Official

Tesla raising $2B war chest to build Model 3 next year

The automaker and CEO Elon Musk are offering up over 9.5 million shares

Tesla Model 3
Tesla Model 3 / Image Credit: Sebastian Blanco / Autoblog
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Tesla will sell 6,800,000 of its shares as part of a new offering designed to raise up to $2 billion to help build the Model 3. The company-owned shares are part of a total offering of 9,577,901 shares, and it's Elon Musk himself who is offering up the other 2,777,901 shares. Once all of the shares are sold, Musk's overall stake in Tesla will be larger than it is today.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs, which is helping to underwrite this sale, say that Tesla only needs $1 billion to get the Model 3 into production. Tesla has adjusted the number of deposits it has for the upcoming $35,000 electric car down to 373,000 after eliminating duplicate and speculation orders. The 3 is supposed to arrive at the end of 2017, with 100,000 and 200,000 units being built in the second half of that year.

Just how Tesla ramps up its production capability in the next 12 months is a source of much discussion. Two Tesla executives connected to manufacturing left in the last few weeks, and only one has so far been replaced, as far as we know. The company's most recent quarterly investment call focused on how it will change its manufacturing process for the Model 3, especially compared to how it designed and built the overly complicated Model X.

After news of the new offering came out late yesterday, the value TSLA stock dropped quickly, but by this morning was actually up 1.1 percent before trading started this morning.

Tesla's preliminary prospectus as submitted to the SEC is available here.

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