15 ms·

Interesting how even after this was announced, their market cap is over $5b (https://www.google.com/finance/quote/NKLA:NASDAQ https://www.google.com/finance/quo

Interesting how even after this was announced, their market cap is over $5b (https://www.google.com/finance/quote/NKLA:NASDAQ https://www.google.com/finance/quote/NKLA:NASDAQ) in the same ballpark as established car companies like Mazda (https://www.google.com/finance/quote/MZDAF:OTCMKTS https://www.google.com/finance/quote/MZDAF:OTCMKTS)

imglorp 5y ago
What? How? Is there any potential upside at all, unless it's another pump and dump or short squeeze game?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  I also think it’s overvalued, but the company distanced itself from the criminal founder long ago. The company also has about 3/4 of a billion dollars in the bank. It’s basically an extremely well funded startup with a bit of a head start on the EV market at this point.
  - zippergz 5y ago
    With the number of companies (from Tesla to Chevrolet) with large volumes actual EVs sold and on the road, I don't see how Nikola has a head start?
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      Popular opinion around EV tech is approaching PowerPC-era Mac apologists. "Yes, it's less performant, but it has {insert special, unmeasurable and/or unproven magic here}."
      - jjoonathan 5y ago
        (Oh, this is fun! I haven't done this in a looooong time!) Unmeasurable? Like, you would have had to run an actual editing, encoding, rendering, or simulation task to measure it, but you only had the skills to read how many GHz were on the box, so you personally were unable to measure it? I suppose I'd have to hand you that one. How well did the "clock speed is all that matters" rhetoric age over the last decade? When was the last time that Intel's claimed perf boost wasn't IPC driven? My favorite part of this story is fifteen years later, when Intel's CEO says: We have to deliver better products to the PC ecosystem than any possible thing that a lifestyle company in Cupertino makes LOOOOOOOL! Whipped at CPU design (and manufacture -- who pays for those new kingmaking TSMC nodes?) by a company that doesn't even specialize in it. Whipped so badly that they have to admit it, even to themselves. Ouch!
      - simondotau 5y ago
        That's not really a good analogy. Every interesting technology has its share of unhinged fanpeople. And it's not interesting to judge a technology by the behaviour of its fans. There's only one real Achilles heel of EV tech and it's a big one—the limited supply (and the consequent high price) of batteries. If there was an unlimited supply of battery cells at a low price, EVs would be generally superior to comparable ICE vehicles in core objective metrics. There are numerous secondary limitations of EVs, such as the availability of charging facilities where they are needed. But this class of problem is directly aligned with uptake. They solve themselves as more EVs are adopted and market share increases.
    - tenpies 5y ago
      Nikola is probably at the same stage - if not ahead - of Tesla when it comes to trucks. How much would a Tesla with only prototype Semis and a factory under construction be valued at? About $5 BB actually sounds quite right, maybe even undervalued depending on cultist zealotry and SEC enforcement levels.
      - detaro 5y ago
        Has Nikola prototypes that can actually drive by now? From a quick look, there seems to be suspiciously little mention of that, despite there being a clear motivation for them to widely promote that after the video scandal broke last year?
      - frockington1 5y ago
        Ford is the obvious leader for electric trucks, what does Nikola have that For doesn't?
      - yourenotsmart 5y ago
