NKLA - Nikola

[arcube]

Not that it is super relevant in the discussion, but I will put it here anyway. https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/world/general-motors-ventures-mini-car-becomes-chinas-most-sold-ev-surpassing-teslas-model-3-5813011.html

I really have no dog in this fight re NKLA, but funny to see how Tesla fans seem to dunk on other EV/hydrogen/whatever ventures while saying that they encourage EV competition because Tesla is light years ahead..

 

You clearly don't have a dog in this fight but you do have a cock in this fight.

 

"The model, the Hongguang MINI EV, is a two-door micro electric vehicle launched by the joint venture between GM, SAIC Motor Corp and another partner, SGMW, in July."

 

"The Hong Guang Mini EV's starting price is estimated at $4,162 USD and fully loaded the car will set you back $5,607 USD. There are electric bicycles currently on the market that cost more than that"

 

Good job comparing it with Model 3.

 

 

 

[Dalal.Holdings]

I heard there are more toasters sold in China than Model 3’s...

[Broeb22]

https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1731289/000110465920102820/tm2030359d1_8k.htm

 

So Nikola is using GM to supply GM's battery technology to Nikola and also using GM to manufacture?

 

If it looks like a fraud, and smells like a fraud, it's probably a fraud.

 

Outsource everything except the brand. Good deal if you can get it, I guess  ;D

 

Someone has to innovate to make this business work. It's not like electric vehicles/hydrogen cell cars have not been tried in various forms before.

 

Someone must do something new.

 

You can debate whether Elon's model will work, but he has undoubtedly done many new things in the field of automobile manufacturing.

 

This by comparison is the same sorry shit.

 

So we're now saying GM is the innovative company that will make this whole thing work with its "State of the Art" fuel cell technology? Got it. 

 

 

[alpha]

 

Based on what I have read the deal is basically Nikola handing 2 billion of stock to GM. I don't see any details of what GM actually has to deliver in exchange for the equity or what funds GM have committed to the joint venture... maybe I am missing something...

[coc]

Some of the money may go back to GM though.

 

Under the METDA, the Company will reimburse GM for up to Seven Hundred Million U.S. Dollars ($700,000,000) of capital expenses to make available manufacturing capacity for up to fifty thousand units per year of the initial two vehicles. Additionally, if the Company requests additional manufacturing capacity in excess of fifty thousand units per year, it agrees to reimburse GM for capital expenses incurred exclusively for such additional capacity.

[A Dhandho Investor]

Hindenburg research is short Nikola: https://hindenburgresearch.com/nikola/

 

edit: at first sight, pretty conclusive evidence that this is indeed a multi faceted fraud.

[Gregmal]

You dont need very thorough research to see that NKLA is basically a promo/story stock with no real business, a sketchy management, and future as a penny stock. Incredible that people think GM got something for nothing here. The capital(not to mention, time and resources) that will be wasted here are just another example of the lack of focus and inability to determine a real direction.

 

You know, Westport Innovations also once had a major deal with GM. The shift to nat gas was all but a certainty they said. The story changes every 5 years in auto.

[Broeb22]

Hindenburg research is short Nikola: https://hindenburgresearch.com/nikola/

 

edit: at first sight, pretty conclusive evidence that this is indeed a multi faceted fraud.

 

Wow, that's nuts. But also not that surprising.

[writser]

You dont need very thorough research to see that NKLA is basically a promo/story stock with no real business, a sketchy management, and future as a penny stock.

 

Yeah. The short report was a fun read (I liked the part about the truck towing and the 'in house inverter' with duct tape covering the logo) but that this was an overhyped clown show and that the CEO lies about everything was pretty clear from the beginning. On the other hand, this clown show (and many others) outperformed my portfolio by a wide margin this year with massive volume so what do I know! Should have joined the masses. Reminds me of a joke I read somewhere today:

 

Analyst: "This company has no revenue, their product is fake, their plans are unrealistic and their CEO is willing to lie about everything to cover it up."

Fund manager: "Dude, I told you, we were looking for something to SHORT .."

[JRM]

lol.  Milton claims to have invented the shopping cart for online ordering, and was beating Amazon and eBay.  He learned his lesson to not grow too fast.

[Liberty]

Thread from someone who was (is?) at the company:

 

[Foreign Tuffett]

Thread from someone who was (is?) at the company:

 

 

One of that account's very first (June 19th) tweets was "I'm no longer associated with Nikola", so clearly they are an ex-insider (or someone claiming to be an ex-insider).

[A Dhandho Investor]

https://nikolamotor.com/press_releases/nikola-sets-the-record-straight-on-false-and-misleading-short-seller-report-96

 

Does not seem that convincing...

