Elon Musk says Tesla's stock price is too high ... welp, NOT ANY MORE Elon Musk's mouth has cost him a pretty penny after he told the press that he thinks his electric car company is a tad overvalued at the moment. "I think our stock price is kind of high right now," Musk told CNBC. "If you care about the long term, Tesla, I think the stock is a good price. If you look at the short term, it is …
Ah good, so it's not just me then.
"Hi, I'm Mr Rich B'stard and I'm going to build a factory to make widgets to make me an even richer bastard. Trouble is, all my money is invested off-shore and I'd really like it if some state or country would build it for me so a local politician can win an election on the back of my wealth job creation scheme. Ok, let's start the bidding now, do a hear a billion?"
Indeed, shock horror, risk-venture CEO is honest with his investors. If their response was to shit themselves and bail out that says all we need to know about the modern stock-market. In addition to the amazing advantages of the "Anglo-American" model of modern capitalism.
"net zero energy" facility, / discounted energy supplies from Nevada for the next eight years. ????
You mean he will get to sell the unreliable occasional solar electricity for 4-5x the regular price as a feed-in tariff subsidized by the same regular customers who will be paying for the free 24x7 reliable supply he is getting from the state?
My definition of blue chip is a large cap company that has survived several long business cycles and which pays dividends. I still see Tesla as a start-up company. That's not to say that you won't make money by buying the stock, but I would question the judgement of any financial analyst that described it as Blue Chip at this point. In my opinion it is still far from a sure thing that the company's profits will grow to meet their valuation in the stock market. Let me tell you about my Nortel "investment" some years back! <groan>
His net worth is reduced but he hasn't actually lost any money unless he _sells_ the stock right now at the suddenly and slightly reduced price. Which would be pretty daft, hypothetically. And the _intention_ of telling people that it's slightly overpriced is for them to sell it. When it's convenient to do so, that is, and not some massive horrible bubble burst. In short; all perfectly fine and frankly more fine than anyone else on the stock market.
In the US, each Tesla is subsidized $50,000, in Norway its $130,000 subsidy!
I guess the only way he can pull this off is if the governments of the world don't wake up and pull out the rug, while in the meantime his infrastructure plans execute perfectly.
http://insideevs.com/tax-exemptions-in-norway-cut-tesla-model-s-price-in-half/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmichaels/2013/05/27/if-tesla-would-stop-selling-cars-wed-all-save-some-money/
"In the US, each Tesla is subsidized $50,000, in Norway its $130,000 subsidy!"
Governments are subsidising electric cars to encourage people to use them. Once the market hits criticality the subsidies will stop.
Shell we discuss the hidden subsidies for road transport in most countries? (HGVs cost their operators a lot less to run than the damage they cause to roads). The electric car subsidy is paid once. HGV subsidies are ongoing.
In the meantime governments from individual states to the fed are scrambling to cover the costs of road maintenance as fuel tax revenues drop from electric, hybrid and simply higher efficiency automobiles. That's the problem with subsidies, it doesn't become obvious until it's obviously not working. It doesn't matter if it's roads, butter or sugar, subsidies are the wrong answer to any problem.
That's not a subsidy problem. That's a pricing problem. If you try to price road use using a measure that's only tenuously linked to road use you're just asking for trouble. Fuel taxes are used because they're easy, not because they're fair or accurate. To overcome this supposedly big problem some places have added extra fees for PEVs. Fixed fees of course, because, you know, people have to pay their fair share. (Never mind that they wouldn't dare consider having everybody pay a fixed fee.)
Tesla shares in the market are worth $17 each to Musk - that's what he got for the ones he sold off. Any money changing hands for them after that point doesn't come back to Tesla, so as far as he's concerned they _are_ vastly overpriced.
Shares are worth precisely zero to their holders sold. Until that point they're a piece of paper with a supposed value, but with no backing other than the confidence of the market. Any other point of view is a gambler's wishful thinking.
Surely that would only be true if Musk no longer held any shares, and if he no longer held any shares its doubtful that Musk would be in charge.
I understand that he gets nothing from the shares he already sold, but the ones he kept have gone up in value nicely and more than offset what he originally sold.
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