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by kreetx 2529 days ago
I seriously doubt this. Writing a tweet doesn't take much time, and it is probably fun to him to irritate the opposing forces.

For profits, I think it's pretty obvious that both Tesla and SpaceX will start making a profit quite soon, and will probably make a lot of it in the long term. (Maybe they are making a profit even now? Sorry, don't know, I'm just a random developer...)
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unityByFreedom 2529 days ago
> (Maybe they are making a profit even now? Sorry, don't know, I'm just a random developer...)

SpaceX is private, so its books are closed and there is no publicly reviewable valuation.

Tesla is public and has had < 5 profitable quarters in its existence. None of Elon's existing companies have been able to turn a profit. Paypal does not count as "his" since he joined there on an acquisition and he was only CEO there for a few months before getting the boot.

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kreetx 2529 days ago
You can't be serious? It's not like Tesla is a bakery where on the 6th month the bread sales pay off the one-time asset purchases (e.g oven and other equipment) and then it's all profit down the line. It takes time, especially on the scale Elon appears to be doing it.
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unityByFreedom 2528 days ago
I'm serious. Before Elon took over, they were profitable selling high performance vehicles [1],

They didn't need to become huge right away, that was his gamble, and it remains to be seen if that will pay off.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/TxDbHX7.jpg

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xiphias2 2529 days ago
It doesn’t take time to get profitable, all it would take is to stop putting billions of dollars into building new factories. The problem is that stopping growth would never bring humanity closer to sustainable transport (nor would it make sensible investors happy)
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kreetx 2528 days ago
Yeah.. My argument perhaps wasn't put in the best way, and yes, Tesla is growth-heavy, and probably could have been profitable already if they would have wanted to.

With what I said was more aimed at the argument that building electric vehicles isn't a straightforward business where there is nothing to innovate and the purpose is just to get profitable as quickly as possible. But yes, as you say, they invest it all back.

I wonder if the negative side in the whole argument would just like the profits and stock go up as fast as possible, and that is the reason for unhappynes?

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AndrewBissell 2528 days ago
Reinvestment of profits into PP&E doesn't affect the bottom line on the net income statement. That's not what Tesla is doing. They're printing losses (aside from one-off "miracle quarters" where they skim high margin backlogs) and then filling the gaps with newly raised capital.
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windexh8er 2529 days ago
> It doesn’t take time to get profitable, all it would take is to stop putting billions of dollars into building new factories.

Are you serious? I can throw a rock at any newly minted tech IPO in the last year and almost guarantee that it's not even remotely close to being in the black without even hearing the name.

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unityByFreedom 2528 days ago
Tesla isn't a newly minted tech IPO. They're just riding the wave of an economy with good lending rates.
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