually going into a cell phone to integrate with their car creating an apple like experience Tesla is vertically integrated because they wanted to control all processes which 3rd party could not meet. They could probably had someone build the supercomputer for them but they know they can do it better keeping it in house. This has served them well.

Their money would be in energy Arbitrage. Making the physical unit is easy. Making it at prices to compete with Tesla (similar to cars) and their software management is the difficult part. This is why I say Tesla is a cutting edge manufacturer on top of their best in business software.

Just get into a Tesla and another car. The software is night and day. If this was so easy to solve, everyone would have a great system but almost all of them done. Software is the reason why they have dominated charging station, no one can make such a streamline system.

Muy said:

---

Fightin_Aggie said:

---

Enron took expenses and capitalized them as assets.

Then pumped up their expenses.

Is Tesla doing that?

The way they are recognizing revenue doesn't seem the same

---

Didn't Enron allow employees to put their 401k money only Enron as well, or was that an ESPP plan?

---

They highly encouraged it. I think the company match was restricted to company stock with restrictions on selling it while still employed.

It was a legit question. Curiosity really and an answer no different than others I've heard from people still in.

I sold a substantial amount off last year. It isn't that I don't believe in what they are doing. I'm worried about their governance though. The Board is clearly completely in Elon's control, has been for a long time and they are big enough now that I think that's bad news. I think they are pretty lucky to have gotten by through scandals like the Solar City thing and the taking it private tweet.

They've had some… questionable revenue recognition moments in the past that make me question the validity of their balance sheet and therefore how truly 'profitable' they've actually been thus far.

Musk is a double edge sword. Steve Job like with spectrum tendencies.

I agree there have been some questionable decisions but betting that his brilliance will win at the end of the day.

If a guy can do what the federal gov could not; make a reusable rocket that lands on a moving boat accounting for all the variance of reentry? I am not betting against him.

Don't under estimate Dojo, it will be used for more than autonomy.

Medaggie said:

---

Musk is a double edge sword. Steve Job like with spectrum tendencies.

I agree there have been some questionable decisions but betting that his brilliance will win at the end of the day.

If a guy can do what the federal gov could not; make a reusable rocket that lands on a moving boat accounting for all the variance of reentry? I am not betting against him.

Don't under estimate Dojo, it will be used for more than autonomy.

---

Just 4 months ago, Musk himself described Dojo as actually not being a very high probability gamble.

Tesla is capable of and probably will continue to do some really interesting things in technology. But that's not really the question when it comes to investing… the question is whether they are doing things that can become economically viable and scalable.

I am not betting against Musk either. I am not betting against Tesla. I am not investing more in them though until they get a proper Board in place that's not totally in bed with Elon. Until then, I simply don't trust the proper governance is in place to run a viable business long term.

All of their accounting shenanigans are those of a company counting on growth and needing their equity up to get proper capital investment for expensive future projects. Not fraudulent necessarily… but it is something to keep your eyes on because it probably means you don't have a reality based balance sheet to look at.

I take whatever a greasy godless left winged freak says with a grain of salt. Would you trust this guy on anything?

?format=jpg&height=1200&width=400&fit=bounds

If you say Enron and Tesla in the same sentence, people will start to believe it. Another leftist hit on

Agree with this. Tesla is more than a car company. It's a data / tech company with the car as the interface. People who ignore that are missing the bigger picture here IMO.

The car is partially a means to an end.

Musk is a unique dilemma.

From the left . Past - What a great guy trying to save the world. Present - Guy doesn't bow down to left wing mantra, fall in line with the UAW, and now relegated to being hated all the way up to the POTUS.

From the right. Past - Guy is smart and cool building rockets and tech entrepreneur. Present - Guy is a sham taking gov handouts to build a company and in bed with China.

Not many people can be loved then hated by both sides at the same time.

DDub74 said:

---

If I was a betting man, I would think Facebook would be the next Enron before Tesla or Musk's other companies. Musk creates things. Do people still get on Facebook?

---

Facebook is a CIA asset. It ain't going anywhere.

Facebook literally admitted to colluding with the FBI to rig/influence the last election in favor of their preferred controllable candidate. Traitors.

tesla's in a tough spot right now not because of cooked books or the left canceling him over "protecting free speech," but because elon was banking on Tesla cornering a large share of the china ev market only for the ccp to basically say "we'll take that nice tech you gave us and take it from here"

DDub74 said:

---

If I was a betting man, I would think Facebook would be the next Enron before Tesla or Musk's other companies. Musk creates things. Do people still get on Facebook?

---

two billion global daily users, including every boomer still suffering from childhood lead poisoning it seems

Why do pro-censorship anti-free speech commies put "free speech" in quotes like it's some kind of joke or something?

