In light of the recent plunge in Tesla’s stock price that has seen the company lose 50% of its valuation in a matter of weeks, the highly respected Financial Times did an analysis of Tesla’s publicly available financial data, and to their surprise, they discovered that $1.4 billion of assets “appear to have gone astray.”
The Brits have such a wonderful way with words, don’t they? “Gone astray”. Sounds like 1.4 billion of Bo Peep’s sheep have innocently wandered away from the field on a sunny day, and the little scamps only need to be rounded up and brought back to the pen. That’s so much more appealing than saying $1.4 billion of Tesla’s assets are missing and unaccounted for, which could give some the impression that malfeasance is afoot and that there has been deliberate manipulation of Tesla’s financial documents to give the false impression the company is doing better than it actually is.
Such anomalies can be red flags, potentially indicative of weak internal controls. Aggressive classification of operating expenses as investment can be used to artificially boost reported profits.
Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.
Additionally, the Financial Times’ analysis reveals the company took on an additional $6 billion in debt, despite claiming to have $36 billion in cash. Why would they take a loan when they have the cash, and the loan rate is surely higher than the ROR (rate of return) of whatever liquid instruments they’ve invested their cash in? Do they have the amount of cash they say they do? Curious.
A combination of excess cash flow and ongoing capital raising is another red flag that can signal accounting misstatements.
Maybe this is all just a byproduct of some of that DOGE efficiency Elon Musk has been reigning down on the U.S. government and generously sharing with the American people. Maybe it’s a Ponzi Scheme — Musk seems to know all about them. I have no clue, but something seems “astray”.
I wonder if this FT article will get any traction with shareholders and Tesla’s board. The stock price was likely going to drop quite a bit further anyway due to the Musk scent, but if further analysis reveals fraud, the stock could be doing the Triple Lindy in no time. And hopefully, Elon Musk with it.
