The Walton Family also happens to own much of First Solar, a competing provider of photovoltaic cells.
First Solar's panels would also be an unusual choice for a rooftop installation even if a different installer handled the work. Rooftop solar installations typically call for high efficiency panels. First Solar makes lower efficiency, lower cost panels that maintain performance at elevated temperatures. Their panels are good for solar farms, particularly in hot climates. They don't have anything special to recommend their use in rooftop projects.
> Criticisms include charges of racial and gender discrimination,[1][2][3] foreign product sourcing, treatment of product suppliers, environmental practices,[4] the use of public subsidies, and the company's spying on its employees.[5]
1) Walmart would have a procurement department. These guys probaly have no idea of the likely 1000's of investment companies the Walton family own.
2) As a listed company, Walmart procurement would contact jobs like this to the best offer, not to seperate companies that happen to be owned by shareholders.
In fact all of the top 10 shareholders of Walmart have more shares (>10M) than any of the Waltons, it appears:
The Vanguard Group, Inc.
SSgA Funds Management, Inc.
BlackRock Fund Advisors
Fidelity Management & Research Co
Geode Capital Management LLC
Northern Trust Investments, Inc.
State Farm Investment Management
Wellington Management Co. LLP
T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc.
Dimensional Fund Advisors LP
So maybe you should look at whatever the interests of the index fund providers are, and who runs them.
Are you sure about that? Do you have an authoritative source?
I get zero hits for Lukas among Wal-Mart shareholder disclosures on sec.gov. Jim Walton, by contrast, does show up.
Also, Wal-Mart is trading for about $320B, so $1.5B is more like half a percent than twenty percent.
Tesla has had a lot of growing pains and they'll be a better company when you guys stop dismissing every single criticism and actually hold the company and Musk accountable for their missteps.
Regardless, SolarCity probably did a poor installation job with cheap parts. They have a reputation among other Solar installers and it's not a good one.
Tesla installed 29 MW of solar last quarter, compared to a peak of 253 MW at Solar City before the acquisition. First Solar, which isn't an apples to apples competitor since it specializes in utility scale, is on track to produce 1375 MW per quarter of panels this year.
Tesla's solar business is dead. They might turn it around with the solar roof product, but if that succeeds it will make Tesla Energy even less of a competitor to First Solar, since it has zero relevance to utility scale solar.
Even if Walmart had evil intent, why give Solar City the PR boost of hundreds of installations in the hope that they'll fail and they can later sue?
It's easy to make a nice conspiratorial quip, but there's nothing of substance here. Jumping at every shadow just numbs you for when you really should be angry.
Where is foul play implied in that sentence? To me it reads like more of an aside than an allegation of wrong doing. The stakes of this particular suit feel more "business-as-usual" than malicious or strategic.
Generally, batteries compete with the power sources that can be turned on and off quickly with control to meet spiky demand. Solar doesn't produce power at the whims of the operators and is not in that category.