        > Nikola is probably at the same stage - if not ahead - of Tesla when it comes to trucks. See, this level of misinformation is a big reason the company even exists yet. Tesla has been selling EVs for years now, and has prototyped their own trucks based on their own existing drivetrain, battery pack IP, software. What Nikola has, when we remove the fraudulent claims, is a prototype built by Iveco, with zero substantial IP from Nikola. To say Nikola is at the same stage of Tesla is not even wrong. They've never built a working truck in their entire existence. Their "stage" is at a super position from nothing to infinity, as long as you don't look, and no one has ever been allowed to look, at the risk of getting a dead cat.
      - bagels 5y ago
        There is no way this is true. Tesla has functional factories for batteries for one.
    - xkjkls 5y ago
      Nikola has focused on some substantially different segments of the EV market than they have. Nikola has focused on the trucking market, rather than the consumer car market, which at least is different from many of its competitors
      - rhizome 5y ago
        Trucking you can still kill people. You know who I'd like to hear about? The company making self-loading and unloading shipping containers. Now that, I bet, is an achievable goal.
  - adventured 5y ago
    > I also think it’s overvalued, but the company distanced itself from the criminal founder long ago. September 2020 is not long ago in terms of distancing yourself from the foundations of an enormous fraud.
- pram 5y ago
  Given this market, the fact that it’s wholly fraudulent is incredibly bullish
  - morpheos137 5y ago
    Yeah actually deliving a product that sells is such legacy thinking...we badly need a hard crash to clear out the deadwood and hucksters in the economy.
    - anigbrowl 5y ago
      I think relying on the market itself to do this is a terrible mistake.
      - morpheos137 5y ago
        The unsustainable economy we are in currently is less a function of market failure and more a function of excessive government interference, globalisation and technological plateauing. In a race to the bottom everybody loses. The industrial revolution took place in the context of cheap energy, new science and engineering, expensive labor and higher interest rates. Since perhaps the 1970s-1990s all these trends have been reversing.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
anyfactor 5y ago
Well... remember the hertz saga?
- handmodel 5y ago
  Hertz got out of bankruptcy because they have a (somewhat) profitable business model and a lot of assets they sold off. I don't think that applies here - at least not without massive growth that seems outside the realm of possibility.
  - ArnoVW 5y ago
    If I remember the analysis of Matt Levine correctly, they have a lot cars, and even if the beginning of Covid was rough on them as ppl traveled less, the price of 2nd hand cars went up 6 months after the that and they were able to bounce back.
chirau 5y ago
I am more surprised that Mazda's market cap is only $5B. That's just about the same as Duolingo. Interesting times we live in, really.
- mbesto 5y ago
  One company has endless growth potential, 80% gross margins, and every new customer served has marginal cost implications to the business. The other one does not. I think you can guess which one is which. For the record - I'm just as skeptical as many others are about tech valuations, but there is a legitimate reason to value companies they way we do, it's just not always a "its tech, so it has to be valued at BLAH", there's a lot of nuance to these businesses.
  - dh5 5y ago
    One company has also lied about "nearly all aspects of the business," so maybe its 5B valuation is based on not quite legitimate things.
    - slymon99 5y ago
      I assume this is a comparison to duolingo, not Nikola.
  - gamblor956 5y ago
    One company has endless growth potential, 80% gross margins, and every new customer served has marginal cost implications to the business. Mazda? Because according to their SEC filings Duolingo has pretty limited growth potential, increasing losses (or in other words, negative gross margins), and they spend a significant amount of money to attract each new paying customer. They only approach 80% gross margins if you use fantasy unicorn accounting instead of GAAP.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - 5y ago
fukmbas 5y ago
Proof that we are in another tech bubble

