On ‎1‎/‎9‎/‎2020 at 1:15 PM, Gramarye said:

 

I sold a lot of my position in the $350 range around a year ago.  It crashed to below $275 and I sold more.  It crashed to below $200 and I felt so smart for having gotten out on the front wave of momentum investors deserting the stock.

 

Yes, I'm an idiot.

 

Then again, considering the volatility there, maybe I'll be able to buy back in below $300 sometime this year.  Or it'll go to $600, split, go back to $600, split again, and I'll be cringing every time I think of when I sold out. ?

 

We're, amazingly, almost at $600 in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS FROM THIS POST.

Apple is such a beast, it's not even funny. Aramco and two trillion are on the radar now.

27 minutes ago, TBideon said:

Apple is such a beast, it's not even funny. Aramco and two trillion are on the radar now.

 

The year was 1998. I bought an iMac DV for a film project and just immediately loved the damn thing. I told my cyberlaw professor I was thinking of taking my student loan money and investing in Apple stock. Despite being a hugest Mac Guy ever, he said it wouldn't be wise, because at that time Apple versions of important software were always coming out months later than the windows version. He said he had finally broken down, just bought a Dell and predicted Mac's would soon be obsolete. 

 

The way I see it, Professor Brand T. Lee owes me a freaking yacht. 

 

edit - if someone wants to ruin my day and run the numbers, the amount of the student loan was $17,500. 

Edited January 29, 20205 yr by surfohio
curiosity

36 minutes ago, surfohio said:

 

The year was 1998. I bought an iMac DV for a film project and just immediately loved the damn thing. I told my cyberlaw professor I was thinking of taking my student loan money and investing in Apple stock. Despite being a hugest Mac Guy ever, he said it wouldn't be wise, because at that time Apple versions of important software were always coming out months later than the windows version. He said he had finally broken down, just bought a Dell and predicted Mac's would soon be obsolete. 

 

The way I see it, Professor Brand T. Lee owes me a freaking yacht. 

 

edit - if someone wants to ruin my day and run the numbers, the amount of the student loan was $17,500. 

 

Depends on when in 1998 you bought.

 

AAPL grew enormously in 1998, from a split-adjusted $0.58 on 1/2/98 (markets are closed 1/1) to $1.46 on 12/31/98.

 

It opened today at $324.45.

 

So if you'd bought on 1/2/98, you could have gotten 30,172 shares, currently worth $9,789,439.66.

 

If you'd waited until 12/31, you'd have only gotten 11,986 shares, and you'd be sitting on a much more modest $3,888,857.70.

 

This is of course assuming no dividend reinvestment ... Apple started paying dividends in 2012 ... but the dividend has never been huge (per share--grand total it's the largest in the world, I think), so reinvesting it might have only added to this pot by, oh, maybe another few hundred thousand at most ... or of course you could keep the dividends to live on, since even at the minimum 11,986 shares, the payout would be $9,229.22/quarter ($36,916.88/yr, or basically the equivalent of getting double your student loan back every year in dividend payments alone ...)

 

I guess I'll stop there ... why is there a dead horse next to me and why do I have this bludgeon in my hand?

It goes to show how important casual users are to most companies and how the "core" people are too hard to please, few in number, and often poorly funded. 

24 minutes ago, Gramarye said:

 

Depends on when in 1998 you bought.

 

A lot of the early Apple Store employees were offered 1,000 shares for staying for a year back in 2002 and 2003.  Most sold pretty quickly but I have heard of a few that held and even some who were still working at the same Apple Store in 2012 or 2013, well after those guys were sitting on over $1 million.  Last I heard Apple Store employees were getting 3 shares per year.  

I never hopped on the amazon/apple/google bandwagons, but I am ecstatic at MSFT's performance. I bought at 44, sold half around 75, it went up and then back down to about 75, and I re-bought. Now it's at 172.

 

A lot of that is from their cloud division (Azure). Right now the cloud industry is like: Amazon > Microsoft >>> Google > IBM > the rest.

 

I work with AWS daily and quite frankly it feels like it's taking over the software world. I was not confident enough to pull the trigger on AMZN because they were not profiting from retail, but I guess between their retail growth + AWS's success that means super high valuations.

On ‎1‎/‎22‎/‎2020 at 11:47 AM, DarkandStormy said:

We're, amazingly, almost at $600 in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS FROM THIS POST.

