Tesla reports steep drop in profits despite US rush to buy electric vehicles

>The earnings report comes at a sensitive time for Tesla and Musk, as the CEO is seeking investor approval for that unprecedented $1tn pay package in a vote next month.

WTAF. I'm not sure who could think he deserves this much pay (other than himself), after tanking the brand.

The articles are stupid. It's up to $1T IF he raises the stock price ~7x.

It's basically the board saying "uh, sure, if you earn us 8.5 trillion dollars, we'll give you a trillion of it".

It's an absurdly high bar, and the board had no real incentive to not throw it out there. Honestly every board should do this. Why not.

It's almost entirely milestone/incentive based. Should Tesla continue on this trajectory, he won't see a dime. Tesla has to hit an $8 trillion market cap, deliver 20 million vehicles, and 1 million robotaxis, and $400 billion in adjusted earnings. Were Tesla to hit those numbers in the specified time frame, Musk's comp would be worth every penny to investors.

From an outside perspective, it feels wrong that the goal isn't higher earnings but a higher stock price. They don't care about actually creating value, just keep inflating the bubble and you're golden.

There are multiple milestones. Earnings is one of them. So it's actually even harder than just an earnings target.

The Nazi salute was the end of it for a lot of folks who had given him grace for awhile

What a monumental fall

If a trillion dollars is on the line, could the stock be manipulated to be higher than that for less than a trillion?

Yeah, I'd have no trouble voting for that $1T package. There are way too many conditions. There are lots of ways Musk doesn't get paid. The original $56B package was only revenue and stock price based. If it was like this one, it would also have been based on car deliveries, and solar installs, and stationary battery sales. He would have totally missed on the solar installs, despite being massively successful on everything else.

Other private Musk companies (SpaceX and xAI) just bought fleets of Cybertrucks. One may wonder what exactly they would do with so many vehicles other than boost Tesla's share price.

8.5 trillion in 10 years, is 20% growth per year. For comparison S&P 500 grew 25% last year.

Also, the basic game theory is obvious. If it’s voted down, Musk might leave, in which case the stock price plummets.

The board can modify those milestones and conditions, no?

Perhaps they will buy a Ford or Volkswagen instead.

Two companies that aren’t currently being run by people throwing nazi salutes; great choices.

Just try and VW ID7 or Audi A6 etron.

Earn cool 19k on each of the 21 million cars sold? That is some hefty margins to get to those earnings... Especially when you have Chinese models to compete with.

I don't believe we will have such growth at all in the next 10 years unless we get hyperinflation

growing 25% when a company is say 50-100b is a lot different than going towards 10 trillion

and valuations are already so stretched across the board

They need them for the Mars colony, duh. You can't drive a gas car on the moon.

If Zombie Ford was still going around pushing antisemitic propaganda, this might be a better argument. As it is it’s just a little silly.

Welcome to the West? It's been like this for a while now here.

Could TSLA be manipulated? With a priced earnings ratio of 300, the question is: how much more manipulated? How about all of the other fashy tech bros with ridiculous valuations in public and private companies?