Unfortunately, Elon Musk’s “funding secured” comment last week was not as secure as previously hoped.
Clean Up
Now the board has selected a special committee which, for one protects Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA ) from any more Musk tweets about going private. The Tesla press release today said, “no Going Private Transaction will be consummated without the approval of the special committee.” That protects the company from future tweets.
It looks like today’s company release poses as clean up to avoid this situation getting any worse as a legal liability.
$420 Too Cheap
Our Hope is that there is no deal. $420 is peanuts compared to our price target of nicely over $1000.The Street’s at $2.89 for 2019 earnings per share. We’re now at over $20.00 per share after going form GAAP to non-GAAP to align with the Street estimates who are all at non-GAAP.
Not As Secured
After seeing Elon Musk’s blog post yesterday it appeared his funding was not as secured as he originally stated. We wrote in chat yesterday morning there was a risk to the shares.
Will Other Investors Allow $420
There are now many potential buyers named; a new one each day. But this only springing last week on Board members, a decision process could take time. $420 seems incredibly low especially if it forces out non-accredited investors. We’d guess the board is looking into that so to avoid any further legal risks.
If there are final bidders agreed by Musk and the special committee then you have to wonder if other investors or private equity people looked through the Tesla numbers. Did they notice the jump in gross margins in Q2? Did they run the math what that means for Q3. If they did we’d think they can get EPS numbers closer to our $20.00+ than the Street’s $2.00+ for next year.
Did they do the math? We think they did and who isn’t interested in capturing that differential. We’d guess that’s the driving force in Musk’s desire to go private, not the shorts. We’d guess the 10X EPS upside that’s around the corner is why he’s so antsy to take this company back at a 20% premium. Can that happen? Being a public stock, a public market, we’d guess others come in.