[JRM]

https://nikolamotor.com/press_releases/nikola-sets-the-record-straight-on-false-and-misleading-short-seller-report-96

 

Does not seem that convincing...

 

They could have shortened the rebuttal to read: "We still intend to do the things we plan to do."

[Libs]

Nikola's response is pure gold. Especially in regards to the  fake video of a functioning truck.

 

Caught red-handed, they are now re-writing the script.

 

First, here is one of several examples of what the founder said prior to the video. ( I excerpted this from Hindenberg's report). Note the use of the word 'pusher.' A pusher is a truck hauled up a hill, then rolled down.

------------------------------------------------------

 

Q: “So how long have you been working on this because this is a fully functioning truck right?

 

Trevor: “Yeah”

 

Q: “So how long have you guys been working on this?

 

Trevor: “Years in secrecy. It’s been very hard. Some of the people found out about us over the last 4 or 5 months as we announced in the lead-up to this big event, but it took years and years to get here. This isn’t just a pusher like a lot of vehicles that they unveil [that] are just vehicles that don’t actually function. This is a fully functional vehicle which is really incredible. You can go through. We can change out whatever they want, all the temperatures. I mean this is a fully functioning vehicle; it’s not just a pusher. That’s what they call [it] in the automotive world; they just push and it doesn’t move.”

 

----------------------------------

 

Here's the infamous video. Note this is a hill with a 2% grade. The filming here is brilliantly deceptive:

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAToxJ9CGb8

 

 

Of course this leaves the impression of a fully functioning hydrogen truck. But.....did you notice one thing? Look at the title: "in Motion."

 

Today comes Nikola's reply. Complete back-tracking. it's beautiful....

 

 

<Hindenburg seeks to portray Nikola as misrepresenting the capabilities of the Nikola One prototype in a 2017 video produced by a third party, as “simply filmed rolling down a big hill.” Nikola never stated its truck was driving under its own propulsion in the video, although the truck was designed to do just that (as described in previous point). The truck was showcased and filmed by a third party for a commercial. Nikola described this third-party video on the Company’s social media as “In Motion.” It was never described as “under its own propulsion” or “powertrain driven.” >

 

 

So 'fully functioning' doesn't mean such mundane things as a motor working. And his initial denial of this being a 'pusher' is......well, B.S. That's exactly what a pusher is.

 

But they have an out; the phrase 'in motion.' I mean, it was in motion, right?

 

All in all, hilarious. Apparently Nikola's technological break through is: gravity.

 

Edit: This reminds me of a Valeant incident. Someone, at some point, noted a seemingly minor issue in their filings. The constant rub with Valeant was the issue of  growth  from their acquisitions after purchased. To mollify their critics, they would release tables showing said numbers. One of them went like this (from memory, the exact numbers are unimportant):

 

-This won't format well, so I'll describe it in narrative form-

 

They showed 4-5 subsidiary companies, bought a year ago, with subsequent growth as follows: -1%, 3%, 40%, 7%, 1%. At the bottom of the table, they summed it up as:

 

Average growth:10%.

 

But guess what. The sub with -1% growth dwarfed the others in size by multiples. In fact, a weighted growth figure would have been miserable, call it 1%.

 

I found this beyond appalling, and would have sold every share if i owned it.

 

FWIW it feels equal to the NKLA video fraud.

[JRM]

If the SEC, DOJ, etc hasn't taken any action again Tesla up to this point, I don't expect anything to happen to Nikola.  Solar tile reveal, robotaxis, funding secured, etc.  This is the golden age of fraud.  We have to protect our geniuses, after all.  Time to buy some deep OTM weekly call option lotto tickets.

[rkbabang]

I don't know why people keep comparing this to Tesla (a real company, with real factories, manufacturing real products that work and customers love, generating real revenues).  This comparison is what has led to the successful purportration of this fraud.  This is a company that doesn't have a product and likely never will, because the technologies it claims to have do not even exist.  There is quite a big difference and I'm not sure why that isn't easy to see.

Yes Musk has exaggerated and delivered things late, and the solar city thing was a bit sketchy, but comparing him to someone that has produced nothing but lies to separate investors from their cash to make himself rich seems a little bit disingenuous and sketchy to me.

 

[A Dhandho Investor]

I don't know why people keep comparing this to Tesla (a real company, with real factories, manufacturing real products that work and customers love, generating real revenues).  This comparison is what has led to the successful purportration of this fraud.  This is a company that doesn't have a product and likely never will, because the technologies it claims to have do not even exist.  There is quite a big difference and I'm not sure why that isn't easy to see.

