“I’ll go out on a limb -– Tesla, Silver Spring Networks, and possibly Solyndra will go public by the first quarter of next year,” [Westly] said in an interview. “I say this because all three of these companies in 2008 did between $10 million and $15 million in revenue, and in 2009 they will do over $150 million. When a company has 10x growth, that is a company you can take public.”
....
Tesla IPO?
Tesla didn’t respond to requests for comment on its IPO plans. But
the company told us back in early 2008 that 2009 would be the year for its IPO (that was before the stock markets took a nose dive, and the appetite for IPOs dried up). Tesla CEO and Chairman Elon Musk
reportedly said last year that he planned to raise $100 million from an IPO, but would first raise another round of financing and also wanted the company to be profitable. If those were the two criteria, at least one has been achieved: Tesla
announced early last week that German automaker Daimler had taken a roughly 10 percent stake in the San Carlos, Calif.-based startup.
The electric automaker
has also applied for a $350 million loan from the Department of Energy to build a factory for its new sedan, the Model S, which it hopes to be producing by late 2011. In the meantime, Tesla is selling its Roadsters for revenue. It also has a powertrain supply unit that Musk has described as cash-flow positive, although
Daimler is the only powertrain customer announced so far. The company does not expect to be profitable this year, spokeswoman Rachel Konrad
told us in February.
But investors will be interested in Tesla’s revenue today, not what is potentially coming down the pike, said Francis Gaskins, president of
IPOdesktop.com, an IPO research firm based in Los Angeles. “In this environment, people don’t look out nine months and say you have revenue coming. They want to see it now,” Gaskins said.
