The 4th quarter and full-year 2019 Tesla conference call starts in 10 minutes. In my opinion, there’s no better place to listen to it than on CleanTechnica TV (video embedded below). Leading into the call, we also have highlights from the shareholder report and some hypercharts on key Tesla figures.
I didn’t create it, and all I basically do is help with the real-time transcription, so I think I can say this without boasting: CleanTechnica’s quarterly Tesla conference call livestreams are the coolest!
Tesla is growing like no other company in the auto industry and is pretty much on a tear. This is a good thing. In late 2019, as in four days before 2020, CNBC had Steve Westly, a former Tesla board member and a member of the Westly Group, on its Power Lunch show. They got right to the point with this question: “What’s changed in 90 days?”
In a Yahoo Finance video discussion about Tesla and its stock, Barbara Corcoran of Shark Tank cuts right to the chase: “I own a Tesla and don’t say anything wrong to me about it.” She also points out that she invests in Tesla as well. Her thoughts on Tesla’s “slumping after a double downgrade” are that these guys are just “hedging their bets” and that they don’t want to be wrong. “It’s all nonsense,” she says.
There is a long-standing argument about whether Tesla is a car company or a tech company. This argument is typically made in the context of how Wall Street should value the company. If Tesla is just a new kind of carmaker, it should be valued at something significantly less than its annual revenue — maybe 25% to 50%, like Ford and GM. Alternatively, if Tesla is a tech company, then it could be valued significantly higher. Google, for example, is trading at about 6 times its revenues today, Facebook at 8, Microsoft at 9, and Salesforce at 10 times. Tesla trades at around 3 times its revenues with some profits, while Uber and Lyft trade around 4 times revenues and have never been profitable.
Barron’s noted on January 7th, 2020, that Tesla had become the most valuable auto company in the history of America. Let me repeat: Not just currently. We are talking about the most valuable American auto company since America was born. Congratulations to Elon, Tesla, and the team for unlocking this achievement!
Comparing Tesla’s Q4 2012 sales (deliveries, not orders) to Tesla’s Q4 2019 sales, we can see that Tesla vehicle sales grew 47× in 7 years. Anyone going along with Elon Musk’s forecast of such growth back in 2012 or subsequent years (even up through 2018 and a large portion of 2019) was frequently seen as unrealistically optimistic or “biased.”
There’s a bit of a problem in much of the media these days. There’s a broad assumption — from both media consumers and members of the media — that media outlets are supposed to present “two sides of the story.” Case in point: Tesla.
There have been many pieces on Tesla stock’s rocket run over the last month. According to stockcharts.com, Tesla went from a low price of 328.69 on December 2nd, 2019, to a closing price of 430.38 on December 27th, 2019 (it has dropped a bit since then). This is a phenomenal return of 30.9% gain in less than 30 days. I speculated earlier on many reasons why it happened. It turns out, though, the reason may be very simple. Wall Street analysts are expecting Tesla to earn higher profits in 2019 and 2020 compared to what they thought 3 months ago.
Eli Burton, the creator of The Adventures of Starman, gives us his version of 2019’s top 10 Tesla moments.
