Sometimes Nurse B it is all too much to understand. I graduated Boston University in I think 1986! Elon Musk the CEO of Tesla graduated U of Penn in 1995. I am older than the CEO of Tesla. Elon Musk upon graduation decided to tackle three areas of life that bugged him-- The Internet, clean energy and space. Upon graduation I decided to tackle three areas of life that bugged me-- Music, DJing, drugs and sex. I did those at Andy Warhol studios where I had a job in the film &TV unit. In 1998 Elon co-founded PayPal; in 1998 I was still publishing the now famous Stock Newsletter StonedInvesting. In 2002 Musk started SpaceX, just as I had stopped taking Ecstasy.
In 2003 Musk founded TSLA with the goal of bringing a $100,000 electric car to Jay Leno. About this time I finally embraced the internet enough to make my first purchase online-- a 1991 MB wagon w/ fuel injection and west coast paint job and 92,000 miles on her. Musk's car goes from 0 to 60 in about 4 seconds. That's faster than my Datsun 240 Z I had back in the 80's and much faster than the MB wagon.
Now what? I'm still driving the same car except she's got 137K on her now and Musk will be unveiling his new car in mid 2012-- The Model S. This one will cost $50K still an absurd amount. Without a generous Gov subsidy I don't think these $50K car's will sell very well, nevertheless tesla plans to pump out 20,000 a year.
20,000 X $50,000 = 1Billion I think dollars! If the profit margin is around 25% then the co's gain could be in the $250 mil range and to that you could divide by shares etc......
Of course the fact is right now all we have is 1,500 TSLA'a on the road anywhere in the world. The stock price of TSLA found some fans as it poked above $22 in Dec 2010 and the stk roared to $36 area. In March 2011 the stock cratered but found support at that same $22 level, in fact twice, creating a firm double bottom.
From $22 again we marched up but made a lower high at $30. and here we sit at $25... so what now? A broach beneath $22 setting up a lower low would be very bad for the name. Is there a $5 march back to $30? And could it break higher from there?
I am thinking about all these questions this morning. One tactic would be to buy the name now for those $5 upside vs $3 downside to a mental stop out below $22. I think this makes the best sense. the other way to play it is to wait for a break out above $30 and ride it back to the highs $36... that seems unlikely in this market.
A fairly recent secondary was pulled off by TSLA at $28.76, I'm not sure there was much interest it seems Musk the CEO bought up a lot of it. He can afford to. Overall 5.3 million more shares were brought to market at that $28.76 those folks are now trapped underwater-- this leads me to think that a move up will fizzle out around $30 as some of those folks raise capital at a break even point-- not bad for what we have seen the past two weeks.
One of the other big buyers of the secondary was Blackstar Investco LLC, that seems a little scary, who is Blackstar? I would feel better with Blackstone. Goldman Sachs had an option to buy in up to 795,000 shares I do not believe they took that option. That is of some small concern.
The Model X Tesla is coming in 2013.
Weighing all of that info, I believe there is at least a $5 trade in this name from this point and I am considering buying in today.
To be continued ~ stoney