Hey everybody Rob Manward here and today of course we're going to continue to talk a little bit about Tesla's earnings report yesterday.
大家好,我是罗布·曼沃德,今天当然要继续谈谈昨天特斯拉的财报。
We do also have some news on a possible performance version of the Highland Model 3. We've got an exciting update from Toyota and a couple other items as well.
我们还有一些有关Highland Model 3可能的性能版本的消息。我们从丰田那里得到了一个令人兴奋的更新,还有几个其他条目。
Looking at the stock, obviously a challenging day today after earnings, continuing the downtrend that we saw during the call and after the call yesterday, closing down probably another 4% from where that closed yesterday after the call, 9.3% drop on the day today closing at 2.20 and 11 cents. Nasdaq down about 1% today, a little bit of volatility in the Nasdaq today with I guess a mix of bearish and bullish comments from Fed Chair Jerome Powell. I guess hawkish and davish would be better put for his comments but ultimately Nasdaq ending down as well not really providing any help for us today.
Just a couple of quick analyst reactions, we're not going to go through them all but just to get a sense of the flavor unsurprisingly, mostly negative. I would say as we expected from yesterday, here's one from Morgan Stanley, they've actually updated their forecast for next year for fiscal year 24. Their earnings forecast for that year down to $2.41 from $3.89 previously. Pretty significant drop in their expectations just based on margins, obviously and expectations for growth next year. They did however only lower their price target $20 so previously they were at $400 and now they've dropped that to $380. Basically just saying that a lot of their expectations for the business are in additional things like AI, supercharging, etc. Other areas of Tesla's business that maybe aren't going to be massive EPS contributors next year but they're still bullish on longer term.
Then I always like to take a quick look at Alex Potter update from him. They have maintained that they're going to update their numbers and forecasts after they get the 10Q. The 10Q that should come in a couple of days, usually that's out within I think like three days for Tesla. So we'll look for that maybe tomorrow or otherwise probably on Monday. That'll give us a little bit more information on a couple of items that we talked about yesterday and some things that we'll talk about more towards the end of the episode. As we can see here, margin recovery seems likely following Q3 downside is kind of the headline from them and they're still overweight.
Then just a quick update here. Obviously yesterday the audio feed on YouTube for Tesla did not include the first couple of minutes and there was a little bit of a drop there as well in the middle. Tesla's posted a full audio version now on YouTube so I would recommend going back and listening to just the first couple of minutes that were dropped. It actually has contained some pretty good insight from Elon in his opening comments. That starts at about six minutes in this full audio version. Just to kind of let people know what he mentioned there.
Obviously he mentioned that for the quarter, third quarter, Tesla was impacted by downtime. Obviously we know that but hearing him mention that as a contributor to obviously the performance here is important context. And he did say that that downtime would help Tesla reduce vehicle cost as well as increase production which is a key piece that obviously was a little bit tapered in terms of the discussion on that later on in the call and in the deck. So for him to start his opening comments really by saying that that is one of the reasons for the downtime, increasing production, I think gives important context that Tesla is going to continue to do that just maybe a little bit less aggressively than what we might have expected before.
So that's important to hear. And then they also, Elon also said that they recently completed the 10,000 GPU cluster Rachel and hundreds from Nvidia saying that they believe that they ramped that faster than any other company has done. So that's also exciting to hear for him to not just say that they've, you know, they're working on ramping that they've actually completed that. That was something that was going on on, you know, Tesla employees on X were talking about that and saying that it takes time to do that. So for him to say that that is now completed, maybe still a little bit of fine tuning things like that that can happen, but it seems like that's a really good spot, which is obviously exciting for FSD version 12. So a couple of really good nuggets there that unfortunately got dropped from the, from the initial stream yesterday.
All right, we'll talk more about earnings in a second, but just want to kind of hit on a couple of news items here. So the first is from Toyota. They have announced that they are going to be adopting the North American charging standard beginning end 2025 for Toyota and Lexus battery electric vehicles. They interestingly said that it's going to be on select vehicles. I would assume that that let's see the exact wording. So BMW sorry, BMW, we just had a Toyota will incorporate NACS ports into certain Toyota and Lexus BVs starting in 2025.