 

TSLA is up near $650 now, mostly on Q4 earnings.  YoY things weren't that great, but with this stock it's turning into a cult where facts don't seem to matter.  If I had any play money / was less risk averse I'd be thinking about buying some puts.  The company had a tiny net income on $7+ bn in revenue Q4 (margins were something like 4.9%) and the stock still popped.

Put action on TSLA is insane because of the polarized opinions on the stock.  A $650 put in May costs about $77 right now, meaning the stock would have to drop below $573 by May 15 just for you to break even (losses beyond that would be to your benefit).

 

On the other hand, a call option for the same period is also about $75, meaning the stock would have to go up to about $725 before you'd break even in May (gains beyond that would be to your benefit).

 

Of course, you could sell a strangle and pocket about $14,000 if TSLA stayed at its current level, between $630 and $650 (or returned to it) as of May 15.  But what are the odds of that happening, either?

 

Basically, no matter what you bet on TSLA's movements at this point, the odds are against you.  This is almost archetypical casino investing.

1 hour ago, Cavalier Attitude said:

I am ecstatic at MSFT's performance

 

I bought Microsoft in my high school stock market game back in 1994, but not in real life.

 

Two weeks ago I called the bank about getting qualified to buy a rental property.  The girl actually was pushing me to use a HELOC as a down payment rather than cash.  This was from notorious predatory lender Wells-Fargo.  With that sort of nonsense going on out there I'm getting a little worried that we're living in a 2005-type environment right now, even though the banks aren't quite as bad as they were back then.  

 

33 minutes ago, Gramarye said:

Put action on TSLA is insane because of the polarized opinions on the stock.  A $650 put in May costs about $77 right now, meaning the stock would have to drop below $573 by May 15 just for you to break even (losses beyond that would be to your benefit).

 

On the other hand, a call option for the same period is also about $75, meaning the stock would have to go up to about $725 before you'd break even in May (gains beyond that would be to your benefit).

 

Of course, you could sell a strangle and pocket about $14,000 if TSLA stayed at its current level, between $630 and $650 (or returned to it) as of May 15.  But what are the odds of that happening, either?

 

Basically, no matter what you bet on TSLA's movements at this point, the odds are against you.  This is almost archetypical casino investing.

 

I mean, yes, trading one stock alone is always incredibly risky.  And I don't have the risk appetite for it.  But for your 5/15 timeline, I'd look at, maybe a $500 put (costs about $20 right now).  They have said Q1 will be poor performance financially.  Add in GF3 is closed due to coronavirus and they're going to focusing on Model Y deliveries - new model launches always seem to come with headaches.  Plus, seasonally Q1 is historically difficult for automakers.  I could see a lot of declining QoQ and YoY numbers in their Q1 financials.  It's still incredibly expensive and risky just to buy a $500 put - a full 23% below their current share price and you'd need it to go below $480 to break even.

 

EDIT - as I said, it's becoming a cult stock anyway.  Either they go the way of AAPL pre-iPhone (the cultists are actually right) or it comes bounding back down to reality.  A $115bn market cap makes no sense on a company that's never had a profitable year.  $105m net income in Q4 on $7.4 bn in revenue is terrible.

 

Q4 doesn't even look good:

-Auto revenues up 1% YoY

-Total revenues up 2% YoY

-Operating margin: 4.9% (isn't good) and is DOWN 0.8% YoY / Similarly declining total GAAP gross margin

-GAAP Net Income: -25% YoY

-GAAP EPS: -28% YoY

Edited January 30, 20205 yr by DarkandStormy

53 minutes ago, jmecklenborg said:

 

I bought Microsoft in my high school stock market game back in 1994, but not in real life.

 

Two weeks ago I called the bank about getting qualified to buy a rental property.  The girl actually was pushing me to use a HELOC as a down payment rather than cash.  This was from notorious predatory lender Wells-Fargo.  With that sort of nonsense going on out there I'm getting a little worried that we're living in a 2005-type environment right now, even though the banks aren't quite as bad as they were back then.  

 

Surpised a guy like you would bank with a company like that.

21 minutes ago, jmblec2 said:

Surpised a guy like you would bank with a company like that.

