Tesla going privet , then going under.

[oil pan 4]

Normally companies go from private to public. Not the other way around.
Normally you go private:
When you get bought out by or merge with someone and they want to take it all private. Thata really the only time it's ever a good thing.
When the CEO wants to make it harder if not impossible for the share holders or board to replace them.
So you can share company financial information with only a select few.
So you can make it easier to follow through with bad decisions.
To limit criticism.
To make it a whole lot easier to commit white collar crime.
When the guys at the top know the stock price has peaked.

Their known problems are: they have limited cash flow in, most of their cash flow is from car order deposits, order deposits are way down for the second quarter of 2018, debt, they are about to post a billion dollar loss for the second year in a row, they have a huge back log of 420,000 orders they don't have the ability to fill, lots of competition now compared to even 2 years ago, model 3 demand has collapsed largely because model 3 are barely moving off the assembly line and the competition actually fills orders, people who have been waiting years for a car are really getting pissed.
Supposedly funding was secured to expand the production line, musk said Goldman Sachs (gigantic red flag alert) and another privet firm approved their loan. Both firms said "no we didnt".

The scale of this problem is it took nissan about 8 years to build 300,000 leaf cars and nissan built the leaf on an existing platform, nissan is an established large global company who knows how to mass produce cars, ship them all over the world and most importantly turn a profit while doing all that.

If ford or GM did this they would have filed chapter 11 oh about a year ago.

I really hope they don't go under because it is a pretty cool company. Some dirty Chinese company would probably buy them up, the United States tax payers pumped a lot of money into this company to get them started, it would be a travesty to let some foreigners buy them up at pennies on the dollar.

[California98Civic]

And there is this, too. Chinese, eating the future lunch of the USA:
https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/14/inv...ipo/index.html

[oil pan 4]

Teslas main Chinese competition files for an US ipo?
This is a lot worse than I thought.
If any one owns tesla shares, I hope you don't any more.

[Angel And The Wolf]

Going from Public to Private could mean that they are so sucessful they no longer need investors. Musk had enough money to start Space X. Don't write the obituary, yet.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Their known problems are... they have a huge back log of 420,000 orders they don't have the ability to fill, lots of competition now compared to even 2 years ago, model 3 demand has collapsed largely because model 3 are barely moving off the assembly line and the competition actually fills orders

None of this part is true.

Having reservations or unmet demand is not a problem.

There is no competition. The next highest sold plug-in vehicle is the Prime, and at 2000 sales per month, is nothing compared to the Model 3. None of the other manufacturers are able to keep up with demand, or they limit demand by lack of advertising and setting the price at a point where they only sell their artificially constrained production targets. The Model 3 in the currently offered trim has a higher profit margin than any other plug-in vehicle by far.

14,000+ Model 3s sold last month, or 7x more than the next highest selling plug-in vehicle. Combined with their other models, Tesla is selling 17,000+ cars per month and that is increasing.

No doubt Tesla has many big problems to eventually solve, but it isn't all doom and gloom.

All that said, China does sell more EVs than the US, and some of those manufacturers are likely to release models in the US eventually. With no patent enforcement, there is little in the way of rapid advancement in their technology, at least in keeping current while spending less on R&D.

[RedDevil]

I work for a company that develops software for governmental organizations. We are mostly privately owned; just one aquired part of the company used to have shares, and we are looking into ways to end it, but as for now it is cheaper to let it be.

We aim at long term stability and have lost business to our competitors in bull markets, to see them crash and burn in adverse times, picking up the pieces and servicing their software and its clients, who would have a very big problem otherwise.
This has made us market leader in a large number of applications.

I fully understand Tesla’s urge to leave the stock exchange. It may be essential, even, if they want steady and continuous growth. You can get big as a public company, but you can get kicked around a fair deal too.

[samwichse]

Tesla going privet? Maybe they are just trying to hedge their bets? They're worried about Leaf competition? Maybe they're just spinning off one branch?

[oil pan 4]

So tesla doesn't have 420,000 back orders and no one else is making electric vehicles?
I would say their competitors are anyone who can get an electric vehicle to you faster even if the competitions cars don't go 130mph and 200 miles on a charge.

Having 420,000 unfilled orders and no way to fill them in a timely manner is a huge problem.
I wouldn't consider over 1.5 years timely no matter how you stretch or spin it.

Plus "If nothing is wrong", then why did musk tweet saying that Goldman Sachs agreed to give tesla a loan, then Goldman Sachs had a press release yesterday saying no such deal had been made?
Which is funny because Goldman Sachs is well know for making risky and other wise bad loans, then says no to tesla? What does that look like?

[redpoint5]

The current EV manufacturers selling in the US have no way to fulfill 400k orders. The only reason some markets have EVs available on the lot now is because of the weak demand for that particular brand.

Tesla is cranking them out as fast as they can build 'em.

Losing a few customers to competitors isn't a problem so much as a minor loss of opportunity.

Tesla faces many problems, but 400k people wanting to buy a Model 3 isn't one of them.

...and besides all that, Elon said he expected the company to fail, and that his main goal was to advance the adoption of EVs in general. Mission accomplished. Whether Tesla survives or not doesn't really matter unless you have some financial stake in the company.

It's entertaining to watch and speculate on the future though. Those people taking a short position either know a lot more than I do (entirely possible), or get a much bigger thrill out of taking huge financial risks than me.

[oil pan 4]

They are building about 5,000 of them a week. Hopefully for 2019 they can post a profit.