Thread by @JCOviedo6

Fun Facts to consider after today's deposit pump:

In the Q1 2018 $TSLA Quarterly letter, Tesla claimed that it had Model 3 "net reservations" that "continued to exceed 450,000 at the end of Q1."

As of the end of Sep 2019, Tesla has delivered a total of 356,084 Model 3s.

In the Q2 2019, Earnings letter, Tesla wrote "order generation has shifted nearly entirely to non-reservation holders."

This implies that no more than 200,000 (and likely less than 150,000) of the Model 3 order backlog actually ended up purchasing a car.

The Model 3 was "unveiled" and started taking deposits on 3/31/2016.

At the unveiling event, Musk announced Tesla had 135k orders for the Model 3.

On 4/1/2016 Musk tweeted that Tesla had 180k orders for the Model 3 and then later tweeted that Tesla had 198k orders.

Later on 4/1/2016 Musk tweeted that the company had 232k orders for the Model 3.

cnbc.com/2016/04/01/why…

On 4/7/2016 Tesla issued a statement to the media stating that it had 325k deposits for the Model 3

cnbc.com/2016/04/07/tes…

On 4/21/2016 Musk told a conference in Norway that it had received almost 400k orders for the Model 3.

reuters.com/article/us-tes…

On 4/28/2016, the WSJ reported "that Musk has splashed money on his companies when they needed it, borrowed money from them when he needed it, and had them invest in one another when doing so was convenient."

wsj.com/articles/elon-…

In that same article, the WSJ reported "lawmakers want guarantees that none of the $3.2B that a person familiar with the matter tells the WSJ SpaceX has received from the government ends up at SolarCity (SCTY)."

In the same article, Musk is also defensive about his use of large personal margin loans. Musk told the WSJ his loans are less than 5% of his 11-digit net worth and therefore don't pose risks to shareholders: "The odds that a margin call cannot be addressed are almost zero."

According to documents from the SCTY shareholder derivative litigation, at the same time all of this was going on SCTY's board (including Musk) knew that SCTY was insolvent and in desperate need of rescue financing.

cnbc.com/2019/09/23/tes…

On 5/4/2016 Tesla announced that it was advancing forward production plans for the Model 3 and that it planned to produce 500,000 Model 3s in 2018.

In reality, the company ended up producing 152,977 Model 3s in 2018.

In the Q1 2016 10-Q Tesla wrote " We unveiled Model 3 in the first quarter of 2016 and received more than 325,000 reservations for this vehicle within one week of its introduction."

After 6 weeks of pumping the "deposit" numbers, $TSLA announced it was doing an equity offering on 5/18/2016.

In the Prospectus for that offering, Tesla wrote " we held deposits from about 373,000 customers who had made reservations for this car."

The equity offering prices at $215/share. In the equity offering, Elon Musk sold 2.8MM shares of Tesla stock for gross proceeds of ~$600MM. This is the only offering Musk has ever sold into.

Tesla also sold 6.5MM shares in the offering as well.

We now know that at the time Musk was pumping the reservation numbers for the Model 3, SCTY was very close to breaching financial covenants and in desperate need of a cash injection.

Elon ended up investing his own money as well as Spacex's money (in contravention of its own internal policies) into SCTY to prop it up so it could be acquired by Tesla

We also know that either the conversion rate of Model 3 reservation holders was under 50% or a large number of the disclosed reservation holders were fake.

Tesla has never revealed reservation numbers for the Model Y. Why is Musk now revealing reservation numbers for the Cybertruck?

The last time Musk was desperately pumping reservation numbers, his financial empire was on the verge of collapse.

Is history repeating itself? Is Musk pumping misleading if not fake reservation numbers in order to conduct another capital raise?

We now know that in Feb 2016 before this article, Kimbal Musk had received multiple margin calls against his Tesla and SolarCity stakes. Musk was likely close to a margin call as well in early Feb 2016 which likely motivated his decision to pull forward the unveiling of the M3