Elon's Most Bullshit Claims from Tesla Earnings

Welcome to the Schmoozeletter Blog. Your source for weekly water cooler wisecracks from the world of finance. If you have an opinion different than mine or a topic you want to hear about, let me know!

This week started off hot with a trade war with our closest geographical allies tanking Mr. Market for a manic Monday. Nothing says “pro-business” like a good old-fashioned trade war.

Just kidding.

Pause those tariffs. Maybe 30 days. Maybe we commandeer all of North America so everything is made in the USA. Who knows?

Avocados from State-Fifty-Two

We had the SEC oust their top evil regulator for his dastardly crimes of trying to regulate financial markets.

Makes me feel a bit sad for poor Sam Bankman-Fried. If he had just waited a few years to steal everyone’s money with crypto, it would be totally fine.

But let’s talk about a different billionaire who people love forking over their money to. Let’s talk about the ever-eloquent Elon Musk.

You might not know this, but between running an unofficial department of our country with unlimited access to our personal information, Elon is the executive chairman of the company formerly known as Twitter. He is also the founder of the artificial intelligence company xAI. He is also the CEO of SpaceX. He is also the CEO of Neuralink. He is also the CEO of The Boring Company. The guy must be one hell of a multitasker.

Oh, I almost forgot. He is also the CEO of Tesla.

TSLA just reported earnings, and they were bad. Although, I guess that depends on how you look at things.

On the one hand, you have logic, reason, hard data, numbers, facts, figures, stone-cold dollars and cents on a virtual piece of paper.

On the other hand, you have the pie-in-the-sky aspirations of a billionaire who has never been told no.

Let’s start with the numbers.

They missed on revenue. They missed on earnings. They were below expectations on every single financial metric.

They grew revenue by less than 1% for the year.

Their operating expenses grew by 18% for the year.

Their earnings per share are down by more than half compared to last year.

Their “Automotive sales” are down 5% for the year.

For a car company (am I allowed to call them a car company?)... that’s bad.

Their capital expenditures are up 27% for the year.

At the same time, they are trading at a crazy high valuation.

They are the eighth most expensive company in the world by market cap.

They are at a price-to-earnings ratio for the past twelve months of over 150.

(Over 30 is considered expensive.)

To put it in perspective, for the price of buying the entire company of Tesla, you could instead buy Costco, Netflix, and Coca-Cola... combined.

TSLA’s net income for the year was $7B.

COST, NFLX, and KO combined have an annual net income of about $27B.

But none of the real numbers matter. All that matters is what Elon says.

The stock traded up when all these horrendous numbers came out because Elon went on one of his classic Alex Jones-esque rants during the earnings call. So this is:

Elon’s Most Bullshit Claims from Tesla Earnings

5. “I know people said, well, Elon is the boy who cried wolf like several times but I'm telling you there's a damn wolf this time.”

People are so mean to the egregiously enthusiastic Elon. Why would any cotton-headed ninny muggins say such audacious things about him spewing bullshit and not backing it up?

Could it be his claim that he would put a man on Mars in ten years... fourteen years ago?

In case you were wondering, zero of Elon’s twelve hundred companies have put anything on Mars, let alone a person.

Could it be his completely false claim that he would fight mixed martial arts enthusiast and generally in-shape human being Mark Zuckerberg?

Give me Zuck in that one.

Perhaps it could be that... uh, everything with Tesla is always delayed?

Anyway. I’m sure this time is different. THERE IS A DAMN WOLF THIS TIME!

4. “like, setting up for what I think will be an epic 2026 and a ridiculous '27 and '28. Ridiculously good... Things are really going to go ballistic next year, and really ballistic in '27 and '28.”

That Elon is so relatable. Gone are the days when CEOs were supposed to be buttoned up and give boring forecasts based on actual numbers.

It’s no wonder Elon is a crypto guy.

We might as well put “bro” at the end of these sentences.

“Mr. CEO, what do you expect for the next few years?”

“Epic, bro. It’s gonna be ballistic, my dude. Absolutely stoked, homeslice. We’re gonna be shredding gnars and slinging cars, ya feel me?”

3. “Optimus has the potential to be north of $10 trillion in revenue… even $500 billion training compute in that situation would be quite a good deal.”

If you watch enough Shark Tank, you see the entrepreneur with the perfect product. They say it is life-changing, and everyone will have one, and they’ve spent some astronomical sum on R&D, focus groups, and product testing to make sure it’s so perfectly perfect that it’ll never be out-perfected.

The sharks say, “Great, what are your sales?”

“Oh, well, I didn’t sell any. I was too busy perfecting it.”

That entrepreneur gets laughed out of the tank.

I wonder what my girl Barbara Corcoran would say about a $10 trillion revenue projection against $0 in sales.

Just a casual ten trillion.

Just double what the entire United States of America brings in, eh?

Elon strikes me as more of the “idea man” and less of the “numbers guy” for his organizations. Very similar to another corporate juggernaut.

2. “I see a path for Tesla being the most valuable company in the world by far… There is a path where Tesla is worth more than the next top five companies combined…. it is an achievable path.”

The top five companies are Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. All of those companies have either bought back shares or paid dividends—in finance lingo, “returned capital” to their shareholders in some way.

Here is a fun chart of Tesla’s Return of Capital:

TSLA investors better hope the valuation goes up that high because Elon sure ain’t paying you back any other way.

1. “There is no company in the world that is as good at real-world Al as Tesla. I don't even know who's in second place. Like, you say like who's in second place for real-world Al. I would need a very big telescope to see them.”

You cannot reach higher levels of bullshit than this statement right here. We’ve reached max capacity, and the bullshit-odometer is about to break.