 

I know.  I was awarded one of the $15,000 Wells-Fargo "Neighborhood Lift" down payment grants in 2015.  This program was part of their $400 million+ predatory lending settlement from 2011 or 2012.  We weren't legally required to get the mortgage through Wells-Fargo but it made it a lot easier.  We were required to remain in the house for 5 years (or else you had to pay back a prorated portion of the down payment grant).  So I was calling just to ask about the procedure to convert my mortgage from owner-occupied to rental property.  That's when all the HELOC chit-chat began.    

On 1/30/2020 at 12:01 PM, Gramarye said:

Put action on TSLA is insane because of the polarized opinions on the stock.  A $650 put in May costs about $77 right now, meaning the stock would have to drop below $573 by May 15 just for you to break even (losses beyond that would be to your benefit).

 

On the other hand, a call option for the same period is also about $75, meaning the stock would have to go up to about $725 before you'd break even in May (gains beyond that would be to your benefit).

 

Of course, you could sell a strangle and pocket about $14,000 if TSLA stayed at its current level, between $630 and $650 (or returned to it) as of May 15.  But what are the odds of that happening, either?

 

Basically, no matter what you bet on TSLA's movements at this point, the odds are against you.  This is almost archetypical casino investing.

 

One day, you will tell your kids you were long TSLA @ ~$200 lol  Btw, it's ~$900 premarket this morning.  Insane.

On 1/30/2020 at 12:01 PM, Gramarye said:

Put action on TSLA is insane because of the polarized opinions on the stock.  A $650 put in May costs about $77 right now, meaning the stock would have to drop below $573 by May 15 just for you to break even (losses beyond that would be to your benefit).

 

On the other hand, a call option for the same period is also about $75, meaning the stock would have to go up to about $725 before you'd break even in May (gains beyond that would be to your benefit).

 

Of course, you could sell a strangle and pocket about $14,000 if TSLA stayed at its current level, between $630 and $650 (or returned to it) as of May 15.  But what are the odds of that happening, either?

 

Basically, no matter what you bet on TSLA's movements at this point, the odds are against you.  This is almost archetypical casino investing.

 

Quoting myself to note that this was last Thursday.

 

TSLA opened at $882.96 today.  Its market cap of $140B is now within striking distance of the world's most valuable car company, Toyota, at $193B.  It is now by far the most valuable American car company.

 

Toyota has said it expects to post a full-year 2019 profit of $23B (https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Toyota-expects-2019-profit-surge-to-23bn).  Tesla posted a 4th-quarter profit of just over $0.3B, and lost money for FY2019 on $24B in revenue.

 

I'm wondering now if I should sell the rest of my position.  I'm up 1088% on my overall position and 1661% on my tiny little position from 2013.  This has to be a bubble, but the thing with bubbles is they can sometimes inflate a lot longer than people think--even when lots of people recognize it as a bubble--before they pop.

 

ETA: That said, if I were Tesla's CFO, I would be strongly considering an immediate capital raise.  Tesla has about $26B in long-term debts.  Not long ago, people were greatly concerned about that.  Now the company could clear almost the entirety of it by selling additional shares of less than one-fifth their current market capitalization.  Alternatively, if any other American car company gets in trouble, Tesla could acquire other old car factories (its existing facility was the old NUMMI plant) at liquidation for a comparative pittance at this point.

The TSLA trading is getting very Bitcoin/Enron-esque.

9 minutes ago, DarkandStormy said:

The TSLA trading is getting very Bitcoin/Enron-esque.

 

Lmao I was just thinking the same thing. 300% in 6 months with no apparent reason

1 hour ago, DarkandStormy said:

The TSLA trading is getting very Bitcoin/Enron-esque.

 

All because of a hype man with a Twitter account. 

People spent the '90s and 2000s whining that way too many people studied the humanities. Now nobody studies them so they don't know how to make a sales pitch or defend themselves against one.

If anything Tusk's tweets had only damaged his company and probably caused some SEC violations here and there, though I can't remember  any faux pax in a while. Guess silence is golden, Elon.

 

I asked my neighbor who works in finance what the hell is going on with Tesla. His response: "Short squeeze... short positions being forced to cover. That stock always attracts a lot of short interest and when a squeeze happens it becomes a runaway train." So there's neighbor Dan's explanation. The guy has good taste in cheap wine, so who am I to argue?

