4mo ago

Tesla’s remarkably bad quarter is even worse than it looks

www.theatlantic.com

Tesla’s Remarkably Bad Quarter Is Even Worse Than It Looks

Yesterday evening, Tesla reported first-quarter earnings for 2025, and they were abysmal: Profits dropped 71% from the same time last year.

Musk sounded bitter on the call with investors that followed, blaming the company’s misfortune on protesters who have raged at Tesla dealerships around the world over his role running DOGE and his ardent support of far-right politicians.

“The protests that you’ll see out there, they’re very organized. They’re paid for,” he said, without evidence.

Non-paywall link

96 comments

He should be totally overjoyed, not bitter.
The current stock price, despite YTD of -36%, is still way over any kind of realistic valuation. And by that I mean orders of magnitude off.
Price to earnings makes it still look like a very, very, very hopeful/optimistic startup in the development phase, rather than a withering, fake luxury, niche automaker facing boycotts and being "run" by a full-blown Nazi that everyone hates.
If you still own Tesla shares, get the fuck out of it now. The recent collapse is nothing.
- Tesla stock went up after the earnings.
  What a fucking joke.
  
  Based on him saying he was leaving the deeply unpopular and public slashing of the federal government.
  The market seriously thinks Tesla will be selling well again when hes not wearing MAGA hats so publicly.
- The problem is it's in the S & P 500 and a lot of ETFs have it packaged in as a result. If pensions find managers start dropping TSLA....
- I read that hedgefunds use Tesla as colatteral and can't let it go down much more. Don't know if true but pretty interesting. If enough people sell they can't keep the price up and fun times will begin which I hope for.
  
  Collapsing hedge funds would be the icing on the cake.
- The current stock price, despite YTD of -36%, is still way over any kind of realistic valuation. And by that I mean orders of magnitude off.
  It is a stock only in the name. For all intents and purposes, it is a crypto memecoin.
- if tsla dropped 71% (more) like its profits have, it would still way over
- Agreed. Their P/E ratio is still in dreamland. Look at the P/E ratio of any other car company and compare to this dumpster fire of a company.
  People like fElon say they aren't like other car companies; they are a "technology" company. I say that's bullshit.
“The protests that you’ll see out there, they’re very organized. They’re paid for,” he said, without evidence.
No. When you do a double seig-heil on national television we protest for free.
- The ones I've been to have been the least organized protests I've seen. There was no announcement on www.mobilize.us, people just showed up on Saturdays at 12. I couldn't actually find any organizers, there weren't anyone with mega phones or anything. I wanted to thank them, but it looks like it was largly just people having the same idea.
- You have a typo in your Nazigruß. I'm not going to correct it because I don't want to write out those dirty words.
  
  Germans mostly call it Hitlergruß.
  
  I was wondering about that, but I have the same problem I wasn't willing to plug it into google to check the spelling.
  Thanks for letting me know.
Nobody's got to pay me to convince me Musk is a nazi piece of shit, he did that all on his own.
- he did the salute twice to emphasize his support;.
Where do I submit my paid protester invoice?
- Submit expense reports here:
  
  Where do I get my member card?
- I'm still waiting for my doge check.
  Every accusation is a confession.
You can bullshit the American people that they are paid protestors, but if any of his investors buy that line of bullshit, they deserve to lose all their money.
- TSLA is around 1.5% of broad market index funds, like S&P 500, so if you've taken the general advice to put your 401k or other savings into index funds, you own TSLA.
  
  People with $3500 of TSLA aren't really who I'm talking about here. You have a technical point, but it's not really what I was getting at.
  
  Not if you moved to foreign indexes.
  
  I haven't checked yet but I spent my evening last night completely rebalancing my 401k and IRA to international stocks and municipal bonds.
  If all goes well, my 401k should be executed by now. My IRA I have to do myself but that should be done tomorrow.
Shorting TSLA is my favorite thing right now. The one tiny bright point in my life.
- Are there any ETFs that I can put money into that short Tesla for mentally handicapped retail investors like me? For example, inverse REITs are an easy way to short the housing market.
  
  TSLQ
  But, I don’t think it’s smart. Holding this for more than a day or two is irresponsible. You capture more risk on the up days then you will gain on the down days of the underlying ticker.
  Instead, invest in a business you expect to grow. Just ignore the failing ones.
  
