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Tesla will cash in on surging stock price with $5 billion stock sale:
Tesla will sell up to $5 billion in new shares, the company announced in a Tuesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company didn't give any specific timeline for completing the stock sale.
The announcement comes one day after Tesla completed a five-for-one stock split that sent Tesla's stock soaring. When Tesla announced the split on August 11, Tesla's stock was worth less than $1,400. Investors reacted enthusiastically, pushing the stock up 60 percent to over $2,200 over the following three weeks.
Since the split took effect on Monday, the stock has surged even higher and is now worth $480—$2,400 in pre-split terms.
The stock's high price means that Tesla can raise a lot of cash by issuing a comparatively small number of shares. Tesla announced its last fundraising round of $2 billion in February when the stock was worth less than $800—$160 in post-split terms. With the stock now at roughly triple that value, Tesla will likely be able to raise $5 billion while giving up a smaller share of the company to new shareholders.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Wednesday September 02 2020, @09:36PM (4 children)
What's futuristic about a car that uses 18650 lithium cells with an electric motor?
Electric cars have been around since the 1960's. Sure, they have come on, and the batteries are now far better than the old UK milk float / forklift lead acid packs.
But they still have the same problems, and there's a reason that manufacturer's have steered clear. Ford sell more cars in a month or so than Tesla have ever sold in their existence.
And Ford et al own all the patents on combustion engines, which now have been assigned a date (roughly 2030) by which they won't be able to sell them any more because of EU and US controls on the sale.
So they'll sell every car they can (far more than Tesla can ever dream of at the moment) to use those patents, tooling, factories, processes, staff and knowledge to the utmost.
Then, when they're done and it's time to move on... Tesla is a blip. They might be worth billions on paper, but they don't have anything like the manufacturing of someone like Ford, and there are dozens of manufacturers just as big. Maybe not all of them will survive, but it only takes one for Tesla to be a smear on the tarmac when they properly start tooling and churning out electric cars.
Fact is, Tesla are taking the market hit for them. They're spending money to get turbochargers into the world. Ford has never cared a less in the last 4 decades about making fuel pumps or the industry to get the fuel to the consumer, it's just been there. Tesla are trying to build not only the car, but the market and the infrastructure. And while bankrolled by a billionaire every time they approach bankruptcy, they'll let them. It's not hurting them at all.
Hell, 20 years from now, someone might well be buying up the Tesla name, and maybe nothing else, and just using it to sell a mass-produced car of their own.
They aren't competition, they're the guinea pig. They aren't rivals, they're setting up infrastructure that nobody else wants to pay for. They're not holding important patents, they're just putting bog-standard kit together to make a car that moves. They're not even making profit, they're just bankrolled.
When Ford et al decide to compete, they will. And Tesla will survive that, at best. At the moment, they push out profitable cars with patented spares at a rate that Tesla can't approach, and need to get the most out of it before the patents become useless. Then you'll see what they're actually capable of. Hell, maybe one or two of the old manufacturers will do a Kodak and completely misjudge, but even then Tesla will still be among a dozen giants of production that are all outpacing, out-patenting, and out-producing them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @10:44PM
The first sign that the big automotive companies are serious about competing with Tesla will be regulations that mandate any charging station must be capable of charging any electric vehicle and vehicles must be chargeable at any station. The laws will be written generically but will be designed to kill Tesla's exclusivity at their super-charger stations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2020, @02:48AM
You may have overlooked one piece? The Tesla battery gigafactory (and clones) were once rumored to be Elon's real business, he wants to supply Li batteries to all the other car companies. That market could be much bigger than Tesla cars could ever be, so if Tesla cars runs out of easy funding it just gets closed. A battery company doesn't have to deal with the public, often there is a lot less hassle in a business-to-business company.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2020, @06:45AM (1 child)
When I said, it's weird nobody else is doing what he is doing, I was mostly speaking to his neuralink venture. Unrelated technically; but, as far as I know, nobody has been pushing the envelope in that area.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Monday September 07 2020, @09:40AM
"By August 2020, only three of the eight founding scientists remained at the company, according to an article by Stat News which reported that Neuralink had seen "years of internal conflict in which rushed timelines have clashed with the slow and incremental pace of science."