 

My non-finance explanation: an inordinate number of seasoned investors bet against Tesla (whoops), because they misread global (but predominantly American-based) interest and loyalty in GM and Ford.  Too many generations of bad cars, dreadful company and union leadership, and years of stagnated stock prices even after the bailouts. Meanwhile the Model 3 is in the ballpark of $35,000, which isn't too bad for a sexy new car. The company definitely has an Apple vibe (I'm sure Musk adores and tries to emulate Jobs), upon which investors and consumers want to latch, despite a marginally higher price vehicle. 

1 hour ago, GCrites80s said:

People spent the '90s and 2000s whining that way too many people studied the humanities. Now nobody studies them so they don't know how to make a sales pitch or defend themselves against one.

Perhaps it was the sales people that sold everyone on not taking humanities.  

Heh heh heh... their boss the Sales Manager doesn't like this, though, because now they can't find enough people

Tesla flirted with $1,000 today.  This is Bitcoin-like behavior that has no basis in reality. 

Quote

Tesla sold only 367,500 vehicles last year, compared with millions at GM, Ford or Fiat Chrysler. GM alone sold 7.7 million, 21 times more than Tesla.

 

12 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

Tesla sold only 367,500 vehicles last year, compared with millions at GM, Ford or Fiat Chrysler. GM alone sold 7.7 million, 21 times more than Tesla.

 

To be fair, most of the stock buys are for future performance.  Tesla has doubled in sales every two years.  Obviously, at some point, they won't be able to keep up that pace.  But the bet the bulls are making is that Tesla will continue to penetrate the market and hold ~17-20% of the EV market globally going forward, if not more.

Apple's computer marketshare is about 7 percent, yet the company is worth 1.4+ trillion dollars. Apples to oranges obviously, but it's clear a company doesn't need to dominate a market to still be an astronomic success.

No, people just have to like them. Boring companies that print money are bad investments. Give it sunglasses, a Mohawk and a skateboard and it can lose infinite money forever. That's how childish this all is.

My grandma is in some sort of old lady stock club.  A few years ago they all bought Dollar General.  It has tripled since 2017.  My guess is that few of Musk's leg humpers also bought Dollar General.  

 

People want a Tesla but need to go to Dollar General. 

The poster child for boring, money-printing stocks here in northeast Ohio has been boring old Sherwin-Williams.

 

That said, profit and volume are two very different things.  Even after the recent run-up, AAPL's P/E ratio is only 25.  It was in the low teens not so long ago.  Apple's products may not have majority market share against their lower-priced competitors, but they do have significant profit margins and people willing to keep paying those prices.

 

Stodgy old Microsoft has also had an excellent 12 months, almost as good as Apple's.  But MSFT's P/E ratio is actually higher at 31, even though people think of it as a boring old dividend stock at this point and Apple still as the one with the razzle-dazzle.

Dumb people on TV.  Macy's is down 75% in the same time Amazon is up 400%.  Yeah, but Amazon gets to operate at a massive loss and Wall St. doesn't care.  

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/macys-to-close125-stores-over-the-next-three-years/

 

Everyone with a modicum of non-emotionality has learned at some point in the past five years that Amazon profits mostly from its web services and it loses money on that stack of Amazon boxes in your apartment's lobby.  

 

 

 

Two people at work hit last night's Pik 4.  Hours of conversation has been wasted speculating on how that $400 is going to be spent.  

 

It's like, go work at a restaurant on the weekends.  It's like hitting the Pik 4.  

8 minutes ago, jmecklenborg said:

Two people at work hit last night's Pik 4.  Hours of conversation has been wasted speculating on how that $400 is going to be spent.  

 

It's like, go work at a restaurant on the weekends.  It's like hitting the Pik 4.  

 

Lol.  Sell a handful of things on eBay/Craigslist and it's easy to get this much money.

20 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

Dumb people on TV.  Macy's is down 75% in the same time Amazon is up 400%.  Yeah, but Amazon gets to operate at a massive loss and Wall St. doesn't care.  

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/macys-to-close125-stores-over-the-next-three-years/

 

Everyone with a modicum of non-emotionality has learned at some point in the past five years that Amazon profits mostly from its web services and it loses money on that stack of Amazon boxes in your apartment's lobby.  

 

I have a modicum of non-emotionality and a fairly large amount of AMZN stock (currently valued far in excess of my annual salary) that I've held since it was around $177 in 2011 (and I had earlier positions around $133).  You are simply empirically wrong on this.  Amazon has been a money-printing machine for more than a decade.  You need to learn more about financial statements before you make (or, more appropriately, retract and cease making) statements like this.

