13 Comments
Jun 7Liked by Motorhead

The best that one can say, is that the whole thing absolutely stinks to high heaven. For those that think that this company is the next Enron (but much bigger) here is further evidence.

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Jun 7Liked by Motorhead

Isn’t there a word for when someone buys something and another person takes it? Oh, right. Stealing.

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Jun 7Liked by Motorhead

Motorhead...

Damn, you're good at this...these missives get more interesting by the day.

I love Mr. Musk's non-denial denial.

Denholm has no idea what is going on at the company.

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Gensler will be right on it.

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Jun 9Liked by Motorhead

Question: Does Denholm have legal liability here? How hard can it be to call the CFO and ask "Did we pay for those chips?" As Board Chair, she has a fiduciary duty to be accurate in her communications. She did NOT say that she doesn't know about the chips. She asserts that Tesla did not pay for them.

If this statement is inaccurate, there should be repercussions. This dingbat has been getting away with the "I'm just a housewife here" excuse since Solar City (no disrespect to Housewives).

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author

Both Musk's explanation on Twitter regarding the chip purchase and Denholm's vastly different explanation on CNBC open the door to shareholder litigation.

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Jun 10Liked by Motorhead

I thinking along the lines of possible SEC action, which just demonstrates what a fool I am.

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Jun 7Liked by Motorhead

all of this makes his recent $6B fundraise for xAI a bit curious in its timing.

as X owns 25% of xAI, then thats $1.5b to X (two private companies = elon's discretion), or more than enough to pay for the chips

possibilities: Tesla had deferred payment on the chips into q2 (and now nets out w/ X paying tsla out of new capital raise this Q), or had played games with cash in Q1 otherwise (ie should've been -$3B instead of -$2.5B had chips been accounted for properly)

of course, we have that same material disclosure problem, but this is the sort of thing elon won't worry about--nor his sychophants surrounding him.

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author

The crux of this Chipgate scandal is that Musk told Nvidia to redirect Tesla's order for 12K GPUs last December. So that's when Tesla should've disclosed it and if they deferred payment, maybe it was included in Q1's AI-related capex of $1bn, which they disclosed on the earnings call.

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Motorhead, interesting analysis. Perhaps a naïve question - what are the typical payment terms for shipped chips? Is it payable immediately upon the shipment, or do they have 30-60-90 days to pay? I am trying to think how the shipment and the payment would be reflected in the financials. (1) If the shipment was transferred to Twitter/X after Tesla took the legal ownership and Tesla paid for the shipment (but Twitter did not repay Tesla), we should see an increase in related-party receivables - and I agree with you that $500 million is likely to be material and require a related party disclosure. (2) If the scenario is Twitter jumping the queue before Tesla taking the legal ownership - there would be no impact on the financial statements and no related party disclosure. I would leave the question of what is included in CAPEX (and as a related matter, in the AI Infrastructure line in the PPE footnote) for another day.

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author

Hi Olga, that's not a naive question at all. I'm in the process of finding out from some chip analysts and waiting for a reply. Will fill you in once I find out.

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Jun 9Liked by Motorhead

Motorhead...Saw your comment on Xitter regarding the prospects of a Trump pardon.

Absolutely, PROVIDED, Mr. Musk makes a substantial contribution to the campaign and I mean SUBSTANTIAL. If Musk tries to be a piker with Trump, the game changes.

Allegedly, Trump asked for a billion from oil company executives.

He'll expect something similar from Musk.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/09/trump-oil-industry-campaign-money/

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Would you please help all of us TSLAQ bears out by doing an investor-by-investor spreadsheet of institutional and then a percentage for retail on the pay package vote? I feel like the outcome here is knowable however I just don’t know it.

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