Tesla Misses Goals, Musk Makes More Promises

Bloomberg reports Tesla Eases Cash Concerns With Promise of Model 3 Progress.

The company led by Elon Musk built 2,020 Model 3 cars in the last seven days, trailing its target for a 2,500-unit rate for the final week of March. Tesla delivered 8,180 of the sedans in the first three months of the year, missing analysts’ average estimate for about 8,800 units in a Bloomberg News survey.

Despite the shortfall, Musk promised a speedy acceleration in the next three months. Tesla shares opened up as much as 6.9 percent and rose 3.6 percent to $261.53 as of 10:52 a.m., regaining some ground after a 22 percent slump in March.

Mounting liquidity pressures and challenges with Model 3 production prompted Moody’s Investors Service last week to cut the carmaker’s credit rating further into junk status, adding fuel to a selloff of the company’s bonds to all-time lows.

Heading into the production results, analysts at Jefferies Group LLC and Moody’s had estimated that Tesla may need to raise $2 billion to $3 billion in capital to continue to ramp up Model 3 output. The carmaker said Tuesday it won’t “require an equity or debt raise this year, apart from standard credit lines.”

A Tesla executive urged line workers at the company’s sole auto-assembly plant in Fremont, California, to safely ramp up Model 3 output to more than 300 a day and “prove a bunch of haters wrong.” Musk said on Twitter Monday he was sleeping at the factory and called the car business “hell.”

Questions

1. Should one believe Moody’s or Musk?
2. Does Musk sleeping at the factory raise production?
3. Does TSLA finish the day in the red?

We will have the answer on question number three shortly.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock

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