You miss a key point. Maxwell does indeed need a cash infusion. But so does Tesla to a much larger degree.
I absolutely dispute this. Tesla is going to be operating cashflow positive from now on, apart from deliberate inventory buildup; this isn't even hard at this point, as long as they can just manufacture enough cars! (Which I am keeping a close eye on.)
Note that buildup of inventory (mostly in transit) was -809 million cash, and the operating cash flow was -639 million in cash. At steady inventory, that would have been operating cash flow positive of 170 million. Not by enough to cover capex -- they need another $135 million in profit for that -- but that just means they need to produce more cars. They'll be building inventory for another couple of quarters, so they need to produce even more cars in order to do that. So it's all about producing enough cars.
Tesla's intention is to be (op cash flow - cap ex) positive from now on, and I think they can probably do it, if not in Q2, in Q3. If they do have a shortfall, they have $2.2 billion in totally unrestricted cash; they have an unused unrestricted borrowing capacity of about $415 million right now; and they have proven their ability to get more both for general purposes (the Warehouse line was expanded in Q1) and for specific purposes (including the China financing of the Shanghai Gigafactory, the $220 million in unused letters of credit, the Warehouse Agreement). (As a payer, you never want to need to use a letter of credit, but it means you pay on time even if you won't have the cash until next week, so it provides a backstop against bankruptcy.) There's also $485 million in restricted cash.
As long as Tesla manages to crank out the cars (which does remain a risk), they're not in danger of running out of cash.
Maxwell needs a cash-rich partner. Tesla is not it IMO.
Then who is? If there was a serious bidder, they would have made their counteroffer already. That's how mergers work: if there was a counteroffer, we'd have heard about it weeks ago already. That means Tesla's offer is the best offer on the table.
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