NEW YORK—Shares of Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA), the Silicon Valley-based maker of electric vehicles, will officially begin trading on Tuesday.
Tesla becomes the first U.S. car company to go public since Ford Motor Co. had its initial public offering (IPO) in 1956.
How the stock will perform depends on investors’ belief in the future of the auto industry. Tesla is the car company that has never made a profit and has only sold 1,000 cars—it has lost almost $300 million since 2003.
And no profit is in sight—until at least 2012, the company says in a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, when it sells its Model S electric four-door sedan in large quantities.
But Tesla has enough believers to at least succeed in the short-run. Its CEO, 39-year-old Elon Musk, was founder of PayPal. It obtained a $465 million loan from the federal government, and has recently signed a deal with Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s largest automaker, to share technology and produce electric vehicles at Toyota’s old NUMMI plant in Fremont, Calif.
“Tesla’s performance on the stock market will deliver something more lasting: a signal about the degree of public confidence in electric vehicles at this early stage of the market, and the role that IPOs will play in financing next-gen cars,” said a Earth2Tech column.
Tesla becomes the first U.S. car company to go public since Ford Motor Co. had its initial public offering (IPO) in 1956.
How the stock will perform depends on investors’ belief in the future of the auto industry. Tesla is the car company that has never made a profit and has only sold 1,000 cars—it has lost almost $300 million since 2003.
And no profit is in sight—until at least 2012, the company says in a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, when it sells its Model S electric four-door sedan in large quantities.
But Tesla has enough believers to at least succeed in the short-run. Its CEO, 39-year-old Elon Musk, was founder of PayPal. It obtained a $465 million loan from the federal government, and has recently signed a deal with Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s largest automaker, to share technology and produce electric vehicles at Toyota’s old NUMMI plant in Fremont, Calif.
“Tesla’s performance on the stock market will deliver something more lasting: a signal about the degree of public confidence in electric vehicles at this early stage of the market, and the role that IPOs will play in financing next-gen cars,” said a Earth2Tech column.
Friends Read Free