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Comment by throwawayosiu1 | Hacker News Reader

Just as a note, the author is from CleanTechnica. They are known to be extremely pro-tesla.

Best case scenario - most of their articles quietly ignore the downside and prop up the upside. Worst case - they lie or embellish the truth.

Disclosure: I've followed both bulls & bears for almost 6 months - and I've got quite a lot riding in short positions.

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I saw a graph on one of the pro-Tesla sites that basically showed that the Tesla debt is to scale with the rampup of the Model 3 production, and that it isn't out of proportion for the scale of what the production scale of the Model3. And the scale now is above profitability. Is that not true?

That is not true. Tesla still hasn't paid off its debt from the Model X, the Model S, the Gigafactory, or the Supercharger network. They might have managed to achieve positive cash flow with respect to Model 3 specific investments, but that doesn't mean they generating anywhere near the level of cash they need to pay off past debts.

I think that is an arguable point and at least we don't know what their profits are, but we'll know better after q3 earnings are out. If they are making the claimed 25-30% margin on current model 3's, making 50k of them a quarter at avg price of 60k, 50k60k.25, that's a car profit $750 million/quarter. That will pay down their debt at a rate 3 billion a year. I think this is why they said after q3 they will start being a real company, with q3 and q4 at the current rate they could be profitable and actually pay off debt. If all else fails they could sell more stock right now, but that only goes so far. I think they will make a significant profit by q4, and probably a good profit in q3.

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