So maybe just, you know, that conversion would be something that isn't instantaneous. Maybe they'll just kind of do in sequence with some of their other production, like whatever that vehicle, the BZ4X or whatever, like maybe that, for example, would convert later or something. That's kind of my read on that language. And then we talked about BMW not indicating that they would be offering an adapter, which I thought was kind of odd.
Toyota has said that they will be offering the adapter also in 2025. So obviously Tesla would be supplying that, but you know, something that they've mentioned. Again, probably just no mission from BMW, but kind of an interesting difference from their announcements with the other ones. At any rate, this is one of the last, I think, kind of last two big dominoes to fall as we talked about Toyota and Volkswagen. Now, obviously Toyota, a bigger EV player right now, or sorry, obviously Volkswagen, a bigger EV player right now than Toyota, which isn't really doing a whole lot. It doesn't seem to have plans to do a whole lot. But as one of the two biggest automakers in the world, this is still, I think, you know, a pretty consequential announcement just in terms of, you know, the overall size of Toyota outside of electric vehicles and Volkswagen kind of holding that same sort of status, but obviously a little bit further along on EVs. So Volkswagen now kind of the loan hold out, I would say, in terms of the major players. And obviously they're going to pretty much have to do this now that, you know, 90% of the industry is kind of on board. So I think exciting to see that. And I doubt Toyota would be, or sorry, I doubt Volkswagen would be too far behind, but we'll keep an eye out for updates from them.
All right. And then kind of an interesting update we've got on the Model 3, Highland. So kilowatts on X noting today, or noticing that Tesla has added some new information on the Highland into the parts catalog. And some of this seems to indicate performance versions, as we're seeing here, a little bit of a badge that kind of looks like the plaid badge. But if you look at it closely, it's, it's more akin to like the ludicrous speed screen from space balls, which obviously the, you know, ludicrous and plaid have both referenced. So it seems as though there's likely to be a performance version that is a ludicrous version rather than a plaid version of the Highland Model 3. And then I wouldn't be surprised if we kind of see that sort of, you know, same terminology or whatever carry over to the Model Y eventually as well.
So obviously we haven't heard a whole lot of official on the performance model three. It's omitted right now, but it looks like something that Tesla is doing. And it looks like it would be ludicrous speed, which will probably be my best guess would be that that would be better performance than what we saw on the Model 3 before. But obviously jury is out on that. And then it looks like there are some new wheels specifically, you know, this style here. This was noted on Chinese social media on Weibo as pointed out by Dr. Tuscanodon X as being the warp wheel that is going to be available for the performance trim.
It's kind of the discussion that was was being had there. You can see the, you know, installation of the carbon fiber spoiler here on what is likely a prototype of the Highland performance. So I think all pretty exciting details there. And then someone on Reddit, real pokey pop noticed that in Fremont, they had spotted a Highland Model 3 didn't take too much notice of it. But upon review, once this information had come out, they noticed that the wheels, as we can see here, do seem to be those, you know, kind of warp wheels. So if we kind of compare that to these and obviously Tesla covering them, but that's seems to be probably what this wheel here is. So I think all good indications there for the, you know, plaid or sorry, not plaid, but ludicrous or performance model three for Highland. Obviously, no timeline details on that yet, but looks like something that is relatively imminent.
And then just a quick one here, the information today, you know, not my favorite source, but they have noticed that a battery engineer for Tesla that was actually from Maxwell technologies which, you know, Tesla acquired in part for a drive battery electrode technology and research and all of their work that has gone into that. One of their, their former directors of R&D for DBE for drive battery electrode, who's worked at Tesla now since that acquisition has now left and looks like is going to be the chief manufacturing officer of a relatively young company called AM batteries.
So how noteworthy that is, I don't know. Obviously, we'd prefer that, you know, people stay and work at Tesla, you know, not forever, but for a while. So always disappointing to see when people leave, especially people in these roles, but hopefully Tesla is now at a good point with drive battery electrode with the 4680s. They didn't quite specifically get into that level of detail on the 4680 up to yesterday, but I think that, you know, certainly they've had a lot of time here to make progress and hopefully not too impactful, at least at this stage.
