Nope, I'm not missing any facts, and your lack of logic indicates that you are blindly arguing a point without understanding what I was addressing.
I don't feel this is substantiated by your following arguments.
Why are these mutually exclusive?
Either they need cash or not. The capital raise shows that they still needed capital even after the loan (in this case used as a cushion, which is something necessary to have if you don't want to risk the company).
And how is stock dilution like paying a "tax"? And your choice was not to buy stock, just like I had a choice not to buy a Sig, and as a stockholder you are always subject to dilution. I don't see the analogy or relevance to what I was arguing, which was that *despite* the short term financial benefit of the Sig premium, long term it will cost Tesla more.
If the number of stocks you own remains the same, a stock dilution results in a loss of value, at least in terms of percentage of all shares, but that is a different question. I'm assuming that the absolute long-term value of Tesla will be quite independent of current investments, as long as Tesla survives. In that assumption, I lost value.
Sig owners have the choice between buying a Sig, and buying an almost identical non-Sig, and you were able to change from one to the other. I can only buy one kind of shares, and already had them long before.
And? Was Tesla's survival said to be in question, or not?
You apparently don't understand how this Sig premium works. The $40k deposits were already made, and would have been the same whatever the pricing was. Although theoretically Tesla could use the cash (except in Washington state), they couldn't recognize the revenue until the cars were delivered. The premium isn't paid until the balance of the car is paid upon delivery, so the fact that a few months ago the company was cash poor doesn't correlate to these premiums, which they've only now collected in large part the last few weeks.
[EDIT: See "addendum" immediately below instead of the 2 sentences I originally wrote here.]
Our point is that Tesla's financial means are limited. Sure Tesla has sources of income, including the loan and sig premiums, but we are saying that they are still very limited.
A total non-sequitur -- what relevance does this have? Wouldn't it help Tesla's prospects to have 100% thrilled early customers singing its praises instead of lamenting about paying extra for little discernible benefit? Is the implication that no one should offer criticism because it may hurt the stock price?
If you accept and agree with the argument that Tesla's financial resources are so limited that they may cause a limit in staffing, or charge more for sigs, you can still argue that they were limiting costs or adding profit in the wrong places, or you can still criticize them for not having enough financial resources in the first place. The possibilities for criticism are still endless, but it may help to understand the situation. So far you don't seem to accept the possibility that financial limits may have been forcing reasons.
I understand why the stores are important. But I also think that early (Sig) reservation holders are important to helping with continued demand for Tesla, and the question I was answering was what spending did Tesla do that they could have avoided (or delayed) to avoid requiring the Sig premium. My response was that delaying one or two store openings would have equaled the total premiums Tesla is getting from its Sig owners, and doing so would have avoided a lot of the frustration, anger and resentment that Sig owners have experienced and articulated over the last couple of months, which would have really helped Tesla's long term prospects more than the few million extra dollars Tesla is collecting *now* from these folks.
That's a similar argument as I understood it before. My answer is that the stores may be necessary for survival, whereas sig holders good will is important, yet expected to be balanced by the higher than expected value of the car, once delivered. Obviously, it would be much better to have both, but then again, that is where the financial limits come in. I would totally agree with your position if Tesla had already been a profit making company with ensured survival.
If the goal is for Tesla's long term success, my point was that the extra money from the Sig premium was not worth the ill will it apparently fomented. You may disagree, but I don't see how that makes me extremely ignorant. You seem unusually angry about this, which I guess is because of the stock price? I hope you calling me extremely ignorant helped you feel better, but random insults hurled online don't change the facts or circumstances.
I even agree that it was not worth the money. You still don't seem to accept the possibility that Tesla saw themselves *forced* to make these decisions, regardless of something being "worth" some amount of money.
I'm not sure why you feel free to use terms such as "bean counter" and then complain about "being ignorant of a situation", which is not a characterization of your personality, and certainly not in general, but merely points out that you are not accepting the question of Tesla's survival to enter this discussion.