Chevy Volt a Failure - GM to Layoff 1,300

In fairness, this is more the fault of the idiot politicians than Tesla. The same variation of that story has been being written since they started building the factory there and the county couldn't handle the flood of people it attracted.

Tesla pays a competitive wage for the kind of unskilled work those people perform -- those are people earning $15, $18, $20 an hour. But they set up a huge factory in a very rural place that didn't have the housing (or government infrastructure) in place to accommodate the workers the factory attracted. So it's been a mess.

This is an issue throughout the country, it's just exacerbated in that area with that huge factory. Developers can't develop affordable homes, because the cost to them is way beyond what people like the people in that story would ever be able to afford. So there there aren't enough homes, and there is no incentive to build them. You'll just lose money. Worse, the surge in people moving there drove up rents on existing places making it tough for everyone.

If you want to blame anyone for this, it should be the idiot politicians who gave Tesla something like $150 million in transferrable tax credits that it has sold to casinos in the area -- it's one of the few things Tesla actually sells profitably. Tesla doesn't actually earn anything, so the tax breaks Nevada gave them are worth only so much. Instead, they got corporate welfare -- an outright cash payment to locate there. The stupid government officials saw "jobs." What they didn't take into account is a very serious housing shortage and the fact that people would flood the area, and the police and fire departments and schools wouldn't be able to handle the stress of that much new population.

If there was a good guy in that story, it was actually Wal-Mart letting those people live in their parking lot and use their bathroom.

 

I have to admit that I don't trust the numbers.

But Tesla just reported a quarter that beat expectations by a ton. A GAAP profit, although it would not be significant except in the context of the loss that was expected. What was notable, though is that there was positive free cash flow, NOT cash burn. They said they took their reserves up from around $2.3 billion to $3 billion.

There have been so many shenanigans with their reporting in the past, and Musk hasn't done his call yet. So I am not sure WHAT fraud or dishonest things (if it does exist) they did to produce a show quarter.

It is kind of fishy when they are going to need to do a capital raise, they have a lot of debt that they have to roll and it is getting more expensive. And out of nowhere, a machine that has always burned through an obscene amount of cash, suddenly is a cash producer. But I'll take it on face value unless something comes out to disprove it. If it is repeatable, Tesla may be able to keep its head above water.

 

This guy had the same thought I did about something being rotten with Tesla's numbers, and he found a bunch of things.

"Q3 Results Secured" | AdventuresInCapitalism | Small Companies--Big Upside

I will bet my left [name a body part] were trying to create a show quarter, so they could ride some hype to another bond issuance, and they played fast and loose with various accounts receivables and how they depreciated assets.