And then finally for today, I just want to kind of, you know, re-circle to a couple of topics on earnings yesterday. So I think largely, you know, I think we covered a lot of what I would want to have covered yesterday, I think probably most of it. One quick thing that we had talked about just needing to look at a little bit closer was the 2.3 billion that had come in cash on this quarter from financing activities. So should I just look at this yesterday about statement of cash flows, it breaks the, you know, where's that where that's coming from down in the cash flows from financing activities line. And we can see that most of that 2.2 billion is coming from net borrowings under vehicle and energy product financing. So that's probably coming from, you know, leasing and things like that. That Tesla is kind of drawing on, you know, for this cash. So that's my guess.
We'll get more details on that in the 10Q if other people that are a little bit more accounting savvy want to provide some additional insights in the comments on that before we get that that would be welcome to. But that's where it's coming from for this quarter. So wanted to follow up on that.
And then I mentioned during the earnings call yesterday when we were kind of recapping things, if anyone wants me to discuss anything more specifically, just let me know in the comments. So we got a nice comment here from Mike, just with a few questions. So I thought, you know, good questions here and worth going through. I'm going to come back to the first one. But second one here is, you know, how does pausing the affordable car slash Mexico jive with the problem of cars not being affordable enough? It doesn't seem to support the mission. Tesla has a strong financial position that it's minimal risk to make at least steady progress in Mexico, et cetera.
So basically, you know, how does pausing next generation vehicle pausing Mexico relate to high interest rates and do those things kind of clash. So first off, how does pausing the affordable car? I think that's a misnomer for what's actually happening here. If we look at the earnings deck, Tesla said that we continue to make progress on our next-generation vehicle next-generation platform. At no point do I recall them saying that that is in any way paused. So that is not my interpretation.
I think a lot of people are maybe misconstruing things and kind of coming to that conclusion that there is either a delay or a slowdown or a pause in Tesla moving forward for these things. And obviously, there was a lot of hesitancy expressed by Elon on the call for being as aggressive as we have seen Tesla be historically. But I also don't interpret that in any way to mean that this is delayed or paused or anything like that because like the comment, like the question points out, obviously Tesla's going to want to continue to lower prices of vehicles and the next-generation vehicle platform is one of the ways to do that. So pushing forward on that as aggressively as possible is the thing that makes sense to do. And I would expect that that is what Tesla is in fact doing.
And then on Mexico, again, it's not necessarily paused. Elon said that we're laying the groundwork to begin construction and doing all the long lead items, but thinking that they just want to get a sense for the global economy before they go full tilt on Mexico. So sort of slow playing it. Again, not being as aggressive as maybe we would have seen Tesla be historically during this period of time where there's at least from Elon's perspective macro uncertainty. And he's kind of worried about where things go, not only from like where things are at right now, but where they go. So this I think relates more to free cash flow rather than trying to slow down specifically the next-generation vehicle.
And both of these things are kind of in tandem, right? Because initially from what we can kind of figure out is that it seemed like Tesla was planning to build this next-generation vehicle just in Mexico from the beginning. And then the Walter Isaacson biography indicated that the plan had actually shifted. And now the plan is to do that initially in Texas and then kind of copy and paste that to, you know, for lack of a better word over to Mexico.
So with that context, even setting aside anything else that Tesla had talked about here, it wouldn't make sense for Mexico to be delayed because of that decision. Again in isolation of anything else. So it's important that we're clear on what exactly happens here or what exactly Tesla and what Elon said because I think a lot of people just kind of like sit there and hear like the emotion of it. And maybe just over apply things that weren't necessarily said. And I think that's not all the reaction today, but I do think that that's kind of a part of it. So we just got to be careful about like things that Tesla did not say making those types of assumptions.
So if we go back to this question, how does pausing the affordable car fit with this? I don't think they've paused it. I don't think they've slowed it down. I think if anything, it's going to happen probably a little bit more quickly now that it's happening in Texas, right? And we've seen from Joe Taggmire that there's stuff presumably going in for that already. So you know, Tesla doesn't want to talk about that at this point. Why would they? But I don't think it's slowed down. And then for Mexico, again, I think that that would this change would be happening regardless of what Elon also said about the current macro environment. So I think that's a factor. But I just, the point is that I think Mexico would have been on a different timeline after that decision was made than it was initially, and that would completely make sense. So hopefully that provides some additional context on that one.
Question two, was Lars trying to do damage control to get Elon to confirm the biography rumors that Gen 3 will be made in Austin. You're going to have to give me a timestamp on that. I went back through the transcript to figure out exactly what this was referencing. I know there were kinds of times where Elon and Lars were just kind of going back and forth. So I don't recall exactly what this would be in terms of like the damage control piece of it. So if you want to give me a timestamp on that, I can take a look at it. But it wasn't something that I noticed at least when I was, you know, going through and doing the live notes.
