dspp wrote:Howard wrote:dspp wrote:
Please show me a significant marketing spend in the tsla accounts, and the corresponding spend in either Ford or VW.
Regards, dspp
Elon Musk earns a number of emoluments from Tesla but, perhaps the most significant reported by the company was his first performance-based payout, worth more than $700 million.
Howard
I don't think that one can in any way shape or form consider a CEO remuneration plan to be 'marketing' expenditure. It is what it says on the tin. And in the case of Musk it only kicks in the tranches in the event of meeting fairly clear success criteria, and then the shares must be held by Musk for 5-years before he can trade them. And since he works for a base salary of $nil he is not rewarded for failure.
As Ody points out VW spends over $5bn/yr on marketing, which I would suggest is the tip of the iceberg as one also ought to consider how the distribution channels (dealerships) are organised. That is $5bn that Tesla does not spend. I'm sorry but your claim about Tesla engaging in dubious but hugely expensive PR is plain wrong.
regards, dspp
Yes, I accept that Tesla doesn’t overtly publish figures which are directly comparable with a legacy manufacturer's Advertising and Marketing spends.
However, in assessing a company’s performance, it may be helpful to read between the lines. Selling cars at around £50k or more should be a profitable activity, especially as Tesla isn’t growing its sales at the current time.
In the past, you and I have debated the cost of Tesla’s approach in setting up its own direct sales/distribution/service. One could classify this as a promotion expense, particularly if the reason given is that legacy manufacturers have expensive distributors.
Tesla’s direct approach looks pretty expensive. In July they sold 387 cars in the UK and 22 cars in Norway using the direct approach. (31 cars in the Netherlands). I don’t know yet how many cars they sold in Germany, but it probably wasn’t many. (And this downward trend in Europe has been developing over around six months.)
Yes, I accept you (and Ody) can pick some classifications of expenditure and show whatever suits the Tesla case. As an investor, I have tended to ignore analysts who look at companies’ finances in detail and make long term forecasts because we all know it is easy to “engineer” good results in the short term. I don’t want to be unkind, but the triumph of Tesla and the destruction of ICE manufacturers has been forecast on this thread (and its predecessor) for more than 10 years and it hasn’t happened yet, despite firms like VW getting caught for the most appalling actions.
Good luck to Tesla investors! As you know, I’m benefiting from their share price performance at the moment. And I'm pro BEV.
But although sales in China have been quite good and the Californians are still buying, common sense tells me that we have to be a bit sceptical about a company spending a lot of money promoting cars in markets where their sales are low.
regards
Howard
Sources for July sales are:
https://www.smmt.co.uk/vehicle-data/car-registrations/https://eu-evs.com/
