Financial Times apologizes for falsely accusing Tesla of missing $1.4 billion in financial report

An article in the Financial Times made headlines when the author claimed to have identified $1.4 billion missing in Tesla’s recent financial reports.

Tesla had lost a substantial amount of value last week when Dan McCrum piled on by asking how the company’s accounting had apparently made $1.4 billion disappear. After the accusations were published Wednesday, other outlets pounced to spread the apparent anomaly and further damage Tesla.

‘Mea culpa. … Tesla’s balance-sheet mismatch may have a benign explanation.’

“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,” McCrum had written.

The Financial Times reached out to Tesla for comment but did not receive a response.

By Tuesday, McCrum posted an update explaining that he had made a mistake in reading the financial reports from the company.

“Mea culpa,” he wrote, acknowledging his fault.

“The question of why a cash-rich company raised new debt in both of the last two years still stands, as does the trajectory of that cash balance if car sales continue to crater,” he added. “But Tesla’s balance-sheet mismatch may have a benign explanation.”

McCrum goes on to say that the discrepancy was easily explained by allocations of cash flows to other operations and that helpful accountants reached out to the author to explain the complexities of reading financial statements.

Failed Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz had mocked Tesla for its stock slide to $225 a share. It has since risen by 27.5% to $287 a share on Tuesday.

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