According to CNBC, Tesla is going to try and raise the money via convertible notes and new equity. $1.35 billion would come from convertible notes and $650 million from new equity.
Tesla is looking for investors and one of them is said to be company CEO Elon Musk. Musk has offered to buy around $10 million worth of stock, which is of course a drop in the bucket for both the entirety of the investment round, or Musk's 20% stake in the company worth over $12.5 billion.
Tesla has been burning through their cash deposits in a remarkable pace for couple years. Musk said in the quarterly conference call to shareholders that raising money is not a fix, but instead the company needs to be more efficient.
I don't think raising capital should be a substitute for making the company operate more effectively. I do think there is some merit to raising capital, but this is sort of probably about the right timing.
Elon Musk, Tesla CEO
However, Tesla has been notoriously inefficient in terms of revenue per employee. In 2018, according to Bloomberg, it was comparable to a mass employing giant like Amazon, not car manufacturers like GM and definitely not tech companies like Apple or Netflix.
Written by: Matti Robinson @ 2 May 2019 13:09
