Anybody who gets this going is ok by me:
[video:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ANv5UfZsvZQ]
If I could buy SpaceX I would. Blows away the competition (which is much less expensive Han electric cars). Demand for satellite delivery will continue to increase.
only hipsters at SpaceX?
Heh, funny. It’s interesting, the coal industry employs roughly 170k workers. This is about the same as the total number of employees of Sears. I say we save sears first. They don’t take nearly as many subsidies and they have very affordable refrigerators via the Sears outlet. Whatever candidate vows to save Sears, you have my vote 
The butt-hurt is strong in this one.
He can buy 1000s of her anyway.
Tesla could be close to bankruptcy…
They are a disaster—quick ratio = .6, $2B loss in 2017, $10B L/T debt, they need more capital soon, a contractor has claimed they did not pay them, and the CEO is joking about bankruptcy.
Musk’s lame psychological trick is “if I joke about bankruptcy it means it must not be serious, then I can raise capital, and not go bankrupt.” These tricks work on the TSLA cultists, but not me kid.
Of course they are massively propped up, but in any normal free-market situation they would be gone.
pa you shorting?
I’ve never been a buyer of their equity but have found Tesla’s sr. unsecured maturity bonds quite interesting. They sold off into the high 80’s and have since picked up a little. Bankruptcy is a real issue eventually. I think Musk and his huge equity position are too valuable to protect and the equity has a ton of value, but it’s there. I say buy the sr. unsecured, earn your 7.25% ytm and if bankruptcy occurs, you could end up owning the equity of this company w/ much less debt and that’d be fine with me. I don’t like the operating leases on their balance sheet and the resid value risk you’re taking w/ this evolving technology but its not huge. End of the day, I think they issue equity to pay off debt to reduce the bankruptcy risk. Musk and equity owners have too much to lose if there’s a bankruptcy which I don’t see happening but if they mess up it definitely could.
To the Tesla believers with rose-colored glasses, look at their financials…they suck. The cash flows are terrible, there’s debt and resale value guarantees. It’s quite messy. They’ve got cash and valuable (overvalued?) equity, however.
Some good observations here!
This company is a mess and it will end poorly. They squandered first mover advantage and have a clueless CEO too immature to manage the laser focus attention to minute details that it takes to run a high level manufacturing operation. It’s pure hubris to position an auto manufacturer with a B3 rated capital structure. I personally know people pulling their deposits on Model 3’s which is going to add to the cash squeeze as it becomes a bigger thing. The biggest problem is CEO ADHD. There’s no reason they should have ever entered the Gigafactory which is a no margin business in any capacity. They should have simply pre-funded a streaming deal of a percentage of off-take and left the rest up to Panasonic. Same reason you don’t see Apple diddling around manufacturing basic components, that stuff goes to Foxconn. One of the latest excuses for Model 3 delays were overloaded and unsafe trucks headed from a factory, these are the myriad sort of details that Ford and GM optimized decades ago. Now that Ford and VW are going in full steam with fat checkbooks and established manufacturing expertise, alongside better dealer networks it’s about to be a hyper-competitive game over for Tesla. Layer in the fact that the CEO is distracted by trying to run a space enterprise and also a flailing solar business and delayed giga-factory with an expected 6% margin with major debt rolling in and the thing is a mess. The only / best path out for Tesla is to form a JV with an established auto-manufacturer but Musk has a mega option structured pay package on the line and an out of touch ego so that will never happen. My favorite part is their big plan to pull people off Model S assembly line on to Model 3 to try to ramp deliveries at the last minute. All it does is highlight how far they’ve failed to properly automate their operations.
Beyond that the product itself is just deceptive marketing. They hype the Model 3 as some paragon of safety because it did well in the NTSB trials, but the more rigorous and industry standard IIHS found it to be solely acceptable highlighted by the fact that there are no Teslas on any IIHS best of class safety list (a remarkable achievement in itself), something they completely ignore while hyping their NTSB results. The premise that the self-driving feature is more safe is also not set in stone, I haven’t seen an updated analysis but thought this writeup which has been cited a few times gives a good insight into the Tesla hype machine: https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1107109_teslas-own-numbers-show-autopilot-has-higher-crash-rate-than-human-drivers
^Bump
I dunno, users seem to love the car, I’m not a buyer or anything of the stock but I’m always leery of shorting a company with an awesome product people love. I think one thing people don’t realize is that autonomous driving is probably safer than manual but none of the manual accidents are reported while every incident associated with Tesla is.
I forgot I posted about the assembly line here. Definitely interesting given what’s come out
I listened to that call after the fact. He is doing himself no favors. What in the world was that YouTube guy doing on the call hahaha
I think everyone gets that. Unfortunately as the link I provided above points out, he’s gaming the data. Moreover, he’s been very opaque about allowing the data used by the NTSB to be released so everyone’s basically taking him at his word. Beyond that, a good product =/= a good business. Many a business has restructured along the path to getting it right. As Buffett has often pointed out, US airlines despite providing a necessary service had net earnings of approximately $0 from inception to 2010 with several bankruptcies along the way. Competition is coming in a big way and the business is deeply cyclical, there’s a reason his peer group is IG and he’s showing his inexperience sitting on the edge of CCC.
highly levered, deeply cyclical! negative cash flow!
they are projecting positive cash flow end of year. (big if),
but imo, whether they do so or nah, they finna get fooked when the market tanks! just cuz i know their cash flow will just go deeper in the red!
Wow, Musk is losing his mind.
Joking about bankruptcy, refusing to answer analyst questions in a call, attacking the media (opportunistically jumping on the “fake news” only because he wants to silence the media and stop the bleeding). Bleeding badly, if a recession hits he’s finished. Massive govt handouts would be needed, and Trump would supply???
If I see this, he sees this. Panicked.
wait is this real news or fake news?
^ Real bro, you didn’t hear?
It’s like, I don’t even follow the guy, and am on the other side of the planet…but the rumble has been so loud I couldn’t ignore! Hear his TSLA is the biggest short on Wall Street? Dude is under pressure, breaking down like Ackman?