TSLA stock

Well, CEO Elon Musk promised a pie in the face of the naysayers on Wall Street and they got it today.

After market close today, Tesla released its financial results for the third quarter 2016. Wall street was expecting revenue of $2.43 billion and a slight gain of $0.02 per share for the quarter. Tesla confirmed $2.30 billion in revenue, below expectations, but it also announced a gain of $0.14 per share during the last quarter – a first in 3 years.
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Tesla (TSLA) is set to release its third quarter 2016 financial results on Wednesday, October 26 after market close. As usual, the release of the results will be followed by a conference call and Q&A with Tesla’s management at 2:30pm Pacific Time (5:30pm Eastern Time). Now here’s what to expect on Wednesday:
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Elon Musk surprised Wall Street last week when he said that Tesla and SolarCity will not need to raise capital before the end of the year and “likely” not until the second quarter 2017. It was going against what Tesla had been guiding for the past few months, but it also came after the automaker confirmed record delivery numbers for the last quarter.

However, Wall Street analysts are still expecting Tesla to need to raise substantial amounts of money in the near future and now one of the top analyst covering Tesla, Oppenheimer’s Colin Rusch, is weighing in on just how much the company would need.
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Last month, we reported that Tesla disclosed that it was fighting 4 different lawsuits from stockholders over the SolarCity merger alleging breached of fiduciary duties in connection with the proposed merger . We now learn that the number has gone up to 7 lawsuits against Tesla CEO Elon Musk ahead of a scheduled court hearing to consolidate the actions on October 14th.
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In a surprising follow-up after his announcement that Tesla will hold a product unveiling next week on the 17th, CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla nor SolarCity will need to raise equity or debt before the end of the year, and “probably not in Q1 2017 either”.
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Tesla generally releases its third quarter financial results during the first week of November, but today the company announced that they will release their Q3 2016 financial results on Wednesday, October 26, just two days before the big event currently planned for October 28.
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Tesla’s (TSLA) stock took a hit in pre-market trading this morning following a note from Goldman Sachs’ top analyst Patrick Archambault (see update below) downgrading Tesla to ‘Neutral’ and significantly cutting his price target from $240 to $185 due to what he sees as an “increased risk premium”.
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Tesla announced its delivery numbers today for the third quarter 2016 and confirmed that it delivered a record-breaking number of vehicles: 24,500. The company maintained its guidance of 50,000 vehicles for the second half of 2016 – meaning that it hopes to deliver roughly the same number of vehicles in the last 3 months of the year.
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Tesla announced that it added a new C-level officer role to its executive team by creating a Chief Accounting Officer position at the company and hiring SunPower’s Senior Vice President Corporate Controller and Chief Accounting Officer, Eric Branderiz, for the role.

He will be joining Jason Wheeler, Tesla’s Chief Finance Officer, as the automaker’s top executives in finance.
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In an updated SEC filing this morning, Tesla (TSLA) disclosed that it is fighting 4 different lawsuits filed by stockholders between September 1, 2016 and September 14, 2016, over the SolarCity (SCTY) merger. The procedures could potentially delay the deal by pushing the date for a vote on the merger.
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SolarCity (SCTY) announced today that it managed to close $305 million in cash equity financing from Quantum Strategic Partners advised by Soros Fund Management. The deal was reportedly more difficult to close ahead of the merger with Tesla (TLSA).
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After market close today, Tesla (TSLA) announced that it secured a loan of up to $300 million with Deutsche Bank for its direct lease program. The company disclosed that the deal “significantly reduced” its cash requirements for its direct leasing program and therefore, it could reduce the amount of capital the company was planning to raise on the public market.
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Last week, we reported on comments made by Elon Musk in a company-wide email obtained by Bloomberg. The publication had only published excerpts from the memo at the time, but now that we have the full email, we learn that Elon Musk actually thinks that Tesla could be GAAP profitable in the current quarter – something the company hasn’t achieved in over 3 years.

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Since he has been seen traveling the world while wearing his Tesla gear (pictured above), you might know that famed actor Morgan Freeman is a longtime Tesla owner, but now we learn that he is also a Tesla (TSLA) investor and a big supporter of CEO Elon Musk.
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After publishing its second quarter 2016 financial results last month, Tesla said that it plans to deliver about 50,000 vehicles during the second half the year to bring the total to 80,000 vehicles. The volume will generate a lot of cash flow for the company and now CEO Elon Musk says that it could be enough to be profitable during the third quarter, which will end by the end of the month.
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At the end of last quarter, Tesla had a bigger cash position than ever before with $3.25 billion in principal sources of liquidity – thanks to its recent $1.7 billion stock offering, which was announced to finance the expansion of Tesla’s manufacturing effort for the Model 3 following the increased demand.

Now it looks like Tesla will need more money to finance its ambitious plans. Today, Tesla confirmed that its is currently planning another round of financing.
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Since SolarCity’s board of directors accepted Tesla’s $2.6 billion acquisition offer earlier this month, the companies have been in a 45-day ‘go shop’ period ending on September 14, 2016. The deal is still contingent on regulatory approvals and a shareholders vote.
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Earlier this month, SolarCity’s board of directors accepted Tesla’s $2.6 billion acquisition offer.  The deal is still subject to SEC review, but otherwise, the agreement will be brought to a Shareholders vote at some point after September 14, 2016 and if all goes well, the merger should close during the fourth quarter.

Now SolarCity announced some restructuring ahead of the Tesla merger. The company will have layoffs and the co-founders, CEO Lyndon Rive and CTO Peter Rive, are giving up their salaries.
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Several top institutional holders increased their stake in Tesla (TSLA) over the last quarter, which is particularly significant ahead of the Tesla-SolarCity merger vote. Interestingly, one of the biggest holders of both companies, Fidelity, divested from SolarCity (SCTY) during the second quarter, but increased its stake in Tesla by 25 percent to 20.36 million shares worth $4.4 billion.
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What is Tesla’s core technology advantage over competitors? Does it even have one? Those are questions that often come up when discussing Tesla’s lead in the electric vehicle sector. Since Tesla open-sourced its patents, some suggested that its technology advantage is virtually nonexistent since competitors could simply use it, but it’s not as simple.

While Tesla’s patents are indeed opened for use in electric vehicles as per its ‘patent pledge’, Tesla is still keeping some trade secrets and the company is fairly secretive about some of its development and manufacturing processes, especially when it comes to batteries, which could very well be Tesla’s core technology advantage led by its co-founder and CTO, JB Straubel.
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Tesla released its second quarter 2016 financial results today after market close. The automaker missed on expectations for earnings, but beat slightly on revenue. Wall Street’s revenue consensus was $1.533 billion and Tesla generated $1.6 billion in NON-GAAP revenue, while the earnings consensus was a loss of $0.53 per share for the quarter, but Tesla actually lost $1.06 per basic share .
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