Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/05/03/after-record-quarterly-loss-t.html
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yeah but, I still want electric cars
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I just hope the shitshow that is Tesla is sufficiently firewalled away from the success story that is SpaceX so that they don’t go down together.
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There’s a lot of capital expansion going on with Tesla right now, is my understanding. You have to spend money to ramp up. Your monthly budget would be shot too if you had to buy a house and put it on that month’s spreadsheet.
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The Boring Company makes boneheads and he doesn’t want to talk about it? 
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Indeed. Amazon took nearly a decade to turn in its first quarterly net profit. Which doesn’t mean Tesla can’t implode, but quarterly loss doesn’t necessarily signal a company’s viability.
I suspect Tesla is the more stable of the two. Commercial space is among the riskiest ventures possible. SpaceX has come close to collapsing several times. There’s very little margin for mistakes. That said, SpaceX has done all it can to make itself indispensable to NASA and other organizations with launch needs. Now that SpaceX is starting to have some serious competition from Blue Phallus Origin though…
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The difficulty is that of cash flow, they have a lot of debt maturing next year which they will have to finance as well as ongoing costs. Moody’s has downgraded their stock to junk rating.
Their productivity has been very sluggish (showing signs of improving), suffered a number of high profile product recalls, and in general the company gives off the impression that they’re trying to sprint before they’ve learned to walk.
I can see Apple being interested in them for their self-driving tech and Ford for getting more of a foothold into the electric vehicle market.
If they manage to sort out their productivity and cash flow issues, then they’ll be in a with a good chance of staying the journey. But, I kinda expect them to be swallowed up by either Apple or Ford before 2020.
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I think any investor putting money in a company like Tesla should have enough sense to realize that it’s not going to be generating profits anytime soon. It’s a much more long term endeavor. They’re building an entire industry from scratch, and as a stock TSLA is not going to behave like blue chip shares in the foreseeable future.
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Tesla was founded in 2003… Also Tesla acquired Solar City (which was co-founded by Musk’s cousin) and in the process, acquired a ton of debt. It’s super tough to break into the auto market so what Tesla has done is staggering. Still, I think they’ll have to strike a humiliating partnership with a big auto company or suffer a leveraged buyout in the next couple of years. The brand is too hot to simply die, but the company has a very narrow path to success in its current form.
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Interesting. I had no idea they’d been around so long. Though now that you mention it, I do remember Colin Powell shopping for the first Roadster and wondering how the fuck a general can afford what was then somewhere around a $200K car.
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Haha seriously. Books sales I hope!
Looks like even though Tesla was founded in 2003, Musk didn’t become CEO till 2008, with IPO in 2010… So it’s path has been more circuitous than other “tech” companies… I wouldn’t expect a car manufacturer to have the same trajectory as a software/web services company, though that’s how the stock has been valued. It’s madness!
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Tesla also posted record quarterly profit of $3.4 billion. And the stock was up a tad yesterday. And people are not canceling their Model 3 reservations. And Model 3 builds continue to climb.
So there are significant upsides in addition to the challenges.
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I don’t pay much heed to any “rumor” posts that come out shortly before an earnings call. There are aways doomsayers trying to tank the stock for financial reasons. You see this with every single Apple call too.
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That was revenue, not profit. They posted a $710bn net loss and have only had 2 quarters of profit in the past 8 years.
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3.4 B in revenue. No profit. They have 2.7 B on hand in cash. I think Elon is sleeping at the factory so he can swim in the acres of $100 bills they have in enormous swimming pools. Agree the path gets narrower every time they shut down the model 3 line. But if they can crank out 5000 units a week by the next earnings call… or mb the one after that =`M
The Boring Company is a dodge so they can develop Mars base tunnel building. All electric semi-autonomous boring machines make nice warrens for Red Rabbits.
Is Blue Origin even carrying payloads to orbit yet?
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Hitting production targets will solve their cash flow problem. As recalls go, theirs have been pretty minor and easy fixes. And it would be an absolute nightmare for the progress of electric vehicles if either of those acquisitions took place. I like my iPhone, but have no interest in Apple building cars.
lol! thanks
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Not necessarily, as I said they have a hefty debt maturity next year which will need to be met in addition with operating costs. That debt could, combined with their rate of burning through cash is a very big millstone around their neck.
Hyperbole much??
I’m in favor of EVs, and I would lose exactly zero winks of sleep if Tesla went belly up or was acquired.
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