This is Tesla. When does Musk crash?
...Tesla Motors, the loss making manufacturer of electric cars, has announced plans to sell an additional 2.1m shares to its investors, to raise $0.5bn in cash.
After raising the cash to help build a so-called “gigafactory” Tesla will have 130m shares in issue. At $245 per share the company is worth $32bn, about nine times annual sales. It expects to deliver as many as 55,000 cars this year.
Tesla has aspirations to be a significant manufacturer of batteries, as well as introducing a third model of electric car, which requires investment, about $1.5bn for this year alone, it predicts. We previously calculated Tesla had spent $3.1bn on capex and research and development up to the end of 2014, which works out to about $40,000 per car sold, so far.
At the end of June the company had access to $750m in bank funding lines, but has also said it may raise cash when the opportunity arises. Shareholders appear to like the opportunism, and the mild dilution, bidding up the price of the stock by 2 per cent, at pixel.
For anyone pleased to see Mr Musk investing alongside them, may we draw your attention to his remuneration. The CEO, PA & COB was granted 5.3m stock options in August 2012, vesting in ten “tranches”. As of the end of June, six of the tranches had been approved, and a further three were considered probable to be achieved.
Some might suggest the Tesla stock price is far more important to Mr Musk’s fortune than the impact of $20m spent in a symbolic show of support to the latest fundraising.
Indeed, according to the most recent quarterly...
The possibility of margin calls causing Mr Musk to sell stock, in the event of a share price decline, is listed as a risk factor by Tesla....