Tesla plans to use part of the proceeds to accelerate repayment of a $452.4 million loan from the federal government. The loan, made under the Department of Energy’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program, was made in 2009 and had an original repayment period of 10 years. Tesla had said earlier that it would pay off the loan in five years.

Tesla’s chairman and CEO Elon Musk will purchase up to 1.08 million shares of the new offering. Musk is also the chairman of SolarCity Corp. (NASDAQ: SCTY).

Opinion appears to be pretty evenly divided between those who believe that Tesla will continue to grow and those who believe that the company is really just another disaster waiting to happen. The company plans to reach production of 500 Model S sedans a week this year, a number that would barely dent the 15.5 million new cars expected to be sold in the United States this year. Naysayers see that as a precursor of doom. True believers expect Tesla to introduce an all-electric car that sells for half the price of the Model S within a few years, which would allow the company to cast a wider net for customers.

In the premarket this morning, Tesla’s shares are up about 2.5%, at $94.54 in a 52-week range of $25.52 to $97.12.

The company plans to use the proceeds from the purchase to fund capex at its Hycroft Mine near Winnemucca, Nevada, and for general corporate purposes. The mine is expected to produce 225,000 to 250,000 ounces of gold in 2013 and 1.5 million to 1.8 million ounces of silver. Production will be heavier in the second half of the year, and full-year cash costs are expected in the range of $565 to $585 per ounce of gold. Silver is produced on a byproduct basis.

Needless to say, existing shareholders were underwhelmed by the announcement. Allied Nevada’s shares closed at $11.83 last night, so today’s sale shaved about 10% off existing shareholders’ value.

Shares are trading at $10.37 in the late morning, down 12.3% in a 52-week range of $10.20 to $41.02.

On a Friday afternoon dividend interview I did with Mario Bartoromo on CNBC, she asked me about Apple’s ability to significantly return capital to shareholders. The issue that I brought up is that Apple cannot get to all of its cash because it has billions upon billions of dollars housed overseas in Europe and Asia where its sales are taking place.

Apple was not specific about its intended use of the proceeds in the filing. It simply said, “When we offer to sell a particular series of debt securities, we will describe the specific terms and conditions of the series in a prospectus supplement to this prospectus. We will also indicate in the applicable prospectus supplement whether the general terms and conditions described in this prospectus apply to the series of debt securities. The terms and conditions of the debt securities of a series may be different in one or more respects from the terms and conditions described below. If so, those differences will be described in the applicable prospectus supplement.”

Apple event went on to say, “We may offer the debt securities from time to time in as many distinct series as we may determine. The indenture does not limit the amount of debt securities that we may issue under that indenture.”

The reality is that Apple should not need to raise capital, but it would be taxed heavily if it repatriated the billions of dollars of capital kept overseas. This is the first wave of an attempt to raise capital so that the company can more rapidly fund its dividends and share buybacks out to 2015.

Apple shares are up 3.3% at $431.11 on the day against a 52-week trading range of $385.10 to $705.07.

FULL SEC FILING

Earlier this month, Sinclair agreed to acquire Fisher Communications Inc. (NASDAQ: FSCI) for approximately $373 million in cash. Including this acquisition, Sinclair broadcast empire will reach more than a third of all U.S. television households.

Today’s offering includes a 30-day option from some selling stockholders for an additional 2.1 million shares. Net proceeds from the offering will be used to fund pending and future potential acquisitions and for general corporate purposes.

The number of shares in the offering equals about 17% of Sinclair’s total number of shares outstanding.

Shares of Sinclair have jumped more than 16% in the two weeks since the announcement of the Fisher acquisition and more than 35% in the past 30 days. The stock has more than doubled since the beginning of the year.

Shares are down about 1.8% this morning, at $27.00 in a 52-week range of $7.82 to $28.53.

The chief beneficiary of the offering will be KKR & Co. (NYSE: KKR) through its Bucks Holding affiliate. Last September KKR and Bucks Holding sold 29.6 million shares of Dollar General stock, and the company repurchased another 4.7 million shares in a $250 million buyback. Bucks Holding’s stake in the company will drop from 16.5% to 7.5%, not including the underwriter’s option, and 6.5% including the option.

Among other sellers are five of Dollar General’s executive officers, none of whom owns more than 1% of the company’s stock before the offering.

No date or offering price has been set for the sale.

Dollar General’s shares closed at $52.22 last night in a 52-week range of $39.73 to $56.04. Shares are down about 2.5% in premarket trading this morning, at $50.91.

