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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (1529730)	3/20/2025 5:34:25 AM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1584057

You made that up, you liar.

To: Bill who wrote (1529730)

3/20/2025 5:40:18 AM

From: Brumar89

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Tesla (TSLA) accounting raises red flags as report shows $1.4 billion missing

Fred Lambert | Mar 19 2025 - 10:53 am PT
77 Comments

Tesla’s (TSLA) accounting practices are raising red flags as a new report from the Financial Times shows that $1.4 billion is missing.

Many Tesla shorts and detractors have questioned Tesla’s accounting for years, but they have never gained much traction – until now.

Today, the Financial Times has released a new report

Compare Tesla’s capital expenditure in the last six months of 2024 to its valuation of the assets that money was spent on, and $1.4bn appears to have gone astray.

The article points out that Tesla reports having spent $6.3 billion on “purchases of property and equipment excluding finance leases, net of sales” in the second half of 2024, while property, plant, and equipment rose by only $4.9 billion in that period.

Accounting experts agree that, in most cases, the capex number matches closely to the increase in gross PP&E, but some factors can make a difference: sales or impairments of assets, foreign exchange, etc.

However, Tesla didn’t report any significant enough change in the usual suspects to justify the difference.

The report also points to other red flags, like Tesla claiming to sit on $37 billion in cash and yet it raised $6 billion in new debt last year.

While it’s not unusual for companies with significant cash piles to raise debts, it’s less than ideal in this current environment.

Finally, the FT report also points to Tesla not offering share buyback or dividend despite claiming a $15 billion operating cash flow last year, higher than its CAPEX. This is rare for large companies and puts Tesla in a very small club that includes other companies like Temu.

Jacek Welc, professor of corporate finance at the SRH Berlin University of Applied Sciences, compares these red flags to recent financial scandals, like Wirecard, Longtop Financial Technologies, and NMC Health.

Electrek’s Take
Top comment by BCV Liked by 11 people
I've been paying attention to the Capex number for the past few quarters with increasing concern, but I hadn't picked up on this.

Tesla's Capex is inline with growth WAY outside of what they've been producing. Most of this goes to depreciation in the cost-of-sales overhead allocation.

Tesla's 2024 Capex pretty much guarantee roughly 1 percentage point of gross margin compression in 2025 that in addition to any impacts from pricing, tariffs, and lower sales volume. The compounding impacts of this means Tesla's gross margins will converge with the rest of the industry over the next few years. They don't deserve a valuation premium for margins anymore.

The big Capex/Asset gap should have been explained in their financial reporting, but I'm not surprised if they didn't (I admit I haven't read it myself). Something of this size isn't FX related. FX is mostly a rounding error on fixed assets. You might see a couple percentage point moves in a quarter, but it's rarely material.

Asset impairment is the most likely cause. My guess is that they had to write down the value of the Cybertruck line or maybe their solar business, and are hiding that from shareholders. While this would be really bad from a PR perspective, it would actually mean their 2024 financials weren't as bad as we had assumed. It means that ~$1.5B of their profit reduction was a hidden asset impairment.

View all comments
I have some experience in financial accounting, having learned the basics from the excellent Brian Bushee at Wharton, but I never felt that I was knowledgeable enough to make such an accusation against Tesla.

Shady accounting at Tesla is something people have been pointing out for years, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it getting traction from a major financial outlet like the Financial Times.

This is likely going to put pressure on Tesla and its auditors.

However, for those hoping for Tesla to get in hot water for cooking the books, I would remain careful. Not only could there be explanations for this, but with Trump and Musk kneecapping the SEC, repercussions are unlikely.

Tesla (TSLA) accounting raises red flags as report shows $1.4 billion missing | Electrek

To: Bill who wrote (1529730)	3/20/2025 5:50:51 AM
From: Brumar89	2 Recommendations Recommended By rdkflorida2 Tenchusatsu Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1584057

Look, another MAGA hero:

To: Bill who wrote (1529730)	3/20/2025 6:03:19 AM
From: Brumar89	1 Recommendation Recommended By rdkflorida2 Respond to of 1584057

?Julia Davis? ?@juliadavisnews.bsky.social? Moscow is rejoicing after the much-anticipated call between Putin and Trump. Kremlin propagandists think they have Trump exactly where they want him. My latest for @thedailybeast.bsky.social : www.thedailybeast.com/joyful-putin... Joyful Putin Pals Thank Trump for Victory in New Cold War Moscow is rejoicing after the much-anticipated call between Putin and Trump. Kremlin propagandists think they have Trump exactly where they want him. www.thedailybeast.com

To: Bill who wrote (1529730)	3/20/2025 6:17:51 AM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 1584057

Commerce Secretary Urges Fox News Viewers To Buy Tesla Stock: ‘Elon Musk Is Probably the Best Person To Bet On!’ Howard Lutnick Urges Fox News Viewers To Buy Tesla Stock

To: Bill who wrote (1529730)	3/20/2025 6:23:53 AM
From: Brumar89	3 Recommendations Recommended By Eric rdkflorida2 Tenchusatsu Respond to of 1584057

