Tesla had another quarterly earnings call yesterday and the stock gained 6 per cent.
The market is now willing to pay $347.86 for the Tesla stock. This seems to be ludicrous and comes with a lot of hype around the brand.
Now, the reason why I keep on writing about the company is that I believe that the internal combustion engine is dead and that Tesla is going eat the lunch of all the other car companies around the world. Having said that, the company has a lot of government loans which makes it very difficult to turn around the current situation.
The company has not made a profit for a single year in which they have been operating
This quarter, which ended on June 30, 2017, Tesla lost another $2.04. They are now up for a loss of at least $8 for the whole of 2017.
I do like Elon Musk, but the Tesla stock is not for me.
Tesla, Inc. is in the business of manufacturing and selling electric vehicles, solar panels and energy storage solutions in the United States. It is based in Palo Alto, California.
Since we last visited with Tesla on February 23, 2017, the stock has advanced another $100 and now sits at $361.61.
Now, there are obviously reasons for this price – bullish analysts tend to focus on the future for electric vehicles and that the potential market for EV:s is immense – but if you are looking at the current value that you are getting for those $362, it is not much at all.
In fact, I would say that you getting nothing at all.
The company has a Debt to equity ratio of 2.83 which is exceedingly high.
I would not touch such a risky asset even with a ten foot pole.
Having said that, Tesla’s Working capital is $434 million which seems reasonable but the ratio between the Working capital and the Operating expenses is only 0.2 which is very risky.
What it means is that the company needs to raise cash sometime during the year.
Tesla does not have a positive Free cash flow and it goes without saying that it does not pay any dividend.
There may be a great future ahead of Tesla, but the stock is not for me.
The reason for this is that I’ve recently been watching a Youtube channel called Now You Know that show a lot of news about Tesla Motors.
So I thought that I should look into the hype and see for myself if there was anything to it.
What I did was that I went to Tesla’s website and I downloaded their financial reports.
The numbers are shocking.
Tesla has been in business for almost ten years and in none of those they have made any money.
Granted, the loss last year was less than the year before, but still the second largest loss out of these ten years.
Looking at the balance sheet it’s very much the same story.
Its total debt is a staggering 16.8 billion dollars and the free cash flow is a negative 1.4 billion.
No wonder that the stock is losing more than 5 percent as I write this.
Who in their right mind would want to invest in something like that?
It’s clear that if you buy Tesla stock you hope that the earnings will materialize in the future.
At $259 those hopes are very expensive.
Elon Musk may be an excellent visionary, but his abilities as a CEO of Tesla Motors are not as good.