Free Cash Flow -- Accounting 101 -- Nothing About The Bakken -- August 3, 2018

Wow, this is so cool.

I'm learning more about free cash flow .... once upon a time I had not even heard of "free cash flow."

Some months ago when covering Tesla, "free cash flow" was said to be "X." But later, we found out that "X" was "free cash flow from operations." Later, we learned that Tesla's free cash flow was even worse when CFI was taken into account.

• CFO: cash flow from operations -- very negative for Tesla
• CFI: cash from servicing debt -- very, very negative for Tesla and that will be true for quite some time going forward.

It appears the "initial"2Q18 number given by Tesla was CFO only. I don't know. But I've seen at least two numbers for 2Q18 Tesla's free cash flow -- and in none of the cases was it stated whether it's CFO, CFI, or CFT.

For example, from Bloomberg:

Tesla burned through about $740 million during the three months ended in June, a better showing than the roughly $900 million analysts were expecting.

"$740 million a better showing than roughly $900 million analysts were expecting." LOL. Seriously. Tesla spikes almost 20%. AAPL spikes 5%?

Apparently $740 million was so much less than $900 million, shares surged about $50 (50/290 = 17%).
 
But that $740 million -- CFO or CFT?

I also saw a negative free cash flow of about $429 million for Tesla 2Q18-- don't remember where that was, but I do know that CFO, CFI, or CFT was not specified.

So, now this, over at y charts:

My hunch is that this number is CFO + CFI = CFT.