Former Astronaut on Fox News Blasts ‘The Five’ Over False Claim: ‘That Is Not True’ Charlie NashMar 18th, 2025, 7:52 pm Scott Kelly Blasts 'The Five' on Fox News Over False Claims Former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly called out Fox News during a live appearance on the network, Tuesday after Greg Gutfeld blamed former President Joe Biden for the two astronauts who were left on the International Space Station for nine months after their space capsule malfunctioned. Asked by Fox News host Bret Baier about the landing of astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who were only supposed to be in space for just eight days, Kelly said: Bret, before I talk about that, let me say something. I was watching your previous program, The Five, and they’re talking about abandoned– they were stranded by President Biden. That is not true. They have had a spacecraft up there since September that was going to bring them home. They have always had a ride home and the decision to keep them up there had nothing to do with politics, it was just the fact that you need crew members to operate the space station and they were the two that were there, and you had to send up a vehicle with two empty seats, so the safest thing to do was to just leave them there. But they weren’t stranded. They always had a ride home. He continued, “Now, they were only supposed to be there for eight days, so to answer your question, yeah, it’s mentally challenging to go on a mission where you think it might be eight days, you know it could be longer because it’s the first flight of a vehicle and sometimes there are problems, and NASA made the right choice to keep them up there longer, and that could be tough mentally.” Kelly concluded, “But I’ve known Butch and Suni before any of us were astronauts and they’re very experienced Naval aviators, test pilots, and even though it might have been a challenge, I’m sure they rose to the occasion just like any astronauts would do, if not all. But, at the same time, I’m pretty sure they are really happy to be home.” During The Five on Tuesday, co-host Greg Gutfeld referred to Wilmore and Williams as “the two stranded astronauts Joe Biden left in space.” Last month, during an interview with CNN, Wilmore and Williams pushed back against President Donald Trump for blaming their extended stay in space on Biden. “We don’t feel abandoned. We don’t feel stuck. We don’t feel stranded,” Wilmore protested. “I understand why others may think that. We come prepared. We come committed. That is what your human spaceflight program is. It prepares for any and all contingencies that we can conceive of, and we prepare for those. So if you’ll help us change the rhetoric, help us change the narrative, let’s change it to ‘prepared and committed.’ That’s what we prefer.”

To: Bill who wrote (1529730)

3/20/2025 6:39:45 AM

From: Brumar89

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Venezuelans watch in horror as Trump sends family to El Salvador - Raw Story

Agence France-Presse
March 19, 2025 7:10PM ET

by Margioni BERMÚDEZ

Mervin Yamarte's family in Venezuela thought the 29-year-old -- arrested by US authorities amid President Donald Trump's migrant crackdown -- would be put on a deportation flight home. But the plane never arrived.

Instead, they learned he had been flown to El Salvador after spotting him in a video, head shaven and bowed, sitting on the floor of a maximum security prison.

Yamarte was arrested last week at his home in Dallas with three friends, all of whom survived the brutal Darien jungle on their journey north in September 2023.

Three days after being detained, they were deported in shackles to El Salvador's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), accused of being members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which has a presence in the United States.

Mervin and his friends were among 238 Venezuelans deported to El Salvador under a centuries-old wartime act invoked by Donald Trump which can be used to repel an "invasion" or "predatory incursion" by an enemy country.

The deportations took place despite a US federal judge granting a temporary suspension of the expulsions order.

Mervin, Andy, Ringo and Edwuar grew up in Los Pescadores, a poor neighborhood of small homes with tin roofs and dirt streets in the country's oil capital of Maracaibo.

With Venezuela's economy, including its oil industry, in meltdown, the four decided to follow in the footsteps of the nearly eight million Venezuelans to have emigrated in the past decade.

But life in the United States, surviving off odds jobs, was a struggle.

"My son wanted to come home because he said this wasn't the American dream, it was the American nightmare," his mother Mercedes Yamarte told AFP.

After their arrest, the four -- who were never charged with any crime, according to their families -- agreed to be deported to Venezuela, where their families were waiting over the weekend to welcome them home.

Instead, they were flown to El Salvador, whose gang-busting President Nayib Bukele struck a deal with Trump to house alleged gang members at his showpiece mega-jail.

One of Mervin's brothers recognized him in a video released by the Salvadoran presidency showing the prisoners being led in chains from a plane, having their heads shaved and sitting in rows on the floor.

A sobbing Yamarte is haunted by her son's "terrified" look in the footage.

"It's the greatest pain in my life, because it's like a cry for help from my son," said Yamarte, adding her two other children in the United States are now "begging" to return home but fear suffering the same fate as Mervin if they agree to be deported.

- Tattoos -

In Canada Honda, another impoverished Maracaibo neighborhood, Yajaira Chiquinquira Fuenmayor was also anticipating an emotional reunion with her son.After 16 months in the United States, Alirio Belloso was detained in Utah on January 28, a week after Trump returned to office vowing the biggest deportation wave in US history.

He too was awaiting deportation to Venezuela but instead was transferred to El Salvador's CECOT, where prisoners are crammed in windowless cells, under 24-hour surveillance and barred from receiving visitors.

In the Salvadoran propaganda video, Belloso is shown having his head shaved.

Legal experts in the United States have challenged the legality of the expulsions, saying that even if courts ruled that Tren de Aragua's presence in the United States constitutes an "invasion," authorities must still prove that each detainee is a member of the gang.

"My son is not a criminal; my son is a decent person. He went to the United States to work to support his family," Fuenmayor argued.

Belloso's 19-year-old wife Noemi Briceno, who lives in Venezuela, wondered "was it the tattoos" that led him to be tagged a gang member.

"My husband has tattoos of his niece, who died of leukemia, and (others with) the name of his daughter and his mother," Briceno said.

"And an hourglass," she added, adding that it was a nod to a promise he made by his daughter to return home soon.

Yamarte said that Mervin too had a tattoo on his hand, which she now sees as a call to action.

It reads "strong like mum."