Tesla Derangement Syndrome -- Yes, I Admit It -- I'm Obsessed With Tesla (I'm Also An Apple Fanboy) -- November 2, 2017

TSLA Update: Model 3 deliveries for October just reported: 145. Holy guacamole, Batman. What next?]. From an earlier post --

Wow, wow, wow -- in pre-market trading, TSLA just dropped below $300/share -- recovered a bit. Waiting for the opening bid: $301.55, down $19.53 from yesterday's close, down 6.08% from yesterday's close.

"Tesla watch" at this post: link here. One can never predict these things, but if a year from now TSLA is trading at $50, we might look back on November 2, 2017, as the day everything came to an end.

They are piling on at CNBC and this is the headline story above the fold on the second page of The WSJ today: "Tesla rolls back goal on sedan amid loss." I haven't read the story yet but it will be interesting if they even mention the huge cost of the new gigafactory planned for China.

And then this: Elon Musk clearly stated that profits and profit margins on the S and X were keeping Tesla afloat. Yesterday we learn that the lowly Chevrolet Bolt, this past month (October, 2017) outsold both S and X combined. On initial reports (when Elon Musk did report S and X deliveries) Tesla did not even report Model 3 deliveries for the month of October.

Tesla watch.

The numbers are all posted for Tesla:

• Models S and X had worse months ever this year (with some minor exceptions for Model X)
• look how far S/X fell month-over-month
• the "X" was Tesla's cash cow
• Tesla actually cut the price on the "X" because it was making so much money on that car (paraphrasing Musk Melon)
• don't even get me started on Model 3 -- goal was 5,000 / week by this time, or at leasing heading in this direction; I opined a couple weeks ago that if Musk Melon did not deliver even 500 cars in October it would be a disaster; one contributor at SeekingAlpha was right on -- suggesting that by mid-October, Tesla had not even delivered 100 cars
• as Cramer says, "bulls make money; bears make money; hogs get slaughtered." Hogs had a chance to see last week

WSJ article on Tesla with regard to earnings call; see 176 comments.

Scathing analysis over at InvestorVillage -- story from WSJ.

Tesla's quest to live up to sky-high expectations looks tougher than ever.

The company reported third-quarter sales of $3 billion and an adjusted loss of $2.92 a share on Wednesday, falling short of analyst estimates. This looks worse when one considers that profit estimates already had dropped steadily. The consensus analyst forecast for the third quarter called for a profit of 80 cents a share last June.

Tesla burned through a record amount of cash during the period, some $1.4 billion. That is disconcerting, but investors' emphasis has been on the future with this company. Developments during the quarter make CEO Elon Musk's vision look more like a pipe dream. For starters, Tesla said it would build 10% less Model S and X vehicles in the fourth quarter than the third quarter, a worrying sign on future demand for its more expensive, higher margin products.

The outlook is even worse for the Model 3, the mass-market model that Tesla has struggled to build. It now expects to produce 5,000 a week by the first quarter of next year, another slippage in its timeline. And Tesla seemed to hint that some equipment to produce more Model 3s hasn't been installed, noting "it has always been our intention to implement that capacity addition after we have achieved a 5,000 per week run rate." Its ultimate target is twice as many.

I don't know what the "worst" bad news for Tesla was in the past 48 hours. I think it might be the fact that Chevrolet Bolt (2,781) easily outsold Tesla S, X, and 3 (1,120, 850, 145, respectively = 2,115). Add, 1,362 Chevrolet Volts and the Chevy EV total is 4,143. Let's see, 4,143 - 2,115 = 2,028.

The "2,028-delta" is almost equal to the total Teslas delivered, which I suppose is another way of saying Chevy EVs doubled Tesla sales. Wow.