Sanchez also announced this morning the private placement of $175 million in newly created Series B preferred stock and its intention to offer additional preferred shares up to an amount totaling $250 million. Today’s offering is expected to yield net proceeds of $168.4 million and if the company raises the offering, net proceeds are expected to reach $241 million.

The company will use some of the proceeds from the sale of preferred shares to pay for today’s announced acquisition. The preferred shares will pay an annual dividend of $3.25 and carry a liquidation preference value of $50 a share. Preferred shares may be converted to common stock at an initial conversion rate of 2.3370 shares of common stock for each preferred share. Sanchez may not redeem the preferred shares, but has the option to convert them to common stock under certain conditions on or after April 6, 2018.

In announcing its acquisition of the Eagle Ford assets, Sanchez said it had obtained financing commitments of $325 million. The acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of this year.

Shares of Sanchez are up about 0.8% in the premarket this morning, at $19.60 in a 52-week range of $16.37 to $25.37.

The offering included only shares from some of the company’s largest shareholders, and Yandex did not share in the proceeds. The share price slide failed to take into account Yandex’s cash hoard of nearly $1 billion, which several analysts were quick to point out. At least one analyst thinks that Yandex will use some of that cash for a special dividend.

Yandex stock is essentially flat to its price of a year ago, while shares of Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) are up 53% and Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) shares are 30% higher. Only China’s Baidu Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU) of the major search engines/portals is down. As of mid-February, Yandex searches outnumbered searches on Bing, the search engine from Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), and the Russian service became the world’s fourth largest search provider.

The price target for Yandex is around $31 and shares are trading at $23.52 in the first half hour this morning, after last night’s nosedive. The 52-week range on the stock is $16.65 to $28.14.

Trulia expects net proceeds of about $100.3 million, or up to $115.4 million if the underwriters exercise their purchase option. The company plans to use the proceeds for working capital and general corporate purposes, and expects to use “some or all of such net proceeds to acquire or invest in complementary businesses, products, services, technologies, or other assets.”

The competition in the online real estate sector is fierce, with Trulia, Zillow Inc. (NASDAQ: Z) and Move Inc. (NASDAQ: MOVE), which operates the Realtor.com site, all competing for eyeballs. Move announced a redesign of the Realtor.com website this morning and is promoting the speedy updates to its listings that are available through its smartphone apps. Zillow, too, has beefed up its mobile apps, and this is the likeliest target for Trulia’s hoped-for new cash.

Shares of Trulia are down about 1.3% this morning, at $30.06 in a 52-week range of $14.69 to $38.22.

The cancer-target company sold 2,200,000 shares of its common stock in an underwritten registered public offering at $94.20 per share. This represents about 3.1% of the shares of common stock currently outstanding. What is amazing is that the shares sold went off at yesterday’s closing price rather than at a discount. After such a rise, perhaps the company should have considered selling more stock to raise even more cash.

Unlike some other offerings in which insiders cash out, all the shares sold were by the company. It is also interesting that the company used only J.P. Morgan Securities as the sole manager for the offering. This would have been an opportunity to go out and get more analyst coverage. Note that compared to the $94.20 as of yesterday’s close, the consensus analyst price target is only $89.90 from Thomson Reuters.

Pharmacyclics has granted J.P. Morgan a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 330,000 shares of common stock to cover overallotments. The gross proceeds are just over $238 million before fees, discounts and commissions, and Pharmacyclics had a market cap of almost $6.8 billion as of yesterday’s close.

The re-start of the blast furnace is attributed to a slight increase in demand from European customers. The furnace was shut down last April for maintenance and never re-started. The company invested about $10.5 million in the furnace during the shutdown. This is good news.

Proceeds from the stock and note issuance will be used to reduce the company’s net debt. At the end of 2012, ArcelorMittal expects to report net debt of about $22 billion. The company hopes to lower that total to $17 billion by the end of June 2013, with an ultimate target of $15 billion in debt.

The dollar amount of the offer for the Alabama steel mill was not disclosed, but a report at MarketWatch estimated that the mill is worth €1.5 to €2 billion (about $1.96 to $2.6 billion). ArcelorMittal noted that if it wins the bidding for the Alabama mill it can still meet its $17 billion debt target.

Investors, apparently, aren’t so sure about all this. The company’s shares are down 4.2% today, at $16.79 in a 52-week range of $13.28 to $23.62.