Hey everybody Rob Mayor here and today actually a pretty big news day kind of out of nowhere we seem to have a new business line popping up for Tesla. We also have pretty major announcements from Ford from their earnings call, Hertz give an interesting update on Tesla as well and a few other items alongside those.
Alright looking at the stock another tough day today Tesla down 3.14% closing at $205.76. The NASDAQ also another challenging day down one and three quarters percent so a little bit better than what we had seen yesterday but it's pretty rare that we get those that degree of negative days back to back. So looking at the NASDAQ this is actually the worst two-day performance for the NASDAQ in this year. The last time it was this poor was December 16th of 2022. So two-day stretch here of really tough results obviously alongside earnings reports from a lot of different companies this week but Tesla hanging in there I think despite the performance you know relative to Tesla's beta over the last couple of days to the NASDAQ. So we'll see after hours a little bit of better results certainly yesterday we saw that trending down leading into today. Right now we're up 1% after hours after what seemed like it was going to continue so hopefully it'll bring a little bit better news tomorrow.
This morning we did have the GDP report the preliminary release for the third quarter and real GDP was up 4.9% with this preliminary report so that will be revised. Real GDP is supposedly inflation adjusted. So this is a pretty strong number that is the highest GDP increase since 2021 which I imagine those comps were boosted by the comparisons they were boosted by COVID and the year prior. So without that's just my guess without looking but strong result there I kind of expected that maybe the performance here would be due to a higher GDP results leading to you know a little bit more room to increase rates but according to the CME Group FedWatch tool that's not been the case at least for today it looks like expectations we're just kind of looking out a few months here in January expectations for a pause have actually continued to increase so that doesn't seem to be what's going on at least in terms of today but obviously a lot going on in the market elsewhere.
今天早上,我们发布了第三季度的国内生产总值(GDP)初步数据报告,实际GDP增长了4.9%,这个初步报告将会进行修订。实际GDP据说已调整为通货膨胀。因此,这是一个相当强劲的数字,是自2021年以来最高的GDP增长,我想这些增长是由于COVID-19及去年的比较影响。所以这只是我猜测,没有具体参考。我本以为这里的表现可能是由于更高的GDP结果导致了一些加息的空间,但根据CME Group FedWatch工具显示,至少在今天看来,预期是在接下来的几个月里会出现暂停加息的情况,并且这种预期实际上还在不断增加。所以至少在今天看来,情况似乎不是这样的,但显然市场上其他方面还有很多事情要发生。
So interesting to see that but getting into Tesla specific news very interesting update again kind of out of nowhere today from BP they announced that they are going to be acquiring at 100 million dollars of fast charging hardware units from Tesla. So this is going to be the V4 supercharging hardware this will be BP branded as we can see in the press release so it'll be kind of interesting that we're seeing these Tesla superchargers effectively under BP branding that BP is acquiring and then deploying from Tesla they say in the press release that the introduction of Tesla's charges to the BP pulse network is the first time the hardware will be purchased from an independent for an independent EV charging network. So said another way first time Tesla is letting other people purchase and install and manage superchargers. So with this release they also say that of course these will have the output of 250 kilowatts hopefully we see that increase over time as again these look like V4 hardware which shouldn't be surprising. They also say this will be including the magic dock so it's going to have the North American charging standard or NACS and the adapter kind of built into the charging connector to allow for CCS charging as well. Now I would imagine that this probably won't be super long lived at least here in North America of course because I think NACS is going to become predominant hopefully a single standard over time but for now they are planning to move forward with that with that adapter built in. They also say that to further improve the user experience the Tesla chargers will support the use of plug-and-charge protocol which simplifies and automates payments so hopefully this means it'll be as simple as right now plugging into a Tesla supercharger where it'll use the vehicle to establish that connection and handle things like billing and initiating the charge. They say that as is Tesla's current policy third-party operated ultra-fast chargers meeting Tesla's reliability and functionality requirements are featured in Tesla's vehicle UI and apps and BP Pulse expects to uphold those requirements on its network. So essentially as long as BP can meet Tesla standards it sounds like these should show up when we're doing things like navigating and looking perhaps at different charger options in things like the Tesla mobile app.
