By Michael Elkins
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) released a regulatory filing Monday which disclosed that the electric vehicle maker would be increasing its spending plan by $1 billion. The company now expects to spend between $6 billion and $8 billion this year and each of the next two years, up from its previous expenditure plan of $5 billion-$7 billion.
The company is preparing to ramp up production at its facilities in Texas and Berlin. The same facilities that that CEO Elon Musk referred to as “gigantic money furnaces” and claimed were "losing billions of dollars" as they struggle to raise output.
Despite Musk’s comments regarding the factories, the carmaker still managed to beat estimates for second-quarter earnings last week, and the CEO’s optimism about emerging from supply-chain challenges sent shares to their highest price since early May.
The regulatory filing also disclosed details of Tesla’s Bitcoin sales as-well-as another subpoena from securities regulators related to Musk’s 2018 tweet about taking Tesla private.
The company said it received the subpoena on June 13 from the US Securities and Exchange Commission about its compliance with an agreement to oversee Musk’s tweeting. The regulator had first subpoenaed Tesla in November related to the settlement. Tesla said it’s cooperating with regulatory and government requests.
Separately, Tesla's filing said it converted about 75% of its bitcoin holdings into fiat currency, gaining $64 million in the process while recording an impairment charge of $170 million in the first six months of 2022. Musk told analysts last week, after Tesla reported earnings, that Tesla sold Bitcoin to bolster its cash position after the Shanghai shutdowns due to Covid-19 earlier this year.