A few days ago Elon Musk announced that Tesla won't turn profitable until 2020. Considering that the company was founded in 2003, to me this sounds absolutely preposterous. Amazon is another good example of such a company that refuses to turn profitable.
I remembered this quote from Warren Buffet: "As of 1992, in fact—though the picture would have improved since then—the money that had been made since the dawn of aviation by all of this country's airline companies was zero. Absolutely zero."
I was wondering, how someone could calculate the money it returned to investors over it's lifetime. It should be quite simple: (all the dividends) - (the capital initially invested + capital raised). I am not that good at accounting, so please help me out here.
My calculations are:
187 million before the Mercedes deal
50 million from Mercedes
266 million in the IPO
=====
503 million
It has 2.37 billion cash and debt of 2.47 billion.
So 603 million dollars were spent to get here. Book value is not important since nobody is considering braking up the company, and it is always overestimated.
So, where was I wrong in my calculations?
