Just saw that myself. Impressive. That confirms what I've been suspecting about the volume of deliveries last week. Now the question will be if they can keep it up. I'm guessing yes!
Very good news.. yet another milestone. Getting to the Production deliveries was needed to get cashflow positive. Sigs already had 40K deposits so they need to get past that.
Could Tesla get into trouble with the SCE from the fact that Musk puts this type of info out on Twitter? I ask this since it seems that there are some strict regulations about how, where and when information about finances, future prospects etc. can and should me made public when a company is traded on the public market.
He's pretty careful in interviews about what he talks about during "quiet periods" as far as stock. I'd guess he knows when he can tweet or not. That's not to say he won't accidentally get it wrong one day, but he's acting with pretty good knowledge of the rules.
There is a certain time within X days or weeks of their SEC filings where they can't make some announcements. I am guessing they are well outside of this now.
This tweet is also being discussed in the investors thread: TSLA Investor Discussions - Page 386 (and following pages)
Which came first? This tweet or the WP article on an investigation? That is, which was a reaction to which?
The tweet came two hours after the article. That's not to say it was a reaction, given that the article doesn't really reveal anything. It was also written by the Washington Times, not the Post.
So how do they do it? Elon had said 8000 cars to go profitable. How many resorvations at $5K each would they need to get to make the same amount?
For all we know, Tesla pays salaries bi-weekly, and last week wasn't a payroll week. But on a more serious note, Tesla pushed out a lot of cars last week, and took in some serious dough from those. I know that my wire for ~$85k was in the mix, and I'm sure my money wasn't alone. Plus, Tesla seems to be getting about 80 reservations a day, @$5000, is $400k. But my bet is on deliveries; it wouldn't surprise me to learn that they received full payment for over 200 cars, or about $16 million.
"Profitable" and "cash flow positive last week" are two entirely different things. A company could lose $1 billion every week for 51 weeks and be cash flow positive in the last week and obviously still be way in the hole. It also depends on exactly how profitable Tesla is every week - $5 or $5 million? Hopefully the latter. After several months, they will eventually have a profitable quarter/year.
Tesla collected payments for a delivery surge of general production cars. Most of the costs of building these cars fell in the weeks before, since gp deliveries were held back and priority given to signature cars. It was a rather unique situation. But in the long run, Tesla must be cash flow positive when delivering 200 cars / week, since that would be 10k cars / year -- well in excess of the aforementioned 8k cars. Tesla planned to produce 400 cars/week with a single shift crew. Right now they appear to be at 200+ cars with two shifts in some critical areas of production. Some way to go there, but they will make it happen.
I think he was referring to a rate of 8,000 per year (as opposed to the first 8,000 mark). Which they had already surpassed with the weekly rate a while ago, however the current costs are probably still higher than regular production. So it means two things: they are producing at a good rate, and have managed to get the costs down to a certain level.
8000 cars per year is equal to about 153 cars per week. So they'd need to receive payment for about 153 cars in a week to be cash flow positive. 200 cars is greater than 153 cars, so 200 would certainly be enough to be cash flow positive.
I believe the 8000 is an annual rate. Start counting in January. Elon has also stated that profitability (net margin) could occur as soon as Q1. Both cash flow positive and profitability timing are well in advance of Morgan Stanley's recent 'optimistic' projections, that cf positive could come sometime in '13, and targeting a mid $40s share price. TM is out-performing. Shorts beware.