Buy Tesla Stock : Model 3, Elon Musk Get Banged Up By Media After Earnings Report

esla faced withering cynicism from the media this week, driven by uncertainty about the Model 3.

The cynicism/criticism was especially intense because during the third quarter the company was only able to make 260 of its first mass-market vehicle. Green Car Reports said, "Just 260 Tesla Model 3s built in three months" (headline) while adding in the body that "The news for October deliveries was, to put it bluntly, not good." (Tesla had originally planned to produce 1,500.)

But that headline was on the charitable side compared to many of the reports, which evinced a lot of existential angst. "Tipping-Over Point for Tesla: Great Cars, Weak Production Lines," said Extreme Tech. Or "Tesla's 'Hell' Threatens Its Future," said Jalopnik.

In some ways it feels like a hell of Tesla’s own making, owing to aggressive targets and promises it’s having trouble keeping up with.

here were plenty of other references to "Hell." Sleepless nights, broken robots and mounting pressure: Musk offers rare glimpse inside Tesla’s ‘production hell’ -- said the Washington Post. Which cited these comments from Musk in the conference call, referring to Dante's Inferno.

I was really depressed about 3 or 4 weeks ago when I realized that we're kind of in level 9, then we got to level 8, now I can see sort of a clear path to sunshine. And so I feel really pretty optimistic right now. If you talked to me 3 weeks ago, I would have been quite pessimistic and I was sort of quite down in the dumps.

--Elon Musk

Going forward, you have to wonder how many more moments like this Musk will have -- only to reveal them much later (or not at all).

Meanwhile Bloomberg echoed other stories in the financial press, "Tesla Sparks Fresh Cash Concerns After Model 3 Rollout Stumbles."

While Musk has brought in more than $3 billion this year from equity, convertible bond and debt offerings, his electric-car maker has burned through about $2.6 billion in cash during just the last two quarters...the stock has traded at the lowest intraday level in six months late this week

--Bloomberg (November 3)

Stock-price-centric blogs had no shortage of scary headlines like, "Conference Call Confirms Tesla's Model 3 Faces Huge Problems."

Earnings/Model 3 recap: To recap: Tesla lost $619 million over the third quarter, a record-high quarterly loss. The company attributed Model 3 delays to a number of things, including the Model 3's high level of automation ("challenging in the early stages of the ramp"), in its quarterly update to shareholders. But the biggest "production constraint has been in the battery module assembly line at Gigafactory 1," the company said in the update.

(Musk described battery module assembly in more detail on the earnings conference call. "There are four zones to module manufacturing...The zones three and four are in good shape, zones one and two are not. Zone two in particular...we had a subcontractor, a systems integration subcontractor, that unfortunately really dropped the ball.")

Attention all Model 3 reservation holders -- revised goal is 5,000-per-week by end of March: Musk said that Tesla would not reach its production target of 5,000 electric cars a week by December 31. And reports quickly ensued of day-1 reservation holders in California and New York "seeing a pushback in delivery date by approximately one month." Along these lines, Musk, in the earnings conference call, updated the production target. "We expect to achieve a production rate of 5,000 Model 3 vehicles per week by late Q1 2018, so probably sometime in March," he said.

And what about the previous target of 10,000 units a week by the end of 2018? "Just to be clear, we are trying to get as fast as we can to 5,000, and then we will work as fast as we can to get to 10,000," said CFO Deepak Ahuja during the call. So that's not a hard target anymore.

by
B. Crothers , CONTRIBUTOR

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2017/11/05/tesla-week-model-3-elon-musk-get-banged-up-by-media-after-earnings-report/#392ff6607cd5

Shoul you buy Tesla ? Raises $226.1M at $17 IPO price - NASDAQ with the TSLA ticker symbol Tesla Motors Inc (Public, NASDAQ:TSLA)

said late on Monday that its shares priced at $17, raising $226.1 million for the electric car maker.


The closely watched Palo Alto company's company's shares get their first test on the open market on Tuesday when they trade on NASDAQ with the TSLA symbol.

Tesla sold 13.3 million shares instead of the 11.1 million originally planned and exceeded its previous estimated range of between $14 and $16 a share.

The company plans to use the money to help it bridge its offerings from the flashy two-door $109,000 Roadster that was its first car to a $50,000 Model S sedan that it plans to make at the former New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant in Fremont.

The company has yet to make a profit and doesn't expect to until after it begins selling the sedan in volume. It has lost $290.2 million since it was founded in 2003.


The IPO is expected to trigger a $50 million investment by Toyota Motor Corp., which previously ran the NUMMI plant in a 25-year partnership with General Motors Co. GM pulled out of the plant last summer and Toyota made its last Corolla there on April 1.



Tesla also has the backing of the U.S. government, with a $465 million loan.



In addition to the Toyota plan to buy shares, Tesla gave its underwriters the option to buy 1.995 million more shares under certain conditions. Goldman, Sachs & Co. is underwriting the IPO along with Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan and Deutsche Bank Securities.



Read more: Tesla raises $226.1M at $17 IPO price - Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal. About Tesla Motors


Our Company

At the core of Tesla Motors is the belief that an electric car need not be a driving sacrifice. We have brought the best of the automotive and technology worlds together to permanently bury the image of an electric car as a step backwards in performance, efficiency, or design. Our key technology is the 100% electric powertrain, which propels us in the present and simultaneously establishes a foundation for our future models. We set out to forever alter perceptions of electric vehicles and to make electric cars a viable alternative. We have produced a car that is at once beautiful and exciting to drive, along with being the most efficient production automobile on the planet.



