DealBook: Bid for Cash by Tesla Motors Is Likely to Energize Company and Critics Alike

Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla's chief designer, showing the company's Model X at the North American Auto Show in January.Larry W. Smith/European Pressphoto AgencyFranz von Holzhausen, Tesla’s chief designer, showing the company’s Model X at the North American Auto Show in January.

Tesla Motors announced plans on Wednesday to tap the markets for more cash, a move that will buy it time to meet its ambitious goals but will also fuel debate over its prospects.

Tesla, the maker of electric cars founded and led by the entrepreneur Elon Musk, said it hoped to raise approximately $830 million by selling new shares and debtlike securities. The company said that Mr. Musk personally planned to buy $100 million of shares in the offering.

The plans could raise questions about the company’s ability to generate cash flows from its operations. Last week in an investor conference call, Mr. Musk played down the notion that Tesla would soon tap the public markets to raise new money. “We don’t have any plans right now to raise funding,” he said.

Tesla’s main product, a luxury sedan called the Model S, was the subject of New York Times articles this year involving a test drive of the car and its charging capacity. Mr. Musk has repeatedly challenged the articles, saying they were unfair.

Since then, however, Tesla has generated a stream of positive headlines, including a glowing review this month for the Model S from Consumer Reports.

The financing announced on Wednesday could prove a pivotal development in the intense debate over Tesla’s future.

The company’s shares have risen by 150 percent this year as more investors have started to express belief that the company will make electric vehicles that people will flock to buy because they perform as well as gasoline cars.

Other investors, however, remain unconvinced. They have bet against Tesla’s shares, saying they believe there is not much of a market for its cars beyond a small group of enthusiasts. These skeptics say they think that excitement has evolved into a stock mania. Tesla’s market value, nearly $10 billion, now exceeds that of Fiat. But the investors who placed those skeptical bets, called short-sellers in stock-market parlance, have suffered heavy losses as Tesla shares have soared. In fact, because of the paradoxical dynamics of short-selling, when these investors unwind their negative Tesla bets, they help force the company’s shares even higher. That phenomenon partly explains why Tesla’s stock is up 50 percent in just the last five days.

“Right now, Tesla is a story stock,” said Carter W. Driscoll, who analyzes clean-technology companies for Ascendiant CapitalMarkets. “Let’s be realistic here, they’ve only produced a quarter’s worth of vehicles.”

For investors betting against the shares, that skepticism will have been particularly painful in recent days. For Tesla, though, the meteoric spike in its shares presents an attractive opportunity to raise money without hurting existing shareholders too much.

“You have to give them kudos for their timing,” Mr. Driscoll said.

The company will take in the money in two ways: it will offer new shares on the public markets to investors; and it will raise $450 million from the debtlike securities, which the company will have to pay back in 2018. The company expects to price the offerings after the close of regular trading on Thursday, according to Sarah Meron, a Tesla spokeswoman.

The company said some of the money would be used to pay down a big federal loan that helped it set up production facilities for the Model S.

Critics of the Obama administration’s clean-energy financing program have focused on the Tesla loan. In last year’s presidential campaign, Mitt Romney included Tesla in group of companies he called “losers.”

The company has about $440 million outstanding on the loan, which was made by the Energy Department. Ms. Meron declined to say when the company would pay off the loan.

The cash from the offering of stock and securities will give Tesla an important cushion to fall back on if its young operations stutter. During the investor call last week, Mr. Musk did say the company might tap markets to protect itself against “some sort of risk event.”

While buying time for Tesla, the decision to raise cash could also end up emboldening critics who said they believed that Tesla was going to experience weak cash flows from its operations this year. In the investor call last week, Tesla executives did not project that cash flows would be positive in the second quarter. They also suggested a decline was possible in North American sales as the year progresses.