Third, how do you think reneging on the Gigamexico timeline, not defending the 20 million cars target and now not defending FSD this year is affecting Tesla's credibility. So just take that piece by piece, reneging on the Gigamexico timeline. We obviously just kind of talked about that. But just to be clear, I don't recall Tesla ever giving a specific timeline on Gigamexico. Obviously, we've had rumors about it. There was a time when the governor of New York, Billy on said that Tesla or that Tom Zuud said that they're going to try to from groundbreaking to actual first vehicles, they're going to try to beat Shanghai, which was roughly nine months. But again, that's not like an official Tesla announcement. That's not an official timeline. That's, you know, a Tesla employee saying something to you know, a member of Mexico that's involved in the planning of this. So if we're trying to frame this as like reneging, that's certainly not how I would frame it. And again, I think context wise, you know, we kind of can understand why the timeline has maybe shifted a little bit from both what seems to be a shift in plans for Austin and then also all the stuff that Elon talked about with the macro economy.
So again, I think it comes down to when we think about like, oh, they're being a little bit less aggressive. Why wouldn't they be more aggressive right now to try to get to higher volume low cost vehicle faster? If we're saying interest rates are making sales difficult, then shouldn't we try to get to that other vehicle faster? Absolutely. But to do that is going to cost more money and potentially be less cost effective. You know, there's there's gating factors and you can't just continue to accelerate that with with more money.
But when you try to do that, it's going to cost more. So I think where you want comments on that come come back to you is just like Tesla wants to maintain free cash flow, make sure that even if the current business like model three model Y model S and X and if cyber truck takes longer than they think or something like that, if the next generation vehicle plans in Austin take longer than they think something like that, you want to saying we just want to make sure that all that stuff is really good that we're still positive free cash flow, not doing anything that's going to put the business at risk before we kind of, as he said, go full tilt into Giga Mexico.
So yes, I do think that there's an argument to be made that, hey, because of the macro situation, this is more important to go fast on than ever. But at the same time, that presents more risk and you want to saying right now, his preferences for the less risk path. So that's again, kind of my interpretation and I think makes a lot of sense with what we heard from Elon on the call. If that's the right decision, obviously that's up for debate. Elon even said that on the call. I love Tesla's aggressiveness historically. I'd love to see them have the confidence to continue to be aggressive in it, but they've got a lot more information than we do. And obviously they know what they can and can't do in terms of timelines and how cost effective those things are going to be.
So I think we kind of all have to defer to Tesla's assumptions on that. I think historically Tesla's made very good decisions in those regards. Obviously, there's other elements of the business that we can talk about ad nauseam, but stuff like this, investments and capex and return on equity and all of this stuff Tesla has done phenomenally with. So it's not an area that I do have a lot of faith in Tesla in that area, I guess.
So yeah, I don't think they're reneged on the timeline. Obviously, it's a little bit later. I wouldn't call it that though. Not defending the 20 million cars target. So this is something that I said was a little bit disappointing to me yesterday. I continue to feel that way. I think, you know, with Elon, I think he's made the point before you can't just grow a 50% in perpetuity, but I would have liked to have seen him kind of reiterate that, you know, we're still trying for that without that. It does put uncertainty into that.
How that affects Tesla's credibility. No one thought Tesla was going to do that in the first place. Really, obviously some people, but largely no one expected Tesla to be able to actually accomplish that, but just having the target out there that hopefully meant that they would get somewhere in the ballpark, right? Like, whether it's 10 million or 15 million or whatever. If this sort of target becomes something that Tesla is no longer trying to pin up there and continue to talk about, which maybe we're seeing an initial case of that here, then it starts to look a little bit less likely that they even end up in that realm. So I'd like to see them continue to talk about that target, but it's also, you know, at a certain point, you've got to start to get also a little bit more realistic about what you can do, and, you know, we're heading into 2024 here as Tesla going to add 18 million vehicle capacity in six years. Like, that's kind of a stretch. So I'm not terribly surprised. It's something that I guess I would like to see a little bit more positive discussion around, you know, their growth targets. Elon obviously choosing this call to focus a little bit more on some of the things that are concerning him rather than that. But hopefully at some point in the future, we kind of, you know, flip back and get sort of the other side of that, which obviously exists. It's just what Elon chose to focus on on this call.