Is this even material? How much of their revenue is recognized deffered revenue? 2%? Who cares! 10%? big problem. 25%? Enron.

I'm not going to take the time to hit EDGAR and try to find out.

BusterAg said:

---

Is this even material? How much of their revenue is recognized deffered revenue? 2%? Who cares! 10%? big problem. 25%? Enron.

I'm not going to take the time to hit EDGAR and try to find out.

---

Enron didn't have any deferred revenue of note that I recall. They had the other issue, they had accelerated income from MTM accounting.

Quote:

---

Deferred revenue related to the access to our Full Self Driving (Supervised) ("FSD") Capability features and their ongoing maintenance, internet connectivity, free Supercharging programs and over-the-air software updates primarily on automotive sales amounted to $3.50 billion and $3.54 billion as of March 31, 2024 and December 31, 2023, respectively.

Deferred revenue is equivalent to the total transaction price allocated to the performance obligations that are unsatisfied, or partially unsatisfied, as of the balance sheet date. Revenue recognized from the deferred revenue balances as of December 31, 2023 and 2022 was $281 million and $134 million for the three months ended March 31, 2024 and 2023, respectively. Of the total deferred revenue balance as of March 31, 2024, we expect to recognize $848 million of revenue in the next 12 months. The remaining balance will be recognized at the time of transfer of control of the product or over the performance period.

---

Tesla made 16.4 billion from automotive revenues in Q1 and 21.3 billion in revenue as a business. They don't break out their recognition of deferred revenue by revenue source, but it would seem around half of the recognition is unrelated to FSD, because they sell annual subscriptions to things like cell service.

Whatever accounting issues Tesla may have, comparing them to Enron is laughable. Tesla at least has hard assets, an in demand product and loyal customer base.
To this day I still don't understand what Enron actually did as a conpany.
But the point was made earlier that this is just about creating a headline to smear Musk. Typical

Enrollment did a lot of things wrong.

But, their primary sin was that they would make a long term trade, and then a counter trade with a special purpose entity that was off the balance sheet. What ever the long term profit of that trade / counter trade was, Enron would recognize as revenue in the quarter the trade was executed, as opposed to earned over time.

It made it look like Enron was making bank on arbitrage when they were actually just hiding their commodity risk in off balance sheet SPEs.

There are alot of liberal left wingers on here trying to tarnish a man, a company, a product with very little facts. Its the classic left wing playbook. Keep saying it, put in random links of unproven facts, keep saying it, ignore facts, keep saying it until they actually believe it.

If all fails, just call him a China asset and move on. Liberals on here do not like free speech and Musk speaks his mind. He is the richest man in the world and that gives him a IDGAF shield.

Elon has gotten the tech and cash influx to keep Plan Mars on track. That's all he really cares about. Everything in addition to those two items for Plan Mars (more tech and more cash) is "icing on the cake".

Old McDonald said:

---

DDub74 said:

---

If I was a betting man, I would think Facebook would be the next Enron before Tesla or Musk's other companies. Musk creates things. Do people still get on Facebook?

---

two billion global daily users, including every boomer still suffering from childhood lead poisoning it seems

---

Youth demographics has been falling since 2014

"he company announced that it won't be reporting Facebook user numbers going forward. "

MaroonStain said:

---

Elon has gotten the tech and cash influx to keep Plan Mars on track. That's all he really cares about. Everything in addition to those two items for Plan Mars (more tech and more cash) is "icing on the cake".

---

Very good point, and now with his new business deal with China for self driving Teslas, he's got even more "icing on the cake" to keep doing everything he loves.

Tesla appears to be abandoning charging stations. Seems like a very bad sign.

Confirmed - @Tesla @elonmusk has let our entire charging org go. What this means for the charging network, NACS, and all the exciting work we were doing across the industry, I don't yet know. What a wild ride it has been.

— willjameson (@willjameson) April 30, 2024

wessimo said:

---

Tesla appears to be abandoning charging stations. Seems like a very bad sign.

Confirmed - @Tesla @elonmusk has let our entire charging org go. What this means for the charging network, NACS, and all the exciting work we were doing across the industry, I don't yet know. What a wild ride it has been.

— willjameson (@willjameson) April 30, 2024

---

Don't tell folks here and their socks!

techno-ag said:

---

wessimo said:

---

Tesla appears to be abandoning charging stations. Seems like a very bad sign.

Confirmed - @Tesla @elonmusk has let our entire charging org go. What this means for the charging network, NACS, and all the exciting work we were doing across the industry, I don't yet know. What a wild ride it has been.

— willjameson (@willjameson) April 30, 2024

---

Don't tell folks here and their socks!

---

I figure I'll keep the shocked face going, a la good old Solari days.