So when the CEO disclosed in the Q1 earnings release on April 26 that the EV-maker had booked a fat gain by selling part of the Bitcoin horde it famously amassed early this year, the Twitter-sphere erupted.
The numbers also reveal a troubling truth: In the first quarter, the digital currency’s appreciation dwarfs what Tesla earned in its bedrock business of selling cars and batteries, and providing software updates and other services.
Accounting rules classify digital currencies as “indefinite-lived intangible assets.” If at the end of a quarter, the price of Bitcoin falls below what the company paid, it’s required to take an “impairment” charge reflecting the size of the hit.
A note on page 5 discloses that Tesla booked a $101 million “positive impact” from the sale of Bitcoin, recorded in the ‘Restructuring & Other’ line on the income statement.
So the math suggests that Tesla sold around 4,800 Bitcoins at that price to raise the $272 million.
Once again, the book value––or what it paid––for the tokens sold is $171 million.
At Bitcoin’s price of $54,100 on April 26, Tesla’s trove is worth over $2.07 billion.
But on the earnings call, Kirkhorn said that Tesla “continues to accumulate Bitcoin from transactions from our customers as they purchase vehicles.” Musk’s famous declaration in February that Tesla would accept the coins in lieu of dollars or yuan may well explain the $2 million discrepancy.
My math shows it parted with just over 11% of the number of coins purchased in Q1.
“Elon and I were looking for a place to store cash that wasn’t being immediately used, trying to get some level of return on this, but also preserve liquidity,” he declared.
Kirkhorn affirmed Tesla’s commitment to Bitcoin, as did Musk in his jab at Portnoy.
But those earnings included $519 million in sales of regulatory credits, a boost that will soon disappear, as well as the $101 Bitcoin bonanza.
Instead of gorging on Bitcoin, Musk could pay a special dividend with this excess cash, and let shareholders decide whether to buy Bitcoin or do something else with the cash.
Among questions being explored by the probe are why Ant’s IPO was fast-tracked, if the company made sufficient disclosures and whether it received preferential treatment in the allocation of its stock code, they said.The Wall Street Journal, which reported the probe earlier, said Beijing was also looking into what support local officials provided Ant and into big state-owned firms that stood to gain from a listing of Jack Ma’s financial technology giant.The scrutiny points to the continuing fallout from the abrupt suspension of Ant’s initial public offering, days before a trading debut in Shanghai and Hong Kong last year.The derailment of what was slated to be the world’s largest IPO marked the start of a sweeping crackdown by Beijing on China’s celebrated financial technology giants, which authorities have pledged to rein in this year.
FRANKFURT -Tesla plans to tweak the application for its planned gigafactory in Europe, the German state in which the plant is being built said on Tuesday, adding it was not possible at this stage to say how long it would take to approve the site.
However, the online search engine dwarfs these other operations and it suffered from a slump in commercial queries for things like flights and hotels.Now, with more than 1 billion Covid-19 vaccine shots given, according to Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker, consumers have started to venture out to restaurants, shops and even vacation destinations — and they often interact with Google services and ads before they do.Ruth Porat, chief financial officer, said the results “reflect elevated consumer activity online and broad based growth in advertiser revenue.”During a conference call with analysts, Porat said it’s unclear how “durable” the recent change in consumer behavior will be, because it will depend on the global pace of the Covid-19 recovery.Barclays analysts said Alphabet’s search and Youtube segments saw a significant share shift from other advertising channels, dampening concerns about Google’s high penetration within the advertising market.The Alphabet board authorized the company to repurchase up to an additional $50 billion of its Class C capital stock.
About two million baby boomers have been retiring every year since the oldest turned 65 in 2011, but between the third quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2020, that number increased to 3.2 million, said Richard Fry, a senior researcher at Pew Research Center.