“They’re going to have to spend an enormous amount of money on capital expenditures to achieve their long-term goals and they don’t have the money because they don’t have the earnings,” Thompson said. “So they’re going to have to sell stock to finance it.” Telsa has taken in 400,000 preorder deposits of $1000 each for their sedan, to be produced around 2018. They are sitting on 400 million dollars of liquid cash to spend on production without selling a single piece of stock or taking out any loans. I mean, sorry, yeah sure go ahead and short Telsa stock. You sound like you know what you’re doing. Ah the stupidity of accounting analysts. Earnings =/= cash flow, and I’m glad you covered it. In fact, you can book earnings any time you want. GM books them when they sell the cars to DEALERS. No way that can be abused… Do you know the difference between cash in hand and deferred earnings? They have $400M in CASH MONEY. GM wish it could have $400M in pre-orders for its Volt… Wow, a growing company in a disruptive space has a stock price that is higher multiples of earnings than a hundred-year-old company that almost went deservedly bankrupt after several decades of making shiatty, gas-guzzling cars. I’m surprised. This is my surprised face. Expanding on myself a little, here’s why I think the people forking over those down payments to Tesla are idiots. What exactly are you getting in return to your interest-free loan to Tesla? They’ll roll out the car when they roll out the car. Go and buy it then. I wouldn’t put down a down payment two years in advance for a car any more than I would for an iPhone. They’ll be available when they’re available and there’s no earthly reason for me to advance the company the cash. Those earnings you see are not earnings.