  Unfortunately no. There is the Bear Cave though. https://thebearcave.substack.com/
It is a mistake to lead off with "here's the thing about Elon Musk," because there's LOADS of things with Musk, but in particular. Let's set aside how ludicrous it is to claim that the protesters are being funded by some outside source, because sure that's worked in the past, and of course it's the Democrats, those notably cash-positive people, who are doing it.
Elon Musk is THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD. If anyone could beat a theoretical money-backed protest against him, it would be him. Just offer to beat the offer of anyone funding the protesters. That's it! If they're only in it for the money then the protest would fold immediately.
More than that, Musk has literally paid people to vote in his favor in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race! The levels of hypocrisy are so staggeringly great that it risks materializing actual hippopotamuses on his properties.
The world would be better without you, Elon. And you’re such a sad little shit you’re probably reading these comments hoping someone will like you.
- Kill yourself, Elon. Everyone will be sorry then.
  
  as someone who will definitely be sorry if elon kills himself i would really like elon to kill himself just to prove that i indeed will be sorry
- Still over here hoping his penis pump explodes and burns him to death from the dick up.
Bruh, don't do shit that causes protests then.
This guy was a liberal environmentalist sweetheart and then he decided he was going to say fuck you to his main customer base and throw his ilk in with Trump. This is all on you Musky-boy.
Worth bearing in mind that EV sales increased something like 24% in Europe from last year, so Tesla (lack of) sales have to be adjusted for that. Even if the number of cars they sold had remained static it would still be troubling.
- europe has so many ev’s that cheaper than tesla and with better build quality and service than tesla
  and 100% less naziism
Don't let up, this is just nothing to him. Make it painful.
- Never stop shaming and making fun of this hateful loser until the day he dies... and then piss on his grave after he dies.
  
  Piss is usually sterile, and is therefore too good for him. Shit or vomit is far more appropriate.
Maybe he should spearhead a supertruck or an xcar project to save the company. Wow those xonsumers with a jetson car theme or something. Cheaply built but somehow luxury segment. It's Idiot proof!
- I've been calling the cybertruck the Homer since it's release. So apt.
- Maybe he should make a submarine and go see the Titanic
- Made in China, no doubt.
We haven't heard much from him over the past few weeks, and now we get this earnings call, and it is far worse than expected. He's known this was coming, and has been laying low, probably hoping things will improve some before making what he knows will be a disastrous earnings call. Its the equivalent of watching your diet 3 days before a doctor's appointment, hoping your weight gain and cholesterol increase won't be as bad as you know it is.
Also, it's a safe bet that his board of directors is livid, and that he has been ordered by his board to get back to work, or be removed as CEO of Tesla.
There is almost certainly a shareholder class-action suit brewing over his reckless and irresponsible behavior over the last several months, which has directly caused severe, and probably irreparable damage to the company's brand image AND it's sales around the world, as well as tanking the stock price, an unforgiveable sin in the investing world. Now that the bubble has popped, it will never inflate again. As future earnings reports are released, and sales continue to slide, the stock will continue to decline, and the cycle will continue until bankruptcy. And it is all traceable to Skum's self-indulgent, egotistical behavior.
The only question is will Skum be the only defendant, or will the lawsuit also name the individual members of the board, for not reigning him in, or firing him. They don't want to be sued alongside him, so they are forcing him to get back to work saving Tesla, thus letting them off the hook for legal liability.
Its doubtful Skum will be able to save Tesla at this point, its almost certainly too late. It is also probably too late to avoid a shareholder lawsuit. Investors have lost millions of dollars, not due to the vagaries of the market, but due to Skum's outrageous behavior, like throwing up celebratory Nazi salutes on national TV, which, as CEO, he should have realized would damage his company and its investors significantly.
And arguing that he didn't recognize the danger in advance is no excuse at all for a CEO, who should have been able to predict the response to his self-indulgent ego bender.
Shareholders have lost many millions, and they won't just let that go with an "Oh well." He's likely going to get sued, and the board is just making sure they don't go down with him.
- Investors have lost millions of dollars, not due to the vagaries of the market, but due to Skum's outrageous behavior, like throwing up celebratory Nazi salutes on national TV
  They lost millions, you say? I took a look and since Nazi Salute Day the value of Tesla has dropped on the order 500,000 million dollars.
do none of the investors just go "shut the fuck up you sig heiling cunt"?
- The same investors who were fine with Musk peddling himself as real-life Tony Stark?
  
  tech investors are fucking idiots who chase after shiny objects in hopes of the next big thing. it's one thing for these morons to be impressed by a wannabe Tony Stark, and another to be ok with open nazism.
  
