Toyota and Tesla to join forces

Non-Suzuki related topics. Anything can go here.
Post Reply
User avatar
Moto
Site Admin
Posts: 1299
Joined: Sun Aug 23, 2009 7:08 pm
Location: North Dakota
Contact:

[youtube][/youtube]
New Mexico Business Weekly wrote:Toyota deal helps, but Tesla IPO questions remain

A pending investment from the world’s largest auto maker has given a marketing boost to Tesla Motors Inc.’s initial public offering plans, but much remains uncertain, analysts say.

Tesla announced Thursday that it would sell $50 million of company stock to Toyota after the electric auto maker has an IPO. It also announced plans to buy the recently-shuttered New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. car plant in Fremont, Calif. to build its Model S sedan.

But it’s still unclear how big an ownership stake Toyota Motors Corp. will have in the Palo Alto, Calif. startup, analysts say.

And securities experts noted that Tesla already has an investment from a well-known auto maker — Blackstar Investco LLC, an affiliate of Germany-based Daimler AG, owns more than 5 percent of the company’s outstanding capital stock.

Still, they said, the news was an endorsement of sorts for Tesla, giving the young, highly-publicized company more credibility among potential investors.

Horace Nash, head of the securities practice group at Mountain View, Calif.-based law firm Fenwick & West LLP, said it created further awareness of Tesla, and “bridges the gap” in taking it from a “cool, little” company to one that sells cars nationwide.

“It’s big news,” he said.

Tesla, founded in 2003, said in January that it plans to sell up to $100 million of company stock in an IPO. It has not said when the sale will occur or how many shares it will offer.

Tesla has not filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission to disclose details of Toyota’s investment. Matt Therian, an analyst with IPO research firm Renaissance Capital, said the size of Toyota’s ownership stake is still unknown, and it’s unclear if it would affect the IPO’s pricing.

Nevertheless, the announcement will help Tesla drum up interest from potential investors, as it will help alleviate “speculations and questions” they might have about the company, said Brady Berg, a corporate partner in the Palo Alto office of Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo PC.

“It’s attractive to the market,” he said.

Tesla backed out of an agreement in the summer of 2008 to build a $35 million plant on Albuquerque's Westside.

Toyota (NYSE: TM) has two major dealerships in Albuquerque, Karl Malone Toyota and American Toyota.

Eli Segall of the Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal, an affiliated publication, compiled this report.

Read more: Toyota deal helps, but Tesla IPO questions remain - New Mexico Business Weekly
BC Upham | May 24th, 2010 wrote: Toyota and Tesla Go for a Spin
Japanese car maker Toyota and glossy electric vehicle start-up Tesla announced a partnership last week that will bring production of Tesla’s Model S sedan to a recently-shuttered Toyota plant in Fremont, California.

Toyota has traditionally taken a pessimistic view of the commercial viability of all-electric vehicles, and perhaps a dim view of the companies that make them as well. Here’s Toyota’s Bill Reinert, designer of the Prius, at a conference last year:
Bill Reinert wrote:I see it all the time from those Palo Alto types. They think the whole world is like a computer company, and they’re always trying to recreate the dot-com economy. You see exactly the same mind-set with Tesla.
Oops!

Nonetheless, the deal makes sense for both companies. It has generated a great deal of positively-charged PR, for starters. Toyota, still smarting from the recall fiasco earlier this year, gets to reopen a factory, with all the goodwill that supplies.

It also gets a wheel in the EV race, which Toyota had, at least until now, ceded to companies like Tesla and Nissan, which has the Leaf coming out later this year.

Meanwhile, Silicon-Valley based Tesla, started by eBay founder Elon Musk, can only be too happy to get the extra boost of legitimacy partnership with the world’s largest car company brings, even if it is a bit forced. They should also enjoy whatever engineering know-how Toyota brings to the table.

According to Autoblog Green, the deal will bring about 1,000 employees back to the Fremont NUMMI plant, which built Toyota Corollas and the nearly identical Chevy Prizm under a Toyota-GM joint venture dating back to 1984. Tesla hopes to push out about 20,000 of the $50,000 Model S yearly starting in 2012.

Toyota has also agreed to purchase $50 million of Tesla’s common stock following a planned public stock offering.

Tesla has sold more than 1000 of its all-electric Roadsters since production began in March 2008.
http://www.triplepundit.com/2010/05/toy ... or-a-spin/
Post Reply