Originally Posted by mispoken

As a personal preference, I don’t use accountants to guide my investing.

As for burning through cash; if that’s a concern at this phase in their growth, consider they expect to be FCF positive for all of 2020. Think about how quickly they came from their nearly fatal balance sheet to where they are now. They’re just getting started.

As for the reason for the cash burn; look at where that cash is going....the development of the S, X, 3, Y and Cybertruck? Battery development? Built out of
factories (both for autos and batteries)? Build out of supercharger network? Build out of mobile
support fleet? Self driving software? Software beyond self driving? Build out of salesforce?

They’re investing, it’s not as if Elon is just taking this cash and buying pot :-)

We are in a new era of companies; I’m not sure if I’ve said it yet (haha) but traditional metrics used by academia and talking heads are utterly useless.

Look at the gross margins of these SaaS companies. Who's had those types of margins
in the past? Nobody.

Look at how easy it is to scale now - compared to the past. Takes very little capital and very few boots on the ground. Was it like that in the past where everything was physical?

Look at subscriptions? That revenue and whatever you retain largely goes right to the bottom line. And it is repeatable.

With Tesla, what is the #1 car company, the #1 power company and tons of subscription possibilities (self driving taxi fleet, software updates, etc....) worth? Much more than looking at historical data ratios. It will take a lot to get there, but I can see that path.

What is Fiat-Chrysler spending their FCF on? Advertising? Auto manufactures as they exist are dead.

Keep the thoughts rolling! Lots of good things to reflect on in this thread. Ultimately we all want the same thing: $$$$$$$$ :-)