Why isn't Tesla (or Twitter) running out of money?

Its not always about profitability, if sales keep going up it's worth more because of the potential to turn those sales into profits down the road. If you look at the price to sale ratio of Tesla it's no worse than Amazons. Amazon was said to be overvalued for years before it became the monster it is today. Those people that bet against amazon based on lack of profitability were all wrong as far as I'm concerned.

Also Tesla's model S destroyed all other cars in it's class when it got rated on consumer reports. A huge embarrassment for the established auto industry I would think. That's usually a good indication that they're doing something right and it's not all just a "big bubble".
 
Sig said:
The CEO of SolarCity, Lyndon Rive, was literally Elon Musk's cousin. Although he lost his job with the merger, so didn't really work out that well for him I guess.
More...

Except he got to transfer worthless SCTY stocks to 340+ bucks TSLA stocks. I think he made like 20 million on the deal...

SCTY was literally bankrupt and Elon saved them by screwing TSLA stock holders.
 
Last edited:
rolando87 said:
Its not always about profitability, if sales keep going up it's worth more because of the potential to turn those sales into profits down the road. If you look at the price to sale ratio of Tesla it's no worse than Amazons. Amazon was said to be overvalued for years before it became the monster it is today. Those people that bet against amazon based on lack of profitability were all wrong as far as I'm concerned.

Also Tesla's model S destroyed all other cars in it's class when it got rated on consumer reports. A huge embarrassment for the established auto industry I would think. That's usually a good indication that they're doing something right and it's not all just a "big bubble".
More...

1. Amazon was (and still is) overvalued. Hey let's sell books online. OK, but we are losing our shirts over that. No problem let's sell MORE, so we can lose more.

2. If you give me 5 billions I can make a fantastic car. Lots of small car makers do that so business wise that is not a big deal. Selling them profitably is a much bigger deal. Yes in a way Tesla is similar to early Amazon, they are trying to get to profitability by selling more and more. Yet they keep losing money. Now the whole production line for Model 3 is set up and paid for, yet they still need to raise money. Why tell me why?

3. Amazon eventually found a completely different niche, the cloud that started to make money for them. (like the Alaskan lawnmower to hair dresser) Maybe Tesla switches to the space business or the crypto business to do the same...They could make Teslacoin and sell the cars for only those coins! :)

The point is, if your core business is not viable itself you will go bankrupt when you can't sell the dream anymore to investors, or you have to switch the company's profile to something else...
 
Pekelo said:
Except he got to transfer worthless SCTY stocks to 340+ bucks TSLA stocks. I think he made like 20 million on the deal...

SCTY was literally bankrupt and Elon saved them by screwing TSLA stock holders.
More...
Just to be clear, SCTY was not in bankruptcy, I think you might be misremembering? Their stock never traded lower than $16/share in it's history. It was trading in the low $20s for the couple months before the merger announcement. If you include the options he lost per the article cited, and the final closing price of the merger, it looks like Lyndon actually came out behind vice where he was in the early summer of 2016 before the merger was announced.
SCTY was/is a shitshow, they're exhibit A for Elon's lack of operational focus/ability. In fact for some time I had a short on them and a long on their competitors. However they weren't considered, by the financial markets anyway, to be worthless at any point before the merger and definitely weren't in any kind of bankruptcy proceeding.
 
Last edited:
Antartica said:
Thanks for posting. This and some other videos about Musk are helping me a lot with one issue. Originally I thought I would feel an incompentent wannabee as long as Musk lives. Feeling better now :cool:
More...

Wow musk is a d*ckbag
 
Sig said:
allow them to develop the capability to build better, cheaper, higher capacity batteries.
More...

Great thread.

Hey regarding the above quote Sig... do you foresee the evolution of batteries continuing gradually for years to come.... or will science and physics eventually hit a brick wall?
 
vanzandt said:
Great thread.

Hey regarding the above quote Sig... do you foresee the evolution of batteries continuing gradually for years to come.... or will science and physics eventually hit a brick wall?
More...
I see a parallel with solar panels. Plain old silicone solar panels were $6/watt in 2008, conventional wisdom is that we'd need to invent some exotic new tech to get it down much and a bunch of VC backed companies worked to do that. Meanwhile with pure scale and effficiency, plain old silicone solar is now $.35/watt and although much of the exotic tech met their goals, plain old silicone had already surpassed them. We're seeing pretty much the same thing with lithium ion now.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top