/1 As reported by the @HindenburgRes report in September, $NKLA founder and now ex-chairman Trevor Milton admitted in a July 2020 interview with me that they have not produced any Hydrogen at their Phoenix, AZ facility. #thread#hydrogen#Nikola
/2 Many $NKLA bulls have contacted me in the meantime calling me a liar and worse so I decided to put the record straight and show you exactly what Trevor told me back in early July 2020.
3/ The main topic is Trevor admitting for the first time that they have NOT produced any hydrogen despite claiming earlier that they’ve been doing so for a while, allegedly misleading their investors.
4/ This is what i asked him. We did the interview using Twitter DM. I saved all messages before Trevor deleted hits Twitter account.
5/ And this is how he responded. BTW: Nikola World was scheduled for next week so I’m wondering if they actually completed the installation of those electrolyzers and have started producing hydrogen. $NKLA
/6 I wanted to be sure that he indeed admitted to no hydrogen production so I asked again in a follow up question.
/7 and this was his answer. Obviously they didn’t even have the permits yet back in July to produce hydrogen. To my knowledge, nobody has asked Mark Russell recently about the state of hydrogen production or if they have the permits available now.
8/ these were my last interactions with Trevor. Shortly after he told me that it was a good interview, he blocked me on Twitter. That’s why the remark at the bottom of the message and yeah, that Nikola World interview is most likely not going to happen... 🔥
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I recently took a closer look at $NKLA's agreement with @AnheuserBusch to deliver up 800 Hydrogen powered Nikola Two trucks. /Thread time
These are the trucks that are supposed to get manufactured in their Coolidge, AZ factory for which they received the permit yesterday to start construction. The ground breaking ceremony took place on July 23, 2 days after they filed the permits.
We need to dive deep in order to get a better understanding what $NKLA confirms in their S-1 filing vs what the agreement with AB defines.
SEC S-1: "The Nikola Two will be marketed in the North American market, with initial production expected in the first quarter of 2023."
Let me do a quick summary about yesterday's $GM / $NKLA announcement. This is related to the #Badger only. I will cover the class 7/8 trucks in a different /Thread
In my opinion, $GM is the big winner with a relatively low risk. They're getting a 11% stake in $NKLA currently worth a bit more than $2B. They can sell 33% of those shares in one year before Badger production starts and another 33% a year later.
$NKLA will have to pay $GM up to $700M of capital expenses to make available manufacturing capacity for up to 50k vehicles/yr. This requires an additional capital raise IMO as $NKLA will not have enough cash to pay for both their factory in Coolidge, AZ and the $GM capex.
"Under the METDA, the Company [$NKLA] will reimburse GM for up to Seven Hundred Million U.S. Dollars ($700,000,000) of capital expenses to make available manufacturing capacity for up to fifty thousand units per year of the initial two vehicles. "
While only taking a $1 per year salary, he is awarded $6M/yr in stock plus 4.8 million shares (currently worth about $222M) if a pre-established SHARE PRICE is achieved.
No business milestones are relevant, only share price!
another interesting detail is the lock period:
"...subject to continued employment during a performance period that ends on the THIRD anniversary of the Closing Date."
-> he can cash out his entire package before their first FCEV is scheduled to go into production in 2023.
The same conditions apply to the CEO and CFO of only with smaller numbers so the entire senior management can cash out before any hydrogen trucks are coming off the production assembly line.
Looks like Trevor won’t be on Tomorrow’s $nkla earnings call...
Look, I'm not saying that he shouldn't have bought that big ranch or even a private jet but going on a trip to the caribbean right when your very first quarterly earnings call after the IPO is taking place seems rather odd. Maybe those pictures are old, I don't know.
A new home on Turks & Caicos?
Again, good for him. I have no problem with that but I hope for his investors that they will get their share of his success too.