The Tesla bears have been saying it for months.
Elon Musk is guzzling cash to fuel his burgeoning transportation empire, and he's going to need new sources for that cash sooner rather than later.
So for them, there's one sentence in Tesla's second-quarter earnings letter that served as a small form of vindication (emphasis added):
"We anticipate that direct leasing will rise from 8% of deliveries in Q2 to about 15% of deliveries in Q3, as we have reached our funding limit with a banking partner. We anticipate adding new partners that will allow us to fund our planned growth in the future. We recognize revenue on directly leased deliveries as cash is received over the lease term of typically three years, on both a GAAP and non-GAAP basis."
This is what the shorts believe will be the end of Tesla: that it will run out of funding for its incredibly ambitious plans, like completing its massive Gigafactory or, you know, self-driving public transportation — see: Musk's Master Plan Part 2.
This goes for all the parts of its business. Funding leases is just one part and we should note that Tesla has $3.25 billion in cash.
Now, none of this is to say that Tesla won't find more funding. It is, however, to say that the company is burning a lot of cash. In his its quest to make Tesla a vertically integrated transportation company, Musk picked up SolarCity, the flailing solar-energy firm he cofounded with his cousin, just this week. SolarCity will add another $650 million bill per quarter on top of what Tesla already spends per quarter.
But Tesla spends quite a lot, about $700 million a quarter since it ramped up the Model 3's production.
Anyway, anyone want to loan Elon some money?
