Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock was up 0.16% at the bottom of the noon hour on April 6. Shares have climbed 14% week over week as the company has brushed off its naysayers, at least for now. In late March some analysts and one premier hedge fund were projecting a collapse at Tesla in the near term. Founder and CEO Elon Musk decided to poke fun at his detractors in a series of April Fools’ tweets on Sunday, joking that the company was bankrupt.
In its quarterly shareholder call on April 3 Musk assured shareholders that the company would not need to raise more capital in this fiscal year. Tesla reported that the Model 3 saw 8,180 vehicles delivered in the first quarter of 2018 and the production output of the Model 3 increased to over 2,000 units in the final seven days of March.
The April Fool’s joke aside, there is still serious concern about Tesla’s future. It faces $1.2 billion in debt maturing over this next year. Tesla aims to ramp up its production of the more affordable Model 3 to over 5,000 per month by the late spring. Shares of Tesla are still down 1.8% in 2018 thus far.
Tesla may find raising capital more challenging going forward. There are also concerns after Tesla’s Autopilot in light of the fatal Model X crash in March. Short-sellers have been burned in recent weeks, but Tesla still has a lot to prove in 2018.
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