Boxster Coupe GTS:

Ageed that where the Tesla stock price trades is largely irrelevant to Rennteam members, assuming there is still a company producing the same electric cars and providing customer servicing, updates, etc in 5 or 10 years time.

BUT... if the company goes through a financial restructuring that exchanges debt holdings (e.g. high yield bonds that have recently been downgraded to Caa1) into a new class of equity (i.e. with previous shareholders wiped out) there is a risk to any customers that have provided an unsecured deposit to Tesla Inc to secure an order for a future vehicle.

To put that into context, at the end of 2017, Tesla Inc had $853 million of Customer Deposits listed as Current Liabilities on the Balance Sheet.

This would include the $250,000 founder deposits that some customers have provided for the Tesla Roadster.

To put it bluntly, given the current underperformance of Tesla as a credit (e.g. check where Tesla bonds have been trading) there is a risk of a financial restructuring where customers lose their depositSmiley

As an aside, it is worth keeping in mind that Tesla cannot raise unsecured debt finance in the global credit markets at this point. So why should loyal Tesla customers accept this risk? Smiley

Given the extensive discussions that have taken place on Rennteam, I sincerely hope that no Rennteam members are ever in a position to lose their (unsecured) deposit on a future Tesla, whether that's the Roadster, a Truck, or any other model... Smiley

Even if you have 100% faith in every word that Elon Musk says, have a look at what he is telling employees about focusing on all cost items, expenditure, capex, etc. The company is running out of liquidity unless they raise new equity capital in 2018.

At this point, the ability to become profitable and cashflow positive in Q3 2018 is heavily reliant on the success of Tesla Model 3 production volumes and margins. The risk to achieving volume targets is well flagged and even acknowledge by Elon Musk. The market is now also focusing on the risk to gross margins following the admission tbat Tesla needs a lot more employees and less automation to become a volume car manfucturer.

Caveat emptor! Smiley

 

No one is forcing anyone to give deposits and they are completely refundable as far as I know. The average person has a better chance of losing $2000 in the SP500 than from bankruptcy of Tesla.

Even if Tesla did go into bankruptcy, the acquiring company would have to honor the deposits otherwise they would be acquiring a brand with no orders since all burned customers would tell them to fuck off and cancel. It would destroy the brand value. And I think we can all agree that Tesla's brand is worth a lot of money, so bidders would simply calculate the cost of deposits into their bid. It's not even that much. $1B is peanuts for anyone looking to acquire Tesla. Toyota makes that in less than a month.