Musk's Model 3 Reveal Sold More Than Cars

Business Onion · Part 2 - The Show · 2:19

On March 31, 2016, Elon Musk unveiled the Tesla Model 3, and within a week 325,000 reservations came in without an ad campaign. Seven weeks later Tesla sold about $1.4 billion of new shares — and its prospectus pointed to those reservations. Musk's shows sold cars, but they also sold Tesla's stock and brought in engineers. In 2020, the year of its first full-year profit, Tesla raised more than $12 billion from new shares. Part 2 of 3 — THE FOUNDER IS THE AD. Numbers & sources: customer deposits rose $396.5M from Dec 31, 2015 to June 30, 2016 (all products; Tesla 10-K FY2015, 10-Q Q2 2016); May 2016 share sale: 6,519,656 shares at $215.00, about $1.4B net (Tesla 424B5, May 18–20, 2016). 2020: $12,269M net from three share sales; accumulated deficit at end-2019 $6,083M; 2020 net income $721M, Tesla's first full-year profit (Tesla 10-Ks). May 1, 2020: Tesla closed −10.3% ($781.88 → $701.32) while the S&P 500 fell about 2.8% (press reports). Twitter deal value: $44B (closed Oct 27, 2022). Sources: Tesla, "Tesla Unveils Model 3" (Mar 31, 2016); Tesla shareholder letter (May 4, 2016); Tesla 424B5 (May 2016); Tesla 10-Ks FY2015–FY2020; Tesla annual meeting (Oct 7, 2021, Tesla's official video); Musk on X (May 1, 2020; July 29, 2021).