 

The critical fact for the Amazon investment thesis is that is absolutely staggering free cash flow with almost zero debt.  Almost all retailers have significant debt (revolvers to purchase inventory, term notes on brick-and-mortar facilities, etc.).  They've incurred more debt recently, deliberately, strategically, simply because of how cheap it is, but as of the end of 2016, they had $15B in long-term debt.  That was up to $63B at the end of 2019.  However, their sales also jumped from $136B in 2016 to $281B in 2019, and the gross profit on those goods sold was $130B.

 

In addition to not financing its enormous operation with debt, it does not do so with new equity diluting existing shareholders.  They have not done a new share offering in at least five years.

 

Their 2019 cash flow statement still showed $4B in total cash gain.  With zero new stock sales, zero new borrowing, $16.8B in capex, another $7.4B out the door in "other cash flow from investing activities," and another $10B out the door from "other financing activities" (e.g., paying off debt, buying back shares, etc.).

 

ETA: For all that, of course, AMZN didn't see the kind of gains in 2019 that AAPL, MSFT, and several other major tech firms did.  But its 5-year growth from around $350 to $2050 is nothing to sneeze at.

Don't care about gross profit. Net profit only. Revenue is nothing without net profit. We can't allow a webhosting company to destroy meatspace just because they have a retail division that exists merely so that they don't have to pay taxes on their webhosting profit. We all know how to read financial statements and we're better avoiding data mining bias than people who think Amazon is doing anything worthwhile.

 

It's SUPER easy to increase your sales when you underprice/overconvienece things -- the easiest thing in the world.

 

People who like Amazon can justify anything.

Apparently, so can people who hate Amazon.

 

What kind of word is "overconvenience," anyway?

 

If you think Amazon's financial statements actually show weakness, tell me where and how.  If you don't, then don't talk to me about how you know all about financial statements right before launching into an obloquy against Amazon that has absolutely nothing to do with financial statements and is just about how Amazon isn't "doing anything worthwhile" (a contention with which I would vehemently differ as a Prime member, Alexa user, Kindle owner, Music Unlimited subscriber, Amazon Mom member, and more).

Overconvinece for the price: When things are priced at MSRP (as they are on there) but the losses come from making people pee their pants, crash their vans, drive around town at 5AM on a Sunday instead of at home with their families and still manage to lose money on the transaction because it's unrealistic to deliver that many individual objects to a bazillion different places. If the real price of dropping a 100-pack of paper clips from a Huey (which is essentially what they are doing) was reflected they would be $200. But instead the paper clips are at MSRP on Amazon.

 

Don't assume a company is good just because YOU give them a lot of money. I was able to separate what I like with what is worthwhile a long time ago. Owning an IROC-Z is stupid. Metal kinda sucks most of the time.

 

And I guarantee you still have to go to the store. All the time.

1 hour ago, DarkandStormy said:

 

Lol.  Sell a handful of things on eBay/Craigslist and it's easy to get this much money.

 

Get a roommate.  Or rent out your spare bedroom.  

 

I'm hitting the Pik 4 like 5 times a month.  

18 minutes ago, GCrites80s said:

Overconvinece for the price: When things are priced at MSRP (as they are on there) but the losses come from making people pee their pants, crash their vans, drive around town at 5AM on a Sunday instead of at home with their families and still manage to lose money on the transaction because it's unrealistic to deliver that many individual objects to a bazillion different places. If the real price of dropping a 100-pack of paper clips from a Huey (which is essentially what they are doing) was reflected they would be $200. But instead the paper clips are at MSRP on Amazon.

 

In other words, your criticism had nothing to do with their financial statements and in fact actively ignored them, because delivery expenses (leaving aside the working conditions issue, which definitely is a concern independent of the balance sheets) are accounted for in SGA and the financial statements still show massive profits after SGA.  It's not like they hide delivery expenses somewhere off the books.

Are the webhosting profits and retail profits separated so that we can see if the webhosting is overshadowing selling, general and administrative?

Man, I'm getting killed in a biopharm I'm in now. They do antibiotics which are cheap and really don't make much money.

 

I'm researching UBX but at 6 dollar a share I feel is super inflated with their pipeline in early stages. Lots of hype around it though.

