Hey everybody, Rob Maurer here and today we are going to be primarily talking a little bit more about Tesla's Q1 earnings report yesterday. Now that we've had a day to reflect on it to think a little bit more about what Tesla discussed. And then we do have a few other news items towards the end.
Looking at the stock, the negative reaction to the earnings reports, and probably more particularly The earnings call continued during trading today. Tesla down almost 10% on the day to close to $162.99. Well the NASDAQ was down 8-10% of a percent on the day.
So let's talk about earnings. Let's talk about the reaction. As I said in the post-call recap yesterday, I'm not surprised by this reaction. Time and time again throughout the earnings call, Elon Musk pretty much said the exact opposite of what Wall Street was wanting to hear or hoping to hear. Obviously, they ask so many different questions about demand, about pricing where that's gonna be going forward. What margins are gonna be going forward? That is the overwhelming focus for Wall Street right now and that's not to say that there's not a good reason for that.
When you see earnings decline even though revenue and deliveries are growing, that's a huge red flag for any company let alone a company that has a high earnings multiple. So while it's annoying that the analysts apparently cannot listen to the other questions that we're asking kept asking the same question. It is a question that is worth asking on its own and Elon's answer pretty much seems to be well, we don't really care. We're just gonna keep cutting prices and eventually we're gonna make more money because of FSD.
The problem with that is that Wall Street certainly does not believe that Tesla's gonna be making much money on FSD anytime soon. So if you don't believe that and you're hearing Elon say that the other parts of the business are just gonna be operated at cost. Then what reason would you have to own the stock? There would be none even if you do believe in FSD but you don't believe that that's gonna happen within the next six months in the next 12 months.
Then what reason would you have to hold the stock during that period where okay earnings or maybe just gonna be collapsing if Tesla's just gonna keep cutting prices and not really care too much about margin. It's kind of hard to think of those reasons when management isn't sitting up there on the earnings call laying those out for you on a silver platter like so many management teams would be doing.
Elon then even goes a step further and instead of giving analysts all these reasons that things are gonna be good. He walks through all the things that are terrible that are happening whether it's interest rates, recession continued price cuts. Potentially the possibility of having to sell cars at literally zero profit. Well, yeah, it's not surprising that the stock is down on that type of rhetoric. So the stock reacts and that creates a lot of frustration, a lot of questioning of Tesla's management.
Especially when we're already in a situation where the share price has declined so significantly in the last year or so. It definitely would be a lot more comfortable if Elon would just get up there and tell Wall Street what they want to hear. Yes, Tesla's focusing on profits. Yes, we're gonna start advertising and drive demand. Our main focus is getting back to those 20% margins. You guys can count on that and you'll see next quarter. Hooray, Wall Street is happy investors are happy the narrative is managed. But the narrative that people seem to want management to be protecting doesn't do anything to the fundamentals over the long term.
Every single item that I have talked about so far has been a short-term item. These are pretty much the only things that matter to Wall Street. This has been proven time and time and time again throughout Tesla's history and that has been one of the core tenants. That has allowed retail investors with a longer-term mindset, a longer-term approach to find such great investing opportunities.
Throughout Tesla's history, it seems quite clear to me that as Tesla has grown as they have started to put up real significant earnings that that mindset collectively in the investor community has shifted pretty significantly. Which should very much be expected right the investor set does change as a company grows as things become more stable. You've got more risk-averse investors starting to come in maybe those Wall Street type of mindsets those voices start to become a little bit louder.
What investors want what investors expect from the company that changes over time as those shifts occur? I think volatility then compounds those types of perspectives those types of desires because people set through a 70% drop in their asset value. And they look back and they think man whatever Tesla could do to just get back to that. I just want him to get back to that like just act. We ask to Wall Street's demands and play the game for a little bit so you can not be down like 70 percent. that has a real impact on sentiment that probably wouldn't have much prevalence at all if Tesla were for example a private company That didn't have to deal with that kind of public volatility in a share price whether that is on the high end or on the low end.
Where I think a lot of the friction comes in is that although that investor mindset collectively seems to have shifted over time I don't think Tesla's mindset really has at all Tesla has one singular focus and every single comment every single decision and every single repercussion of those decisions needs to be viewed through that lens. Otherwise, there's going to be a lot of friction and that singular focus for Tesla is driving costs down through scale and through utilization. Scale amortizes cost across units and utilization amortizes cost across time in all facets of Tesla's business. There is constant optimization of both.