So that'll be really nice. I don't know how much hardware exactly 100 million dollars is going to buy, they don't give a number of charging stations that they plan on deploying here but that's a significant investment and we'll come back to that quote there in a second. They said in February that they're going to be investing 1 billion dollars just in America's EV charging infrastructure by 2030 so what we're seeing here with this 100 million dollar investment could just be you know sort of stage one of a multi-stage investment from BP just with Tesla just in the US.
So over time you know we could see other companies join this do similar things you know that we've clearly seen the dominoes fall quickly for the adoption of the North American charging standard. We could see similar dominoes fall quickly quickly with fueling companies wanting to follow BP and not get left behind with the deployment of this charging infrastructure.
So it could come a situation pretty quickly where Tesla is supply constrained on producing this hardware presumably Tesla will be the preferred partner here. We've talked before with the new energy vehicle or the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure funding that Tesla's cost for those their bids on those projects are well below other competitors trying to install projects as well. Looks like roughly 50% probably even a little bit more than that.
So if Tesla is able to supply this at scale and at a much cheaper cost than competition this could be actually a very significant potentially multi-billion dollar business for Tesla as kind of crazy as that sounds maybe over you know multiple years but again this kind of just looks like a first stage.
So interesting to see this of course the rest of the relationship I would imagine that BP is positioning themselves to be able to you know profit off of the sale of the electricity otherwise it probably wouldn't make a ton of sense for them to make the investment so I don't expect outside of any potential hardware margins that Tesla would stand to benefit from this maybe they build something into the contract where they get a little bit of it which would be awesome but it's not something that I would have maybe huge financial projections for again outside of hopefully at least a little bit of margin on that hardware hardware sale because again Tesla's probably going to be supply constrained here and Tesla can deploy these stations themselves too so integrating this with BP there's got to be at least some incentive to do that which I think Martin Viega Tesla's head of IR touched on today on X he said this is a big big deal ice car drivers will get to see fast chargers wherever they refuel at BP owned stations which is great for EV transition on top of that more fast chargers for EV owners it's such a win-win so fully agree with that and the points is well made about you know when you're driving a nice vehicle and you're filling up at a BP station if you're seeing constantly people being able to charge their their electric vehicles you lose a lot of that range anxiety that maybe exists before you're willing to make that leap into an EV so exciting to see that.
And then also mention they mentioned here that as part of the that a national electric vehicle infrastructure funding when we've looked at those projects BP is actually one of those other companies that is getting funding so although Tesla is somewhat limited in terms of the maximum amount of funding that they can get in each state some of them have limits on 25% of their budget can go to one company with some of that funding then going to BP and BP then paying Tesla for the hardware that I wouldn't say necessarily like circumvents that rule but it does mean that Tesla's able to reap the benefit potentially from those other companies and the funding that they were being granted through this through this project so again that's sort of something that will be deployed over the next five years and it should be pretty significant over times small small start initially in the few states that we've talked about so far but that will grow to be pretty significant over time.
So then just quickly looking at uh quote here from Tesla so Rebecca Tenuchi who we frequently hear from she presented at Investor Day relating to these sort of charging updates she said that selling our fast charging hardware is a new step for us and one we're looking to expand in support of Tesla's mission so again a hundred million dollars here nothing small in terms of Tesla's in terms of Tesla's overall revenue it's it's a small chunk though but should be something that grows over time and hopefully just one of again future dominoes that we'll see fall so good for BP on that and again we'll continue to keep an eye out and see if another company wants to follow quickly.
All right, next we've got confirmation here from Tesla on their Waybo account that deliveries of the new Highland Model 3 have commenced in China. So, of course, we have seen over the last few days, these start out in Europe, China now beginning deliveries as well, so exciting to see that when we see insured vehicle numbers for this next week. Hopefully, we see a little bit of a bump there with these sort of being unleashed. Although I would keep my expectations lower for that first week. And then you know, hopefully, in the coming weeks, we'll continue to see that Model 3 start to contribute more significantly. So good to see that.