Freedom of Choice

The very definition of automobile is freedom of motion. The word itself originated as a literal way to define a vehicle that moves under its own power without need for another vehicle – such as a horse or locomotive. Today the definition of automobile often includes association with an internal combustion engine. We’re here to change this definition one car at a time. The world will once again use the automobile to transport us free of convention. Tesla Motors will be part of this liberation. The Tesla Roadster moves not only under its own power, but ultimately free of the existing and increasingly troublesome petroleum-based infrastructure.



Passion for the Future

For 130,000 years humans looked upon the moon with wonder and speculation. On July 20, 1969 we walked on its surface. Sixty years ago a computer was comprised of more than 17,000 vacuum tubes and weighed 30 tons. Today one can place many times this same computing power in a jeans pocket. The end result of technological achievement is often so impressive that we forget the drive of the innovators behind the solution. While we are a technology company, we deliver our automotive innovation with enthusiasm and passion for design. We are engineers and designers. We are drivers and racers. We are executives. We are Tesla Motors.

Milestone Now

The Tesla Roadster is no longer a vision. Our automobile is not merely a claim. The Roadster is our first production car, and will not be our last. With a range of 244 miles on a single charge and a supercar level 3.7 second 0-60 mph acceleration time, the Roadster Sport is proof that the combination of passion and technology can deliver a truly groundbreaking automobile. The Tesla Roadster is just the beginning. We will use what we have created in the Roadster as a foundation for models to come. The 30-ton computer will easily fit in your pocket. The moon will not seem so far away. The car you drive will liberate you from convention. That car will be a Tesla.

Our Mission

Tesla Motors designs and sells high performance, super efficient electric cars. Tesla Motors cars join style, acceleration, and handling with advanced technologies that make them the quickest and the most energy-efficient cars on the planet
Tesla Motors uses proprietary technology, world-class design and state-of-the-art manufacturing processes to create a new generation of highway capable electric vehicles. We utilize an innovative distribution model based on Company-owned sales and service centers. This approach allows us to maintain the highest levels of customer experience and benefit from short customer feedback loops to ensure our customer needs are fulfilled. We believe our operational infrastructure provides us with a competitive advantage compared to traditional automobile manufacturers.


We introduced our first vehicle, the Tesla Roadster, in 2008. The Model S, our four-door sedan, has a planned release in 2012.
Tesla Motors will offer up its shares to the public for the first time on Tuesday, testing investors' faith in a company that has proven it can make functional and stunning electric cars but has never had a profitable quarter.




Tesla, which will trade on Nasdaq under the symbol "TSLA," priced its shares late Monday at $17 each, above the target range of $14 to $16. That allowed Tesla to raise more than $226 million in the IPO

PayPal founder Elon Musk's seven-year old auto company lost $55.7 million last year and $260.7 million since its inception. The company has performed so poorly from a financial standpoint that Musk recently said he lost his entire personal fortune on Tesla.


But investors are giddy about the Palo Alto, Calif.-based automaker's initial public offering, prompting Tesla on Monday to increase the number of shares it plans to offer by nearly a fifth to 13.3 million.

Much of the excitement is pegged to Tesla's launch of the Model S, an electric sedan that the company says will sell for a minimum of $50,000 in 2012. That's much more reasonable and practical for most consumers than the vehicle that Tesla currently sells, the $100,000

The electric automaker plans to acquire a plant where it will produce 20,000 new Model S sedans each year starting in 2012. That's a significant increase from the 1,063 Roadsters it has sold -- total. But until 2012, Tesla said it will continue to pile up hefty losses.Apple iPhone 3GS, Black (AT&T)

"Investors that are interested in Tesla know that it's going to continue to burn cash until it gets Model S into commercial production," said Matt Therian, an analyst at IPO research firm Renaissance Capital in Greenwich, Conn. "Tesla investors are really looking out to 2012, with their investment very much tied to whether they think 20,000 is a conservative or an aggressive number

Nissan will sell the electric Leaf and General Motors is ready to bring the hybrid-electric Chevrolet Volt to market next year -- a year ahead of the Model S.
The Nissan Leaf is set to get 100 miles to the charge with just a $25,000 price tag (after tax credits). The Volt will get 40 miles to the charge, but will also have a gas engine, and it will be sold for about $35,000.

The Tesla Model S will have a variety of range options from 160 miles to 300 miles per charge, but at double the price of the Leaf, Tesla will likely remain a niche automaker for some time.

What's more, Tesla has just 12 dealerships to sell and service its vehicles, compared with more than 1,000 Nissan dealers and thousands of Chevy dealerships in the United States.

"I'm struggling to see what Tesla's unique selling point is, to be frank," said MacKenzie.


But Tesla owns an undeniable "cool" factor that its competitors would love to have. The ultra-slick Roadster has a range of about 244 miles per charge, according to the company -- the first production electric vehicle to get more than 200 miles on a single charge. And it does zero to 60 miles per hour in just 3.9 seconds -- better than most similarly priced sports cars. Tesla CEO Elon Musk To Sell Nearly One Million Personal Shares At IPOThe additional shares are being sold by existing shareholders looking to cash out at the IPO, including Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk who is selling an additional 909,212 of his personal shares. Other selling stockholders include VantagePoint Venture Partners (238,748 shares), Bay Area Equity Fund (88,586), Westly Capital Partners (72,625), Compass Venture Partners (22,931), as well as friends and family like Elon’s brother (and OneRiot CEO) Kimball Musk (12,692). Tesla itself won’t make any additional money from the bump in shares, but more shares will be available to the public. (Watch Out )This stock pick should not be a long term risk , get in early and get out when you get your pop early in the game .... do not buy and hold !!!!