Tesla's mentality their philosophy has pretty much always been that earnings profitability margins these things that people are focused on these are Results of the work that they're doing on cost. This is why Elon keeps saying time and time again Hey, if we can just make these things more affordable there's gonna be more demand We're gonna sell more we're gonna make more money when Elon says that he doesn't mean over the next quarter. He doesn't mean over the next six months like Wall Street is asking about Elon is talking about over the lifetime of the company Elon doesn't care about a quarter He probably doesn't even care about a year or two decades in this is meaningless to him. That's why he's sitting up there saying yeah, if we need to sell cars at cost sure we'll do that. We can do that because we'll just make money later. That's fine.
He's not saying that's his preference. He's not even saying that he thinks that's what's gonna happen He's just trying to help people understand that if it does come to that Tesla and only Tesla has the capability to do that and if they have the capability to do that that should paint a very clear picture for what the auto market is going to turn into from a market share perspective because no one can compete with Tesla on cost so Tesla again back to that singular focus is saying hey We're just gonna keep pushing on this as fast and as hard as we can literally the first sentence in the earnings report saying Quote in the current macro economic environment we see this year as a unique opportunity for Tesla as many Carmikers are working through challenges with the unit economics of their EV programs We aim to leverage our position as a cost leader We are focused on rapidly growing production Investments in autonomy and vehicle software and remaining on track with our growth investments and quote.
This is the biggest capital expenditure quarter in Tesla's history and despite vehicle inventory increasing which drags cash flow They still had positive free cash flow and added to their cash balance this quarter These are the things that are super important for Tesla over the long term and guess what they're going to work. Contrast Tesla with what we hear from Renault today after Tesla's last price cuts. They say quote There is no big incentive to go and cut prices and go into a spiral that some of our competition is following if it results in slightly lower volumes in the short term So be it and quote Renault you're talking about a spiral but you don't realize that you're starting one of your own with volume. If you have declining volumes on your EV programs or if you can't increase your volumes You're never going to be cost competitive and you're going to die.
It is not Tesla in a death spiral in this situation. It is a company like Renault. So for me as a long-term Tesla investor both in the past and going forward the biggest thing I want to see from Tesla is pushing ahead on future growth and that is exactly what Tesla is doing. Even if you tell me FSD is just never going to happen that is still exactly what I want Tesla doing. Because the growth that Tesla is doing now even if it's not at some extremely profitable level is still building the infrastructure Building the supply chain building everything that Tesla needs to move to that next like a volume which is the one that pretty much unquestionably destroys the entire internal combustion engine industry. And what do you think is going to happen then can Tesla maybe ring a little bit of profit out of that? I think so.
That is Tesla's focus. That is what investors should be focused on. But sadly Wall Street doesn't care because that's a couple years out. Sorry, they would rather have one billion dollars of extra earnings in the next quarter. The reason people get so hung up on today's margins or today's earnings is because those are being used as the basis for extrapolation for future forecasts, which is how the valuation is formed. It has almost nothing to do with the actual dollars that are coming in over that period.
So, when you think about that for a company like Tesla doing let's say a hundred billion dollars in revenue per year, whether they make twenty billion dollars on that, 10 billion zero dollars per year on that over the next couple of years, the variance in that range relative to Tesla's market cap is small. It's five to ten percent of the market cap. When it comes down to it, those earnings are almost entirely insignificant for Tesla. What matters with those earnings is whether or not Tesla can continue to support the growth, which is exactly what Tesla said their focus is on being able to do so again.
Great. That is what I want Tesla to be focused on and then it matters because people extrapolate from that level of profitability. But ultimately what will provide Tesla with long-term consistent and defendable profitability is their cost structure. And that is what Tesla is putting every effort into improving with the long-term mindset. That is the right thing to be pursuing rather than trying to optimize for quarterly profits today. That short-term optimization will give you a higher multiple today. Because people will have more confidence in that future profitability. But those forecasts, those extrapolations those don't matter if that profitability can't be sustained and only way to sustain that again is the cost structure.
