Curt Doolittle

Form: Quote Commentary

  • “So the military has a choice: engage in extraction, or protect the capitalists

    —“So the military has a choice: engage in extraction, or protect the capitalists ability to engage in fraud, or protect the court’s ability to administer natural law.”–Zachary Miller A militia has no choice but the court. An Army has the choice of the first two. An empire has only the first.

  • “So the military has a choice: engage in extraction, or protect the capitalists

    —“So the military has a choice: engage in extraction, or protect the capitalists ability to engage in fraud, or protect the court’s ability to administer natural law.”–Zachary Miller A militia has no choice but the court. An Army has the choice of the first two. An empire has only the first.

  • Charles Murray, one of America’s most influential social policy thinkers, has co

    Charles Murray, one of America’s most influential social policy thinkers, has come out with a widely discussed new book called Coming Apart: The State of Whi…

  • Charles Murray, one of America’s most influential social policy thinkers, has co

    Charles Murray, one of America’s most influential social policy thinkers, has come out with a widely discussed new book called Coming Apart: The State of Whi…

  • by Michael Churchill NFLX and TSLA look insane to me. Not at all clear to me tha

    by Michael Churchill NFLX and TSLA look insane to me. Not at all clear to me that there is any sort of calc that has TSLA with normal gross margins. NFLX capitalizes content costs, which is like Caterpillar capitalizing the cost of making tractors. Buying/making content is cost of goods sold — not capex! GOOG, FB and MSFT make a lot of money and valuations are not crazy. AMZN is insane in the same way that NFLX and TSLA are. The operating margins on selling books are WILDLY negative — and only offset by the cloud-services business. Now … that doesn’t seem right from an anti-trust standpoint. Amazon is using cloud money to wipe out the entire country’s retail infrastructure. How about a Sherman anti-trust case against them?

  • by Michael Churchill NFLX and TSLA look insane to me. Not at all clear to me tha

    by Michael Churchill NFLX and TSLA look insane to me. Not at all clear to me that there is any sort of calc that has TSLA with normal gross margins. NFLX capitalizes content costs, which is like Caterpillar capitalizing the cost of making tractors. Buying/making content is cost of goods sold — not capex! GOOG, FB and MSFT make a lot of money and valuations are not crazy. AMZN is insane in the same way that NFLX and TSLA are. The operating margins on selling books are WILDLY negative — and only offset by the cloud-services business. Now … that doesn’t seem right from an anti-trust standpoint. Amazon is using cloud money to wipe out the entire country’s retail infrastructure. How about a Sherman anti-trust case against them?

  • by Michael Churchill NFLX and TSLA look insane to me. Not at all clear to me tha

    by Michael Churchill

    NFLX and TSLA look insane to me. Not at all clear to me that there is any sort of calc that has TSLA with normal gross margins. NFLX capitalizes content costs, which is like Caterpillar capitalizing the cost of making tractors. Buying/making content is cost of goods sold — not capex!

    GOOG, FB and MSFT make a lot of money and valuations are not crazy.

    AMZN is insane in the same way that NFLX and TSLA are. The operating margins on selling books are WILDLY negative — and only offset by the cloud-services business. Now … that doesn’t seem right from an anti-trust standpoint. Amazon is using cloud money to wipe out the entire country’s retail infrastructure. How about a Sherman anti-trust case against them?

    Source date (UTC): 2017-11-24 23:34:00 UTC

  • Tesla

    (via Vincent Wolters at Seeking Alpha) TSLA gross margin excluding R&D is comparable to that of competitors. (~25%) TSLA SG&A per revenue is higher than that of competitors and just about wipes out gross profits. There is no indication of economies of scale in spite of increased production. Expansion will not lead to profits if Tesla doesn’t change its cost structure. CURT: (This is being critical of overhead costs – which are, admittedly, nonsense-high, but neither acknowledging that revenues purpose is to offset R&D costs, and the analyst is not putting value on the upside. They’re using the amazon model and betting that they will own the battery market, and therefore the whole car market. IMO this is exactly how leaps in technology should be achieved: public investment (with non-voting public ownership), and funnelling all profits into R&D and market expansion. Markets do not produce capital intensive leaps as fast as mixed market investments.

  • Tesla

    (via Vincent Wolters at Seeking Alpha) TSLA gross margin excluding R&D is comparable to that of competitors. (~25%) TSLA SG&A per revenue is higher than that of competitors and just about wipes out gross profits. There is no indication of economies of scale in spite of increased production. Expansion will not lead to profits if Tesla doesn’t change its cost structure. CURT: (This is being critical of overhead costs – which are, admittedly, nonsense-high, but neither acknowledging that revenues purpose is to offset R&D costs, and the analyst is not putting value on the upside. They’re using the amazon model and betting that they will own the battery market, and therefore the whole car market. IMO this is exactly how leaps in technology should be achieved: public investment (with non-voting public ownership), and funnelling all profits into R&D and market expansion. Markets do not produce capital intensive leaps as fast as mixed market investments.

  • TESLA (via Vincent Wolters at Seeking Alpha) TSLA gross margin excluding R&D is

    TESLA

    (via Vincent Wolters at Seeking Alpha)

    TSLA gross margin excluding R&D is comparable to that of competitors. (~25%)

    TSLA SG&A per revenue is higher than that of competitors and just about wipes out gross profits.

    There is no indication of economies of scale in spite of increased production.

    Expansion will not lead to profits if Tesla doesn’t change its cost structure.

    CURT:

    (This is being critical of overhead costs – which are, admittedly, nonsense-high, but neither acknowledging that revenues purpose is to offset R&D costs, and the analyst is not putting value on the upside.

    They’re using the amazon model and betting that they will own the battery market, and therefore the whole car market.

    IMO this is exactly how leaps in technology should be achieved: public investment (with non-voting public ownership), and funnelling all profits into R&D and market expansion.

    Markets do not produce capital intensive leaps as fast as mixed market investments.

    Source date (UTC): 2017-11-24 12:34:00 UTC