好的,接下来我们在特斯拉的Waybo账户上得到了确认,新的Highland Model 3已经开始在中国交付了。因此,在过去的几天里,我们已经看到了这一交付开始在欧洲,中国也在开始交付,所以看到这一下周我们看到的保险车辆数量,实在是令人兴奋。希望这个新一批交付能够给这个数字带来一点提升。尽管我认为在第一周保持较低的期望是合理的。然后希望在接下来的几周里,我们将继续看到Model 3的重要贡献。因此,看到这一消息是好事。
And then somewhat relatedly, Green the only on X who often finds hidden details in Tesla's firmware has said that there are going to be two versions of the refresh Model 3 base and sport. He says that the sport version will have different front seats with bolstered side support and headrest. And the refresh 3 will have different rear bench seat the middle seat will have a headrest. So you can see the comparison photo here easy to look and see the old one with the stocks also the dash and just notice some of the comparisons between the two there's the headrest that he is talking about in terms of the sport seats. I'm not sure that we have a comparison photo of those but we do know from previous information that there are differences between the rear wheel drive version and the all-wheel drive version I think speaker count is among those things and it sounds like some differences with the seats potentially as well. And then he also noticed a little bit of a different update to the manual door release hatch or door release in the rear of the Model 3. And then also says that the Model S and X are getting the ambient or interior led lighting that we have seen in the Highland Model 3 and the updated Model Y in China so that's coming soon not a Tesla app also says their sources have confirmed that. And they say that the sort of upcoming mini refresh that would do that for the S and the X would also include the front bumper camera which the jury is still out on of course we've seen that pop up in the Highland renderings or the Highland renders on the web pages when that first released and then they kind of removed them. So still a little bit unclear I think Tesla still figuring that out but sounds like that could be coming soon for the S and the X. And then what we're seeing here is some again a render for the Cybertruck that is starting to show up now in the firmware so not too much to make from that I don't think but kind of a cool look and a nice milestone to see that start to show up ahead of deliveries.
All right next we are getting into a few Ford updates.
好的,接下来我们要谈一下一些关于福特汽车的更新。
So we continue to have a pretty significant amount of industry-wide news this week, this time from Ford.
所以这周我们继续有一些相当重要的整个行业的消息,这次是来自福特公司。
Just an update from UAW they posted late last night that their national negotiators reached a tentative agreement with Ford.
来自UAW的最新消息,他们在昨晚晚些时候发布了一则公告,他们的全国谈判代表与福特达成了初步协议。
So we talked about that yesterday but that has now been announced by the UAW, of course, that will still need to be finalized and ratified by the UAW so we'll keep it out for that but again those dominoes will probably fall pretty quickly.
And then Ford released their earnings today so just want to take a quick look at a few things there and some of their comments on the earnings call here we can see their financial results.
So these were a little bit below expectations particularly in terms of earnings, I think their stock is down about 5% after hours at least it was when I last checked.
Most interestingly for us though is taking a look at the EV business.
最让我们感兴趣的是观察电动汽车行业。
So as we know Ford one of the very few that separates this out we can actually see their profitability.
正如我们所了解的,福特是为数不多能够将这一点明确分开的公司之一,我们可以清楚地看到他们的盈利能力。
So far, year to date they've lost 3.1 billion dollars in earnings before interest in taxes from the EV portion of the business at a negative 73% e-bit margin.
So continues to be tough profitability-wise here in a little bit more detail we can see the quarterly results.
从盈利角度来看,情况仍然很困难。更详细地说,我们可以看到季度的业绩结果。
So as we previously knew unit sales for the third quarter were up very marginally remember there was an impact this quarter from downtime for the F-150 Lightning that's going to impact all these buckets but revenue also basically flat quarter of a quarter e-bit loss increasing so again driving that to 3.1 billion dollars here to date but 1.3 billion dollar loss specifically in Q3 on 1.8 billion dollars in revenue obviously not very strong.
And specifically in Q3 the e-bit margin negative 76 percent so losing huge amounts of money here of course that is to be expected somewhat as they ramp up production and again this is going to be impacted particularly this quarter by that downtime that they had on the F-150 Lightning.
The questions is can they kind of get over this hump where they're losing money and start to make this at least less significant in terms of the losses and eventually flip that into profitability.
问题是,他们能否克服这个难关,从亏损中开始使其至少变得不那么重要,并最终转化为盈利。
I think they've said in 2026 they're looking for low single-digit EV margins so e-bit e-bit EV margins.