Yes Musk has exaggerated and delivered things late, and the solar city thing was a bit sketchy, but comparing him to someone that has produced nothing but lies to separate investors from their cash to make himself rich seems a little bit disingenuous and sketchy to me.

 

Under my definition of fraud, lying about your products, their capabilities, your production capabilities, etc is fraudulent behavior. You don't have to search far to find instances where Tesla lied about those aspects:

 

Here you can find a post on the fake (it was fake, not a little bit sketchy) solar tile reveal Elon used to bailout Solarcity: https://mansionengineer.com/2019/02/04/elon-musk-tesla-and-the-solar-roof-tile-fraud-update/

 

Here you can find a blog post on the (according to Tesla) fully autonomous drive they did with a model X in 2016: https://dailykanban.com/2017/02/03/ca-dmv-report-sheds-new-light-misleading-tesla-autonomous-drive-video/

 

imo it's clear that Elon has crossed the line between over promising and fraudulent behavior multiple times in the past.

[arcube]

It is ok. There are some butt hurt people who need to vent.  :)

 

I don't know why people keep comparing this to Tesla (a real company, with real factories, manufacturing real products that work and customers love, generating real revenues).  This comparison is what has led to the successful purportration of this fraud.  This is a company that doesn't have a product and likely never will, because the technologies it claims to have do not even exist.  There is quite a big difference and I'm not sure why that isn't easy to see.

Yes Musk has exaggerated and delivered things late, and the solar city thing was a bit sketchy, but comparing him to someone that has produced nothing but lies to separate investors from their cash to make himself rich seems a little bit disingenuous and sketchy to me.

[ander]

Unfortunately NKLA seems like a train-wreck in slow motion. Was it just puffery or ambitious targets OR was it fraud? Interesting is that even if it was a fraud previously, with an inflated stock price they can create real value. The deal with GM - essentially handing over (or paying) $2.7 B to GM to make Badger trucks. Nikola engineers might understand hydrogen fuel cell technology well, but do they have a credible plan to get their costs to the projected level? I doubt any of the investors are doing that detailed diligence for something that's many years away. Maybe it doesn't matter and just like when TSLA was "pie-in-the-sky" and TSLA delivered a sizeable fraction of the dream. With a recency bias of positive experience with Tesla, why wouldn't corporates and investors dream the dream with NKLA. The biggest value for NKLA based on tangible accomplishments (which has been very few to date) is the currency that an expensive stock valuation affords to create real value. The risk seems to be to the downside.

[Liberty]

Smells like Theranos

[jschembs]

Smells like Theranos

 

Not until they add George Shultz to their board!

 

Although I'm not sure what to think about Jeff Ubben's presence on their board.

[Foreign Tuffett]

Hindenburg Research update

 

https://hindenburgresearch.com/nikola-response/

 

"Sam Alexander" has a good series of videos on YouTube about the company and the wild claims of Trevor Milton. Usually I find this sort of thing useless to investing analysis, but his breakdowns of the reality behind Milton's claims seem cogent.

 

https://www.youtube.com/c/SamAlexanderYouTube/videos

 

 

I agree that the company looks fraudulent. The crux of the issue is that Trevor Milton has made made statements that (a) he knew to be false at the time he made them and (b) very material/important. 

 

My favorite part of this whole saga is the solar panels on top of the HQ building. Apparently they don't exist? If they did exist then surely Nikola would have mentioned them in its response -- the obvious thing to do would have been to send someone up to the roof to photograph them. What a ridiculous, bald-faced lie to be caught in.

 

 

I am not associated in any way with Hindenburg Research or the "Sam Alexander" YouTube account

 

 

[rkbabang]

 

My favorite part of this whole saga is the solar panels on top of the HQ building. Apparently they don't exist? If they did exist then surely Nikola would have mentioned them in its response -- the obvious thing to do would have been to send someone up to the roof to photograph them. What a ridiculous, bald-faced lie to be caught in.

 

And what a stupid thing to lie about.  If you will lie about what is on the outside on the roof of your building that anyone can see, what are you lying about what goes on inside that people can't as easily see?

 

 

[Foreign Tuffett]

Thread from someone who was (is?) at the company:

 

 

One of that account's very first (June 19th) tweets was "I'm no longer associated with Nikola", so clearly they are an ex-insider (or someone claiming to be an ex-insider).

 

Upon further review, it seems probable that whoever is behind that account is (as they claim to be) an ex-insider. I don't know how else he would have multiple pictures of the Nikola One prototype in the process of being assembled.

 

https://twitter.com/InsiderNikola/status/1304050107927601157