 

https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/can-we-live-forever/3009999.article

 

https://unitybiotechnology.com/the-science/

 

Edited February 6, 20205 yr by Mildtraumatic

28 minutes ago, GCrites80s said:

Are the webhosting profits and retail profits separated so that we can see if the webhosting is overshadowing selling, general and administrative?

 

Not in the financial statements, but in regulatory filings, yes.  And those are covered a lot by the financial press, since of course Amazon gets plenty of attention.

 

It's true that AWS is more profitable than the retail.  But you need to understand the distinction between asserting that truth and asserting the falsehood that it is subsidizing the retail.  See, e.g., https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazon-web-services-powers-tech-giants-profits-slower-growth-raises-new-questions/

2 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

Two people at work hit last night's Pik 4.  Hours of conversation has been wasted speculating on how that $400 is going to be spent.  

 

Updates: Pik 4 conversation flared back up at 3:05pm and again at 3:55.  

8 minutes ago, Gramarye said:

 

Not in the financial statements, but in regulatory filings, yes.  And those are covered a lot by the financial press, since of course Amazon gets plenty of attention.

 

It's true that AWS is more profitable than the retail.  But you need to understand the distinction between asserting that truth and asserting the falsehood that it is subsidizing the retail.  See, e.g., https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazon-web-services-powers-tech-giants-profits-slower-growth-raises-new-questions/

 

Then how much of that is collecting Prime Club revenues or people just having Prime for the streaming services rather than unsubsidized by Prime Warehouse Club revenue sales? As in people just buying objects from them without another commitment?

14 minutes ago, jmecklenborg said:

 

Updates: Pik 4 conversation flared back up at 3:05pm and again at 3:55.  

 

They should probably short something with the cash

38 minutes ago, Mildtraumatic said:

Man, I'm getting killed in a biopharm I'm in now. They do antibiotics which are cheap and really don't make much money.

 

I'm researching UBX but at 6 dollar a share I feel is super inflated with their pipeline in early stages. Lots of hype around it though.

 

https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/can-we-live-forever/3009999.article

 

https://unitybiotechnology.com/the-science/

 

A few years ago some of the most profitable drug companies were re-thinking their biopharma investments. Huge red flag! 

37 minutes ago, surfohio said:

A few years ago some of the most profitable drug companies were re-thinking their biopharma investments. Huge red flag! 

One I'm in now I wish would get bought out by big pharma.

I'm now recording the third Pik 4 conversation since the last update and might upload it tonight.  Hopefully my phone picked that up.  

 

So celebration #14 of the day was all about hiding the fact that you just hit the Pik 4 from your women, which is impossible, since nobody can stop talking about it.  

On 2/4/2020 at 9:49 AM, Gramarye said:

 

Quoting myself to note that this was last Thursday.

 

TSLA opened at $882.96 today.  Its market cap of $140B is now within striking distance of the world's most valuable car company, Toyota, at $193B.  It is now by far the most valuable American car company.

 

Toyota has said it expects to post a full-year 2019 profit of $23B (https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Toyota-expects-2019-profit-surge-to-23bn).  Tesla posted a 4th-quarter profit of just over $0.3B, and lost money for FY2019 on $24B in revenue.

 

I'm wondering now if I should sell the rest of my position.  I'm up 1088% on my overall position and 1661% on my tiny little position from 2013.  This has to be a bubble, but the thing with bubbles is they can sometimes inflate a lot longer than people think--even when lots of people recognize it as a bubble--before they pop.

 

ETA: That said, if I were Tesla's CFO, I would be strongly considering an immediate capital raise.  Tesla has about $26B in long-term debts.  Not long ago, people were greatly concerned about that.  Now the company could clear almost the entirety of it by selling additional shares of less than one-fifth their current market capitalization.  Alternatively, if any other American car company gets in trouble, Tesla could acquire other old car factories (its existing facility was the old NUMMI plant) at liquidation for a comparative pittance at this point.

 

If I were employed by McKinsey, I could have charged a few hundred thousand for that advice instead of giving it away for free on the Internet: 

 

https://www.fidelity.com/news/article/top-news/202002130758RTRSNEWSCOMBINED_KBN2071OY-OUSBS_1

 

I'm sure my previous comment made the difference in the decision to go ahead with this announcement.

I mean, as long as you don't want to be Berkshire-Hatawahy (which it's fine if you do) you don't want share prices to be that high because it deters individual investors -- especially small-time ones. Releasing more shares is less drastic than a split.