The company has also stopped giving out the number of reservations in place for its cars, a metric that investors had previously found useful for assessing future demand.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 18, 2013

An article on Thursday about Tesla Motors’ plans to tap the markets for more cash misstated, at one point, the way in which the company plans to raise the money. As the article correctly noted elsewhere, the company will sell new shares and debtlike securities; it will not raise new money from another Energy Department loan.


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Wheels: Wheelies: The Joint-Venture Edition

Akio Toyoda, left, the president of Toyota, shaking hands with Norbert Reithofer, the BMW chairman, after they announced a partnership in January.Toyota/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Akio Toyoda, left, the president of Toyota, shaking hands with Norbert Reithofer, the BMW chairman, after they announced a partnership in January.

In which we bring you motoring news from around the Web:

• Something is brewing between Toyota and BMW, in the form of a four-part joint venture aimed at using lightweight materials, fuel-cell technology and batteries to bolster vehicle efficiency. The companies announced their intentions to collaborate in January, but had apparently come closer to agreeing upon what they would like to do with their pooled resources. Motor Trend reported that a joint concept vehicle might be unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show this year. At this point, what that vehicle will be is pure speculation, but Motor Trend surmises that it may be a hybrid sports car. Whatever it is, Toyota and BMW have already engaged in feasibility studies, all very hush hush. (Motor Trend)

• Three former Saab executives have been arrested by Swedish authorities for fraud and tax evasion. Although Olof Sahlgren, a Swedish prosecutor, would not name the executives, he said that they had been accused of falsifying the company’s financial records from 2010 to 2011. Skypker, the automaker, had bought Saab from General Motors in 2010, filing for bankruptcy in December 2011. It is now owned by a consortium of Chinese and Japanese investors who plan to build electric cars under the Saab brand. The three Spyker-era executives face four years behind bars if convicted. (The Boston Globe)

• Don’t expect to see too many Renaults for sale in America soon, but if there were a dealership in the neighborhood, the driving enthusiast might consider taking the new Renault Mégane RB8 for a spin. Production of the hot hatch, the styling of which was inspired by Renault’s Formula One partnership with Red Bull Racing, will be limited. Mechanically, the RB8 is the same as the Mégane 265 Cup, sporting a 265-horsepower, 2-liter 4-cylinder engine. But it will have 19-inch wheels, Recaro seats and a few other goodies the other car does not have. But again, we will have to watch the fun unfold from afar on this side of the Atlantic. (Piston Heads)

• Sergio Marchionne, Chrysler and Fiat’s Italian chief executive, came under fire from an Italian-American anti-bias advocacy group in New Jersey for comments he made at the Detroit auto show in January. He had told reporters there that if a new Alfa Romeo model was sold in the United States, it needed to have a “wop” engine. Although putting an Italian-designed engine in an Italian car may sound fine to most, using the word “wop,” a pejorative for Italian-American, attracted the attention of the the Italian-American One Voice Coalition, which pursued Mr. Marchionne until he issued a public apology for the slur. (The Detroit Free Press)

• A 20-year-old woman was killed Saturday when a Jeep demonstration in Edmonton, Alberta, went awry. Two Jeeps were parked in such a way that one Jeep had its front tire on top of the front tire of the other Jeep, ostensibly to show off the S.U.V.’s climbing prowess. When the top Jeep’s driver got out to pose for pictures, his vehicle moved forward, rolling to its side. A young woman standing nearby was knocked down by the tumbling Jeep and later pronounced dead at the hospital. (CTV News)

• Audi is now India’s top luxury brand, having outstripped BMW of the title. Sales of BMW and Mercedes-Benz cars in India fell by 9.5 and 5.4 percent, respectively, while Audi sales there rose by 43 percent over the last year – a total of 9,350 vehicles. Audi said it owed its success to focusing outside of the city centers typically aimed at by top carmakers in India. The automaker expanded its sales outside urban areas. S.U.V.’s are the company’s primary focus in the country, particularly in smaller cities that tend to have more rough roads. (Automotive News Europe)


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