PALO ALTO, CA - Electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors Inc., based in California, is scheduling its initial public offering to trade June 29, Dow Jones Newswires reported, and the automaker hopes to raise as much as $178 million through the deal. 

Tesla Motors plans to sell 11.1 million shares between $14 and $16 a share. The company has applied to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol TSLA. 

After the IPO, Tesla CEO Elon Musk will own at least 28.8 percent of the public shares of the company, according to a regulatory filing. 

Immediately following the IPO, Tesla is selling $50 million of its shares at the offering price to Toyota Motor Corp. as part of an agreement reached last month. At a $15 offering price, Toyota would have 3.33 million shares and less than 3 percent ownership of Tesla. Daimler AG, through its affiliate Blackstar Investco LLC, had a stake of 9.6 percent prior to the offering. The stake, however, will likely be 7 percent or less afterward the IPO, a source told Dow Jones Newswires. 

Tesla plans to spend $42 million to purchase the former New United Motor Manufacturing plant in Fremont, Calif., a few months after the IPO. As a condition of Tesla's $465 million loan facility from the U.S. Department of Energy, half of the proceeds from the IPO must be placed in an account to pay for capital expenses related to building Tesla's Model S electric vehicle. These expenses would include purchasing the plant. The DOE loan can be used to reimburse Tesla for the costs. 

Tesla revealed in its prospectus that the company had a loss of $25.5 million in the first quarter of 2010, compared with a loss of $16.0 million a year earlier. For 2009, the company's loss narrowed to $55.7 million from $82.8 million a year earlier. Automobile sales, including zero-emission vehicle credit sales, totaled $20.6 million in the first quarter, dipping slightly from $20.9 million a year earlier. Sales for all of 2009 totaled $111.9 million, up from $14.7 million in 2008, Dow Jones Newswires reported. 

0 Comments