As Tesla's car sales and share price plummet in response to Elon Musk's political and physical stances, we would like to draw readers' attention to something puzzling in the group's accounts.
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 sum is big enough to matter even at Tesla, and comes at a moment when attention is returning to the group's underlying numbers, now that its fully diluted stock market valuation has crashed from $1.7tn to below $800bn.
A closer look at Tesla's cash flow statement may also prompt investors to ask other questions, such as why a business with a $37bn cash pile raised $6bn of new debt last year?
First, consider the apparent anomaly. Tesla is investing heavily, particularly in AI infrastructure. It intends to spend at least $11bn in each of the next few years, aiming to take advantage of opportunities in robots, computing and batteries.
Looking at last year, in the third and fourth quarter combined, Tesla spent $6.3bn on "purchases of property and equipment excluding finance leases, net of sales"according to its cashflow statements.
Over on the balance sheet, however, the gross value of property, plant and equipment rose by only $4.9bn in that period, to $51bn.
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We'd expect the numbers to tally. General Motors, for instance, spent $30bn on capex over the past three years, disposed of $14bn of assets, and so reported a $16bn rise in the gross value of property, plant & equipment to $88.7bn at the end of last year.
