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Comment by ckastner | Hacker News Reader

Quoting Musk on Twitter[1], about a year ago:

The Economist used to be boring, but smart with a wicked dry wit. Now it’s just boring (sigh). Tesla will be profitable & cash flow+ in Q3 & Q4, so obv no need to raise money.

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/984705630106673152

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So the bank predicted 2-3 billion in 2018, and instead it's 1.5B in 2019. The CEO of a company is optimistic about his company, and the bank is pessimistic about the company. Truth ended up somewhere in the middle, I don't see anything noteworthy about this.

It's 1.5B after several rounds of gutting the company, closing stores, firing people, etc. Banks were predicting 2-3B, to sustain trajectory they were on in 2018.

2019 is much different time, with Tesla scaling back.

You don't see anything noteworthy about a $1,500,000,000 gap in funding?

Tesla had a revenue of $20,000,000,000 in 2018. Yes those are big numbers. They had some problems, fell short by 5-10% (or 25% if the trend continues :P), yes that's a big deal short term, and yes if this were some big stable corporation people would get fired. But Tesla is not a big stable company, no matter how many people buy the stock on their Robinhood accounts. And no one said the gap wasn't noteworthy, what I'm saying is Musk's response to that article has very little relevance to this situation, at least from my perspective.

If the CEO misses the guideline by such an enormous margin, there clearly is a problem.

As an owner of one of their cars, my issue has been is he is horrid with managing money in regards to Tesla. It just seems this way. The typical response of someone who isn't use to money and goes in boom and bust cycles with it. Get it and have relief then find new ways to blow before shoring up what needs it and building a base. He is like the people who never look back and build on what they have let alone finish it.

If they need to raise money then it needs to be focused solely on delivering cars. Not some future taxi service or robot what evers. It should only be towards getting the model Y line up and running on time and under budget, getting the full refreshes of S and Y out. then once you are profitable by year car company, then you do robo. taxi.

Telsa doesn't need sayers to make shit up when the CEO is like a jack Russell terrier

Raise no money EVER? Or just in Q3+Q4?

This is from the Economist article that Musk was tweeting about:

Well before it confirmed the latest missed production target, investors worried about the firm’s cash-burn rate in 2018. In addition to the $2bn or so of capital that may be required to expand production of the Model 3, Tesla has some $1.2bn in convertible debt maturing by early next year. On March 27th Moody’s, a credit-rating agency, downgraded Tesla’s debt, cautioning that the firm “will likely need to raise additional capital during the second half of 2019”. Jefferies, a bank, predicts that Tesla will need $2.5bn to $3bn this year.

The cited prediction by Moody’s was very close, apparently ("likely need to raise capital in the second half of 2019").

"Tesla will need to raise $2.5bn to $3bn this year, according to Jefferies, a bank"

This was the tweet (April 2018) Elon has replied to.

And Tesla raised half of it already by early Q2. Doesn't sound to far of, does it?

Sounds like the "this year" was 2018, in which I don't believe they raised money in

Note that there isn't a year mentioned there.

Tesla may well be cashflow positive in Q3/4 2050.

"No need" doesn't mean they won't or that it isn't smart to continue to leverage for more resources if possible - not sure what point you're trying to make otherwise.

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