So. A long way to go for them to get there, they did say in terms of the overall business. Just real quick, that because of the UAW strike, they have not withdrawn their guidance for 2023 for the fiscal year. I think GM did the same, so that probably impacting things today as well.
But more interestingly for us, they provided updates on their earnings call about their EV plans. So their CFO said that Ford is going to be postponing about 12 billion dollars in plan spending on manufacturing capacity for EVs, including a second planned battery factory in Kentucky. He did note that their blue city, their blue oval city manufacturing campus in Tennessee is going to continue as planned, so they are still going to be making investments but delaying a significant portion of it here and saying "the customer is going to decide what the volumes are Ford is able to balance production of gas, hybrid, and electric vehicles to match the speed of EV adoption in a way that others can't," end quote.
So you could have copied and pasted this into GM's earnings, this is almost exactly what they had to say. I guess they both feel that they are able to do this in a way that others can't, but again, as we had talked about, with flexibility comes opportunity cost in terms of real costs, actually, so opportunity costs.
And I think real costs, uh, no, you can't just have flexibility at the cost of nothing, uh, with manufacturing. So, you know, they're trying to, I think, spin this as positively as possible, but looks like pretty significant slowdowns in EV plans for GM, for Ford, and for some others. Hyundai kind of going the other way, but for the most part, significant delays.
While they're also said that, quote, "we're not moving away from our second-generation EV products, we are though looking at the pace of capacity that we're putting in place. We are going to push out some of that investment," end quote.
So, you know, a story that has continued to repeat day after day after day after day over the last few weeks, delayed investments, less aggressive plans for EVs from automakers kind of across the board. And it's not like we haven't seen that sort of similar conversation from Tesla, obviously. Tesla has also slowed down their plans a little bit too per the Q3 report and earnings call.
But we're talking about things that are very different in terms of context. These companies are slowing down their plans before they're even at a place where their business is starting to even become profitable. They haven't even achieved that type of scale yet. Tesla is slowing down because they just want to continue to be free cash flow positive on their already significantly profitable, significantly scaled business.
And the longer that that disparity exists, the more that benefits Tesla because Tesla's going to continue to have positive free cash flow. These others are going to continue to have negative free cash flow because they're not yet to scale. The longer that you go in that sort of an environment, you know, Tesla's going to continue to make these investments with that free cash flow. Others aren't going to have that luxury and it's just going to widen that gap.
So yes, we are seeing a little bit of a slowdown for Tesla too, I believe. But again, these are very different in terms of what they mean for each of these businesses, each of these businesses meaning Tesla versus companies like Ford or GM, legacy EV makers.
So although this period is challenging, I think ultimately this is something that probably increases Tesla's, you know, competitive advantage or the gap between Tesla and the rest that are making decisions to delay things to even get to where Tesla is today.
You know, we ended up in this situation in large part because this already happened, right? This is just a repeat of what had already happened where others were too hesitant, too slow to make these investments. Not going to commit. Tesla going all in and, you know, getting to where they are. today. And that's why that's part of why it's so tough for these other companies at the moment. Tesla is in large part applying a lot of the pressure that we're talking about here.
So anyway, significant update from them for Ford. Mercedes also gave an update today, talking a bit about EV plans. They shared a little bit on that. So I believe they reported during today. Yeah, they reported a decline in profit and revenue. So although we've been seeing a lot of automakers still post pretty good results because last year was a little bit weaker, Mercedes did see a drop that reflected in their stock price after hours. They did talk a bit about EVs. So their chief financial officer described the EV market as a quote-unquote pretty brutal space and said, "I can hardly imagine the current status quo is fully sustainable for everybody." So it just goes to show that although automakers right now, like Ford is a great example, maybe are pricing EVs in a way that is similar to Tesla, it's, as he says here, hard to imagine that that's fully sustainable for everyone. over time they either need to scale and get those cost advantages that come with scale or they need to raise their prices or just cut out cut the business completely they can't do this forever unless they just want to keep losing money for nothing so we're at that sort of inflection point right now and that inflection point just kind of happens to be getting added pressure from the macro environment high interest rates all this sort of stuff so a fascinating period of time and we'll continue to keep an out for these type of updates.