And then defending FSD this year, again, this is something like the 20 million target. Like, no one actually, I don't think really many people probably expected this to actually be solved this year. And again, we're coming up to the end of it. So it's not, not terribly surprising to not have Elon reiterate that and double down that this is going to be done in the next two months. So I'm not surprised by that. But obviously, you know, it does hurt Tesla's credibility a little bit. I just think in that area specifically, it's again, something that people kind of expected. So those are kind of my thoughts on those.
But I mean, good questions in general. And then for you downplayed advertising as a major solution, I have to disagree. People at the company never know what Tesla prices are, but they're well aware of all the other negative headlines around Tesla. So yeah, I think I've been pretty clear. Like I've been a supporter of Tesla trying things with advertising. As far as a major solution, I think it's just kind of semantics, right? Like, I do think it's something that can be effective for Tesla. I think yesterday I said it's not like a magical fix or a silver bullet. And I think that's what this is in response to. And I still feel that way, you know, but it's a matter of what does that mean exactly when I say that, I'm saying advertising is not the thing that's causing the business to be so different this year than it was last year, right? The lack of advertising is not going to suddenly, you know, if Tesla implements advertising, we're not suddenly going back to a $58,000 average selling price and 29% margins or whatever we peaked at. Like, that's not what's going to do that. It might help with profitability. And hopefully that would be the case. And that would be obviously the argument for doing it. If it didn't do that, then it wouldn't make any sense. Just a matter of like how far along that spectrum does it go? And that's what none of us know, right? And that's kind of what I've always argued, you know, why I've wanted Tesla to do this is because I don't know, they don't know because they haven't really tried it. So it's something that I'd like to see them happen. I just don't think that it's going to. It's something that moves things all the way back. You know, there's there's a lot of factors here that need to be overcome. So that's hopefully a little bit more context on that.
And then the last one here, which was the first one, thoughts on the new CFO. So obviously I was a big fan of Zachar Corn. I think he did a great job. Definitely sad to see, you know, sad to have a call without him on it, disappointing for sure.
In terms of the new CFO, you know, it's one earnings call, right? Like, let's give the guy a chance. Not judged too quickly. Just off of a few minutes on earnings call.
Didn't help that Elon felt the need to cut him off twice. I think I don't know if it was once or twice, but one of the times, you know, it was kind of he was going down the path of talking about how like Tesla is still in the EV adopter, early adopter on the EV curve. You know, that comments, I was a little bit disappointed to hear because Tesla last call specifically spent time talking about how people need to stop thinking about how there's this EV market and there's this car market. And it's just one car market. And that's what it is. And that's what it should be judged by. So for the CFO to then comment about, you know, we're in the early adopter portion of the EV market or, you know, that wasn't the exact language he used, but sort of going down that thought process. No surprise to see, you know, the Tesla team cut him off on that. So that to me is a little bit disappointing comment. But again, let's not be super quick to judge here. Had he had the chance to finish the thought. Maybe it ends up differently, right?
So those are kind of my thoughts so far. And yeah, obviously, you know, really, really like Zach, so just not having Zach there is going to be something that is not quite as exciting. So again, good questions here. I think hopefully, you know, some of that is helpful. And I think that'll kind of wrap it up here.
But again, just go back and listen to that first few minutes. I think it's always good to just go back and listen to the call again, especially once the impact of the call is fully sort of settled. Because that colors people's interpretations, you know, you're sitting there and you're listening and then you're maybe looking at the stock in the other window. I mean, I've got it on the screen, which is probably not the best thing anyway. But that's going to color people's reactions, right? If you're sitting there and Elon's talking and the stock is going down, it's going to make you feel probably not the best about what's being said. So better just kind of clear your head, go back, listen to it, read the transcript maybe, which isn't going to be colored by whatever mood Elon happens to be in, which as I've talked about probably doesn't have any relation to what he's talking about. So I think that's always just a good thing to do.
Alright, I'll wrap it up for today though. So as always, thank you for listening. Make sure you subscribe and sign up for notifications. You can also find me on X at Tesla podcast and we'll see you tomorrow for the Friday, October 20th episode of Tesla Daily. Thank you.