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Tesla IPO Raises $226 Million

Posted by kdawson on from the ok-fine-but-when-will-they-fly dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Tesla, which will trade under TSLA on Nasdaq, has been priced at $17 per share, allowing the electric car start-up to raise more than $226 million in its IPO. Investors were expecting the share price target range to be between $14 and $16 but the overflow of excitement saw Tesla increase the number of shares it plans to offer to 13.3 million, nearly 20 percent more than originally planned." Reader hlovy contributes a link from Xconomy.com summarizing the skepticism among some analysts as to how much staying power TSLA will demonstrate.

4 of 274 comments (clear)

  1. Re:IPO: It's Probably Overpriced, but... by TooMuchToDo · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The Model S doesn't compete against a Yaris. It competes against the BMW 5 series and the Mercedes E class. You're not the target market.

    Disclaimer: I own a Roadster, have a $5k down payment on a Model S, and bought a couple thousand shares of TSLA this morning.

  2. Re:Stock price already increased by savanik · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No revenue stream now; no revenue stream until 2012.

    This seems to be pretty much parallel to most of the business plans of dot-coms. "We have cool new technology! What, we also need sales?"

    It really depends on how well they can market the roadsters... which they have not shown to be one of their strong suits yet. Time will tell. Opening day will not.

  3. Re:IPO: It's Probably Overpriced, but... by FooAtWFU · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Tesla's innovative organizational structure won't be enough to save them if their cars are a flop, though - and sure, the Roadster is a cool car and could be construed as being ahead of the competition so far, but it's also expensive, the batteries suffer from massive depreciation, and the economy's not looking spectacularly hot right now. Moreover the regular automakers aren't really that far behind (a plug-in hybrid Prius would be a perfectly reasonable substitute for the normal-consumer-oriented version of the Tesla technology).

    There's a lot of optimism priced into the stock right now. I wouldn't expect them to go out of business in the next couple of years or anything, and I might pick up a few shares if it gets down to $10-$12 or so, but a $22/share price sounds way too optimistic for my liking. I'd wait for the headline-buzz to fade a little before pouring too much money into it.

    Telsa is not GOOG. Automobiles are a capital-intensive business.

    --
    The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
  4. Re:IPO: It's Probably Overpriced, but... by westlake · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Tesla's model is new to the auto industry: manufacturer sells direct to consumer, and also owns the distribution network and the service departments. That's nothing new in high tech: Apple's made a fortune using that model.

    One difference is that Apple's exposure in a recall is limited to the replacement cost of a small household appliance.

    It doesn't have to "service" anything.

    Tesla has a $100K Roadster and a $65K Model S sedan in the works.

    That implies a full-scale luxury dealer showroom and auto repair garage. Not a niche in the Galleria Mall.