electrek reports:

Tesla’s (TSLA) accounting practices are raising red flags as a new report from the Financial Times shows that $1.4 billion is missing.

Many Tesla shorts and detractors have questioned Tesla’s accounting for years, but they have never gained much traction – until now.

Today, the Financial Times has released a new report pointing to a $1.4 billion gap in assets:

Compare Tesla’s capital expenditure in the last six months of 2024 to its valuation of the assets that money was spent on, and $1.4bn appears to have gone astray.

The article points out that Tesla reports having spent $6.3 billion on “purchases of property and equipment excluding finance leases, net of sales” in the second half of 2024, while property, plant, and equipment rose by only $4.9 billion in that period.

Accounting experts agree that, in most cases, the capex number matches closely to the increase in gross PP&E, but some factors can make a difference: sales or impairments of assets, foreign exchange, etc.

However, Tesla didn’t report any significant enough change in the usual suspects to justify the difference.

The report also points to other red flags, like Tesla claiming to sit on $37 billion in cash and yet it raised $6 billion in new debt last year. [Continue reading…]