Elon Musk: SpaceX and Tesla almost went bankrupt in 2008 | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk: SpaceX and Tesla almost went bankrupt in 2008

bbc.co.uk

28 pointsiam-TJ13 comments

There isn't a lot of substance in the article to back up the clickbait title. A lot of the concern about Tesla and Space X were from quotes referencing the state of the companies almost 10 years ago.

That is the substance of the article - 10 years ago, both of them nearly died. As you can see from the discussion here, a lot of people are either confused about the article thanks to the title, or love discussing Tesla's current market cap.

I don't know about SpaceX (since they're private), but anyone who can read a quarterly report knows that TSLA is one downturn away from becoming insolvent. Their last bond issuance was well into junk territory, and the cash burn means they'll be forced to raise more money sometime this year. If cash becomes harder to come by they're in real trouble.

It doesn't help that they seem incapable of ramping up Model 3 production.

It's kind of weird. Their bond rating is pretty bad, but yet their stock market cap seems super high - 5x last years revenue (with profits of -2B). Of course, if there is risk to the bonds, that means the equity is even riskier.

Are many sophisticated investors buying the stock or is it mainly retail investors who love the brand+man?

TSLA has a ton of retail investors, which definitely helps prop up the price, but there are definitely institutional investors as well. Everything is expensive these days, so one of the few ways to generate alpha is to buy the right 'priced to perfection' companies, and for some reason (that I personally can't comprehend) TSLA has a lot of savvy investors going long.

That being said, the short interest on this stock is incredibly high, making it very pricy to bet against the company.

Traditional retail investors can't push a stock to $55 billion. Institutional holders have ~60% of the stock.

Fidelity, T Rowe Price, Vanguard, Blackrock, etc. Even the Bank of Montreal has a billion dollar position. Baillie Gifford of Edinburgh is sitting on a $4 billion position. Institutional holders picked up another ne three million shares last quarter.

At the end of 2013, SpaceX had 50 contracts to launch stuff into space, worth about $4 billion. I'd imagine that they're doing way better now, seeing how they seriously undercut all other providers on price.

...his tunnelling firm, the Boring Company, was started as a joke because he thought the name was funny...

"They will start off building a rudimentary base... then this will open up a world of new opportunities, because Mars will need pizza joints, great bars - Mars Bars..."

And now we know what the first bars on Mars will be called.

someone pointed out to me tha all the Tesla car models so far are named: S,3,X,Y...

they guy has a bold flair...

Headline and article itself are a bit misleading. When he said “alive by the skin of their teeth” he was referencing the past, not current situation

This isn’t really a news article. Almost everything in here was covered in the Vance book.

(in 2008)

First rule of HN - "thou shalt not blasphemize the HN gods"!! Flagging a BBC story on Musk and co. is bloody low.

This article is factually accurate. Get over it fanboys

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