  One is remarkably worse than the other
- Nah, they are either true believers or the "420.69 lol" crowd
- If you were a left wing investor, why would you invest in a company fronted by a right wing person?
  If you weren’t bothered by that, why would you invest in an over valued, over hyped, badly managed company?
  
  not about being left wing. the right wing came up with "alt-right" for a reason. they knew the nazi shit is toxic. there's no doubt that his sig heil played a major role in regular or otherwise indifferent people to really feel icky about him. the shit he did with doge didn't help of course.
  investors care about money. it's easy to see the sig heil was the beginning of the freefall. even if you're a nazi you should know that's not a thing to do. so this is not about the political views of the investors at all.
Good. Hope it gets even worse.
At most companies, it’d be long past time to show the CEO the door. But Tesla’s stock price is inextricably linked to Musk and his onetime image as Silicon Valley’s greatest living genius.
BWaHAAHAhaahaha. Ahhh what a fuckin' idiot Elmo is.
- He is also Tesla's largest single shareholder, and has a hand-picked board. It would take a lot to get him to leave involuntarily.
  
  Oh yeah, it's not happening. I just thought the part about his image as the greatest genius was well-played as sarcastic AF and also laughable in hindsight
Looks like revenue this quarter was $19.34B. That's slightly less than the 2024 Q1 result of $21.3B. Looks like Q1 is usually lower, let's make this trend continue to following quarters.
https://macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/tsla/tesla/revenue
- These are numbers for all of Q1 too, and people didn't really start the protests until a few weeks to a month in. So in theory last quarter had a few more good weeks than next quarter will.
This bubble does not just need to be popped, it needs to evaporate.
- I want to see it implode!
"They’re paid for"
Bro, if people hate you and your company enough to employ and pay others to protest, then you and your company must be an all new level of shitty. I'm not quite sure the claim/excuse you're making is the defensive shield you think it is. It sounds much more like an admission of total failure...
And yet the board still thinks it's a good idea to retain you? I guess it's heartwarming they're more loyal to you than they are to the company.
- Bro, if people hate you and you company enough to employ and pay others to protest, then you and your company must be an all new level of shitty.
  His people—conservatives—don't follow logic. They have a victim complex and see anything that negatively affects them as someone else's fault and not the consequences of their own actions. If there isn't an obvious perpetrator, they scapegoat one into existence.
  I've debated some of these people and it's hopeless trying to get them to connect the dots. You can keep presenting them with logic and evidence, and they keep shifting the goalposts and changing the topic to justify their beliefs. A summary of one of my attempts to convince someone that Trump isn't universally beloved by average Americans went roughly like this:
  "Trump has improved the average citizen's quality of life"
  "Then why are there 5 million protesters coming out every month?"
  "I haven't heard of any large protests"
  (links to 50501 Wikipedia page)
  "They're 'protesters' funded by the left"
  "All 5 million of them? That would be extremely expensive, even if it's just $100 a person. Nobody could afford that."
  "Remember, all the billionaires are Democrats" (Thiel? Musk?)
  "That's not even their playbook. It's cheaper and more effective for them to lobby for changes that benefit themselves."
  "But they can't do that anymore because Trump is in charge, so now paid protesters are their preferred choice"
  "Suppose they are paid. With 5 million people, there's absolutely no way that they're being paid will remain secret."
  "OK fine, maybe it's only a couple hundred thousand being paid."
  I don't doubt that some tiny handful of people would be paid to protest for some reason or another, but I highly doubt it's anywhere close to what MAGA conservatives think. IMO, it's more likely that protesters would be paid by the other side to make the protest violent so they could crack down on them.
- If they were being paid and he knew they were being paid and by whom, they’d have some easy lawsuits to recoup damages and end the protests.
  Funny how that’s not happening.
- Because then it's one evil actor instead of you know tens of thousands.
  But it's just projection anyway. Every accusation is a confession.
The picture makes him look like a Dollar Store, Kathy Bates.
Good
My faith in magic and wonder in this world is restored!
you_guys_are_getting_paid?.jpg
Only his Fuhrer can save him now. Does he "not see" ?
Surprisingly, being a dick pays for itself in miriad ways. Like having throngs of people actively work against your every interest, for free, because you are such a gigantic dick to everyone around you and to everything in your purview. Weird concept I know?! Maybe try being less of a huge gigantic dick to make up for your lack of having a functioning one? You could also try not laughing at the misfortune of others? Maybe they won't all pile onto laughing about yours?! Just a thought.
So good. I hope investors keep buying and it just keeps failing and they all just lose a shit ton of money.
i'd kinda like to see a movie about some sales guys at tesla trying to sell their way around this, maybe dane cook/jeremy piven.. and have their discussions with management, and their cooling off after hours. and michael sara just stumbles around with no sense of context and accidently being top rep.
I really want one of these paid protester jobs.
Nothing on indeed or LinkedIn. Any tips on where to find them?
Archive link
Can I get more pictures of Elmo crying? They make me fell all warm and fuzzy.
Profits dropped by 71% compared to the same quarter last year, but the stock price went up 68% in the same time frame. Because that makes sense. Who are the idiots still buying TSLA at these prices?

96 comments