Replies to post #11592 on Saleen Automotive, Inc. (fka SLNN)

[FredVestor]

Must be a great world to live in where revenue decrease and expense decrease have no correlation.

[TARKA2]

PUMA and VFIN in action, bad times. Imo

[AutoInvestor]

The larger issue is that the COGs = 89%
and Gross Margin is only 11% for 2014 vs 84% and
16% the previous year. This (5%) loss of profit indicates that Saleen has pricing issues and too much product cost (probably too much content added to the car and rising vendor part pricing due to the risk of making parts for a bankrupt customer (Saleen) who does not pay it's bills.

No way any Automotive company can survive of 11%---16% Gross Margin because the cash flow is not sufficient to fund new tooling and continuous product launches.

Most Automotive financial models strive for 35--40% GM with year one having higher pricing than succeeding model years. This P&L is exactly what I expected to see. The White Label Mustang priced at $42K cannot possibly generate any profit. The chassis cost = $33K + all the parts and labor Saleen adds to the car must be at least $12K. With no consideration for overhead expenses I estimate that Saleen is losing at least ($3K) per vehicle at the Gross Margin level. Just cost out the BOM for that car.

I bet a majority of the approximately 63 car deposits totaling $1.7M that Saleen has yet to tune and deliver are
White Label Mustangs. This means that not only is Saleen $1.0M short on the inventory it needs to build these cars, but even if they build them they will not get paid enough to cover the cost of production.
This also means that the Ponzi scheme of having to collect more and more deposits to make cars
(ordered long ago) is about to hit critical mass and cave in the company with a mountain of law suits from very angry customers. This is about to get very ugly.