2 Reasons SolarCity May Be Headed for a Power Failure

“SolarCity is in dire need of cash. It’s already gotten two bridge loans from Tesla and it needs this deal to go through,” said Gordon Johnson, an Axiom senior analyst, told Real Money this week. Axiom, in its June 28 report on SolarCity, estimated the company wasquickly burning through its cash and would likely fall to near zero, or $1.4 million, by the fourth quarter. As a result, some Wall Street watchers have been whispering the “bankruptcy” word as it relates to SolarCity.

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Goldman Sachs Plays A Rotten Role In Tesla-SolarCity Deal

Summary

  • You’ve not met Aswath Damodaran? Allow me to introduce you.
  • Damodaran lays bare the many follies & misdeeds behind the TSLA-SCTY fairness opinions.
  • In the Tesla fairness opinion kitchen, Goldman Sachs wrote the recipe, furnished the ingredients, and supplied the spoon; Evercore and Lazard merely stirred the pot.
  • Goldman Sachs has been consistently wrong in forecasting Tesla performance, and (very quietly) already has slashed the 2017 revenue forecast it gave Evercore and Lazard.
  • Ben Kallo stops by with an important reminder for us all.

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This shows why Tesla-SolarCity is a ‘crazy’ merger, Jim Chanos says

Jim Chanos called Tesla Motors’ proposed merger with SolarCity”crazy” and “the height of folly” while outlining his short positions in the stocks on Tuesday.

The short-seller from Kynikos Associates estimated the combined company would burn through $1 billion per quarter and “constantly need access to capital markets.” He described SolarCity’s business model as “just plain uneconomic.”

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Tesla’s Head of Communications departs

Since Reyes’ departure from Tesla, Khobi Brooklyn, Director of Communications, became the most senior employee in the department and the de facto “Head of Global Communications”. We now learn that she is also leaving the automaker just a few months after Reyes.

As previously mentioned, Reyes has been VP of Communications at Tesla on two occasions. First from 2009 to 2012, when he left for a 2-year stint at Square, a financial service and mobile payment company. He then came back to Tesla in 2014. Brooklyn joined Tesla around the same time as Reyes (2009) and followed him to Square and back to Tesla again in 2014.

The company didn’t hire or promote another Vice President when Reyes left in March, but sources familiar with the situation told us that the company’s General Counsel and Elon Musk’s former divorce attorney, Todd Maron, among others had oversight and executive responsibilities of the communications department.

We asked Tesla for a comment on the situation, but our request went unanswered. The company rarely comments on employee matters.

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