So, point being, I think overwhelmingly Tesla's focus is on the right things. I'm very much aligned with not throttling production for the sake of supporting margins. And although that might lead to some more painful financial reports over the next few quarters, I think the advantages that that will ultimately afford Tesla are more than worth it. Now with all that being said, I'm also not saying that there's nothing that Tesla could be doing better. Handling better communicating better in this interim period. I think there are plenty of those and I think they're more than worth talking about. But I think sometimes those things can be overemphasized especially when there is a period of pain from the stock.
It's hard like no one ever said this was easy. I've held Tesla for a decade and there's been maybe like two two years that have been easy to do that in. It's usually aggrined and there's a lot of volatility and there's things that go wrong. And sometimes things unfold differently than we expect then Tesla expects etc. I mean that's kind of the whole point of Tesla daily right even if you just buy and hold for a decade. You still got to make that decision every single day.
So we've got a lot more to talk about on this. I do want to spend more time on things that I think Tesla could be doing better. There's stuff there with communication particularly around guidance. I do want to spend a little bit more time talking about demand and demand generation. But I think what we talked about today is where the conversation needs to begin because I think it informs how Tesla is approaching the business. For now, that we'll move on just a couple of other quick things I wanted to touch on one is related to earning.
So, we'll start there and it was the foreign exchange impact this had a big impact. So, I want to make sure that everyone is thinking about it correctly because I definitely didn't get quite all the way there yesterday. But if we look at how Tesla listed out various different impacts the 800 million-dollar negative impact from foreign exchange is in the revenue bucket. Which means it would be impacting average selling price pulling that down a little bit. But if we look at profitability Tesla doesn't mention foreign exchange and profitability. So, it's not fair to just put that right back into margins.
This implies that foreign exchange also negatively impacted Tesla's cost of good sold at a similar rate as it did Revenue so therefore not really impacting the profitability at least from a margin percentage perspective. But potentially impacting the dollars a little bit because if you have more revenue at the same margin well, you earn more dollars. To make sure we're thinking about this correctly, we can go back to Tesla's Q4 shareholder letter where they also disclosed a negative $1.4 billion impact on revenue from foreign exchange. But in Q4 under profitability, they also listed foreign exchange as a negative $300 million impact. Again, nothing of the sort listed for Q1 profitability. And when Zach talked about margins on the call, he attributed the mis to changes in pricing. And then warranty expenses and some autopilot related deferrals.
So no mention there either of foreign exchange. So hopefully that helps clarify what the exact impact here for this quarter was.
因此,关于外汇的问题也没有提到。希望这样可以澄清这个季度的确切影响。
As far as analyst reactions to earnings, we won't spend much time on this. I did tweet out a reaction from Alex Potter last night. They reiterated their $300 price target and overweight rating. A lot of analysts though basically just reacting with minor price cuts.
Which you can see a little bit of those here. Ark Invest has also updated their Tesla model and price target. Remember though this is for 2027 so not the typical 12 month price target that we usually see from analysts. I haven't had a chance to look at it yet but my guess is my thoughts will be pretty similar to the last time we had talked about it. But maybe we'll come back to that in a future episode.
Tesla today did update their mobile app, Version 4.20.69 on April 20th. And they have now added the Tesla trip planner into the mobile app. Which I think is a really nice feature for planning ahead. When you're not actually in the vehicle quite yet.
Next the EV tax credit listings have been updated by FuelEconomy.gov. And it looks like the Volkswagen ID series is actually going to be eligible for the full credit. That has been newly added to the post April 18th list. And Rivian has been as well, they are eligible, it looks like for the half credit.
And then finally today last but certainly not least a monumental day for SpaceX. And all of humanity today with the first integrated test flight of Starship and Super Heavy. It did clear the launch pad, it did clear max Q max impression. Stage separation though was not successful and ultimately rapid unscheduled Disassembly. Nevertheless a massive success for SpaceX. So huge congratulations to the SpaceX team.
Alright last thing before we wrap it up. I may leave this episode out here as the last one for the week. That'll help get it a little bit more broadly distributed. And I think this one's an important one for people to hear. So I might just leave it out there and not do an episode tomorrow. We'll see if something comes up then I will. But if there's nothing really newsworthy then I'll leave this one out there. And maybe we do a Twitter space, something like that.
Alright so that's it for today as always. Thank you for listening, make sure you're subscribed. And sign up for notifications. You can also find me on Twitter at Tesla Podcast. And we'll see you for the next episode of Tesla Daily. Thank you.