And then lastly for today we also heard a number of interesting things from Hertz on their earnings call so we've you know of course we're aware of the significant order for Tesla vehicles that Hertz has placed that led to a nice rally in the stock in years past. So right now their business is a little bit more challenging their stock is down significantly after reporting earnings after hours today and part of that was because their EV fleet which is 80% Tesla vehicles has impacted their financials a little bit here in multiple ways. So they say that first of all conventional maintenance on electric vehicles remained lower relative to comparable ice vehicles higher collision and damage repairs on EVs continued away on the results negatively impacted EBITDA. They say that for context collision and damage repairs on an EV can often run about twice that associated with combustion engine vehicle and they say that second where cars salvaged they must crystallize at once any difference between their carrying value and the market value of that car so the MSRP declines in EVs primarily driven by Tesla have driven their carrying value or have driven the market value lower than their carrying value which they then need to recognize for any of these salvage vehicles. So as they do that that's going to impact their financials as well. So basically Tesla's price cuts putting pressure on their residual value of the EVs for Hertz which I'm sure that played in their calculation when deciding to make that significant investment.
So that that part is interesting obviously not a super exciting update there were some mixed commentary were some other mixed commentary throughout here though they do say that the share of new electric vehicles in the US is growing studies of current EV ownership evidence lower incidence of damage and collision then for ICE vehicles not higher as we are experiencing so they're saying that there's a little bit of a difference in what the sort of standard market is versus what they are seeing they say that they'll believe those trends will converge so their hope is that this is not something that persists but is rather I don't know that they gave it they attributed it to anything in particular but something that they don't expect to continue a very long term so that's you know a more positive take on some of the things that they had said up there bear with me there's a lot of stuff of I've highlighted in here
they also say that over the next several quarters they're going to continue increasing the number of electric vehicles into the ride share fleet so it sounds like they're moving things from leisure which my understanding of it just from context reading through here I think that's sort of their normal rental rental business they're going to move EVs from that into the ride sharing fleet they say that they're doing that to simultaneously tighten the EV supply in that channel and more accurately accurately match the fleet to demand so it sounds like they kind of over allocated EVs into again leisure here and are shifting those into ride share. fleet which would be their their partnership with uber that we've talked about on a number of occasions so trying to basically right size that which means we should probably expect a little bit lower you know growth in terms of Hertz's EV business over time or at least in the you know in the short term
and then kind of the last thing from Hertz they said that over time to the extent that we take on more GM vehicles as an example they'll be buying all forward EVs at an appreciable appreciably lower price point than they were when they bought all the Tesla vehicles so that's going to be driven by opting for non-Tesla EVs or from Tesla which has significantly lower their price their point here is just that as they purchase more EVs in the future they are lower priced and shouldn't be subject to some of the negative impacts that they're seeing here in terms of residual value since the starting price is obviously lower they also say that they think that their elements of those cars that will likely speak to lower incidence of damage but they think more importantly will speak to lower costs of parts and labor so this is a particular point on Tesla again not something that's positive here but they're saying that for Tesla in particular that they think that that's part of what is driving their repair costs to be a little bit higher they say that remember for the likes of GM and other OEMs there's decades of establishment of a broad national part supply network there's an aftermarket of parts that that is there that is less mature in the context of Tesla so again not something positive but something that I thought was interesting and definitely wanted to share
As they had said previously, this doesn't necessarily reflect, you know, perfectly in terms of what it would be for the consumer market, but still an interesting update for them. It sounds like they're going to continue to push forward on EVs. Just this is part of the learning curve that they have to undergo and again not necessarily a perfect match for what the consumer market would be. So, you know, hate to end on a more negative note there, but nevertheless wanted to pass those comments along because, you know, they definitely attributed a part of the learnings, miss at least, to the impact that Tesla has had, a lot of that being driven by the price cuts from Tesla. But again, they do continue to plan to increase and continue to grow the EV business, just probably a little bit less aggressively than what they were doing, you know, in 2021, 2022.
All right, that'll wrap it up for today then. So, as always, thank you for listening. Make sure you're subscribed and signed up for notifications. You can also find me on x at Tesla podcast, and we'll see you tomorrow for the Friday, October 27th episode of Tesla Daily. Thank you.