imglorp 5y ago

What? How? Is there any potential upside at all, unless it's another pump and dump or short squeeze game?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
I also think it’s overvalued, but the company distanced itself from the criminal founder long ago. The company also has about 3/4 of a billion dollars in the bank. It’s basically an extremely well funded startup with a bit of a head start on the EV market at this point.
- zippergz 5y ago
  With the number of companies (from Tesla to Chevrolet) with large volumes actual EVs sold and on the road, I don't see how Nikola has a head start?
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Popular opinion around EV tech is approaching PowerPC-era Mac apologists. "Yes, it's less performant, but it has {insert special, unmeasurable and/or unproven magic here}."
    - jjoonathan 5y ago
      (Oh, this is fun! I haven't done this in a looooong time!) Unmeasurable? Like, you would have had to run an actual editing, encoding, rendering, or simulation task to measure it, but you only had the skills to read how many GHz were on the box, so you personally were unable to measure it? I suppose I'd have to hand you that one. How well did the "clock speed is all that matters" rhetoric age over the last decade? When was the last time that Intel's claimed perf boost wasn't IPC driven? My favorite part of this story is fifteen years later, when Intel's CEO says: We have to deliver better products to the PC ecosystem than any possible thing that a lifestyle company in Cupertino makes LOOOOOOOL! Whipped at CPU design (and manufacture -- who pays for those new kingmaking TSMC nodes?) by a company that doesn't even specialize in it. Whipped so badly that they have to admit it, even to themselves. Ouch!
    - simondotau 5y ago
      That's not really a good analogy. Every interesting technology has its share of unhinged fanpeople. And it's not interesting to judge a technology by the behaviour of its fans. There's only one real Achilles heel of EV tech and it's a big one—the limited supply (and the consequent high price) of batteries. If there was an unlimited supply of battery cells at a low price, EVs would be generally superior to comparable ICE vehicles in core objective metrics. There are numerous secondary limitations of EVs, such as the availability of charging facilities where they are needed. But this class of problem is directly aligned with uptake. They solve themselves as more EVs are adopted and market share increases.
  - tenpies 5y ago
    Nikola is probably at the same stage - if not ahead - of Tesla when it comes to trucks. How much would a Tesla with only prototype Semis and a factory under construction be valued at? About $5 BB actually sounds quite right, maybe even undervalued depending on cultist zealotry and SEC enforcement levels.
    - detaro 5y ago
      Has Nikola prototypes that can actually drive by now? From a quick look, there seems to be suspiciously little mention of that, despite there being a clear motivation for them to widely promote that after the video scandal broke last year?
    - frockington1 5y ago
      Ford is the obvious leader for electric trucks, what does Nikola have that For doesn't?
    - yourenotsmart 5y ago
      > Nikola is probably at the same stage - if not ahead - of Tesla when it comes to trucks. See, this level of misinformation is a big reason the company even exists yet. Tesla has been selling EVs for years now, and has prototyped their own trucks based on their own existing drivetrain, battery pack IP, software. What Nikola has, when we remove the fraudulent claims, is a prototype built by Iveco, with zero substantial IP from Nikola. To say Nikola is at the same stage of Tesla is not even wrong. They've never built a working truck in their entire existence. Their "stage" is at a super position from nothing to infinity, as long as you don't look, and no one has ever been allowed to look, at the risk of getting a dead cat.
    - bagels 5y ago
      There is no way this is true. Tesla has functional factories for batteries for one.
  - xkjkls 5y ago
    Nikola has focused on some substantially different segments of the EV market than they have. Nikola has focused on the trucking market, rather than the consumer car market, which at least is different from many of its competitors
    - rhizome 5y ago
      Trucking you can still kill people. You know who I'd like to hear about? The company making self-loading and unloading shipping containers. Now that, I bet, is an achievable goal.
- adventured 5y ago
  > I also think it’s overvalued, but the company distanced itself from the criminal founder long ago. September 2020 is not long ago in terms of distancing yourself from the foundations of an enormous fraud.
pram 5y ago
Given this market, the fact that it’s wholly fraudulent is incredibly bullish
- morpheos137 5y ago
  Yeah actually deliving a product that sells is such legacy thinking...we badly need a hard crash to clear out the deadwood and hucksters in the economy.
  - anigbrowl 5y ago
    I think relying on the market itself to do this is a terrible mistake.
    - morpheos137 5y ago
      The unsustainable economy we are in currently is less a function of market failure and more a function of excessive government interference, globalisation and technological plateauing. In a race to the bottom everybody loses. The industrial revolution took place in the context of cheap energy, new science and engineering, expensive labor and higher interest rates. Since perhaps the 1970s-1990s all these trends have been reversing.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

anyfactor 5y ago

Well... remember the hertz saga?

handmodel 5y ago
Hertz got out of bankruptcy because they have a (somewhat) profitable business model and a lot of assets they sold off. I don't think that applies here - at least not without massive growth that seems outside the realm of possibility.
- ArnoVW 5y ago
  If I remember the analysis of Matt Levine correctly, they have a lot cars, and even if the beginning of Covid was rough on them as ppl traveled less, the price of 2nd hand cars went up 6 months after the that and they were able to bounce back.

chirau 5y ago

I am more surprised that Mazda's market cap is only $5B. That's just about the same as Duolingo. Interesting times we live in, really.

mbesto 5y ago
One company has endless growth potential, 80% gross margins, and every new customer served has marginal cost implications to the business. The other one does not. I think you can guess which one is which. For the record - I'm just as skeptical as many others are about tech valuations, but there is a legitimate reason to value companies they way we do, it's just not always a "its tech, so it has to be valued at BLAH", there's a lot of nuance to these businesses.
- dh5 5y ago
  One company has also lied about "nearly all aspects of the business," so maybe its 5B valuation is based on not quite legitimate things.
  - slymon99 5y ago
    I assume this is a comparison to duolingo, not Nikola.
- gamblor956 5y ago
  One company has endless growth potential, 80% gross margins, and every new customer served has marginal cost implications to the business. Mazda? Because according to their SEC filings Duolingo has pretty limited growth potential, increasing losses (or in other words, negative gross margins), and they spend a significant amount of money to attract each new paying customer. They only approach 80% gross margins if you use fantasy unicorn accounting instead of GAAP.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - 5y ago

fukmbas 5y ago

Proof that we are in another tech bubble