Investor's Corner
Mercedes flexes traditional pricing approach in Q1 earnings report
Mercedes is showing off the strength of a more traditional pricing strategy in its Q1 earnings report, which has crushed investor expectations.
Much like many legacy automakers, Mercedes-Benz has quickly learned the incredible expense of a complete switch to electrification. Not only does it require a complete retooling of numerous factories, but in the case of Mercedes, it also involves investing in an EV charging network alongside its development of countless EV segments. Despite these cost hurdles, Mercedes kept its earnings up in the first quarter of the year, crushing estimates and showing the strength of its traditional pricing strategy.
According to the German automaker’s Q1 earnings report, group earnings grew 5% year-over-year (YoY) to 5.5 billion euros ($6.04 billion). Simultaneously, group revenues grew 8% to 37.5 billion euros ($41.19 billion) over the same timeframe. Group earnings include sales of Mercedes cars, commercial offerings, and all other incomes. According to the company, the discrepancy between earnings and revenue growth is correlated to a slight dip in profit margins, down to 14.8% from 16.4% a year ago.
It should be noted that while Mercedes is no longer a margin leader after being dethroned by Tesla, it maintains one of the most robust margins in the industry and plans to maintain its current margins throughout the rest of this year.
“Our focus on Top-End cars and premium vans has made Mercedes-Benz more weatherproof, allowing us to accelerate our digital and electric transformation – even in a period of economic uncertainty,” says Harald Wilhelm, CFO of Mercedes-Benz Group. “Ongoing cost discipline, combined with further key product launches like the all-electric Mercedes-Maybach EQS SUV, will keep us on track to continue delivering sustainable results.”
As noted above, the margin dip is expected for the premium German automaker, which is investing heavily in an ever-expanding lineup of EVs across numerous sectors. Most recently, Mercedes introduced its first ultra-premium EV offering as part of its Maybach brand, the Mercedes-Maybach EQS SUV. The company is expected to spread the reach of each EV offering in the near future, bringing them to an increasing number of markets following the ongoing production growth.
This investment is, luckily, not occurring without return, as the brand saw EV sales nearly double YoY in the first quarter of the year, while other top-end sales also had some of their strongest numbers to date.
But how does this success relate to a traditional pricing structure? Because Mercedes has been able to keep its prices high and without adjustment, which is more standard practice in the industry, counter to Tesla’s more aggressive pricing strategy, the German company was able to battle high materials costs and investment needs better, helping to limit damage to its all-important profit margins.
Compared to lower-cost competitors, Mercedes has been able to definitively show investors that it has stayed out of the “price war” that some have worried could pull down margins across the industry. And looking at Mercedes’s stock offering, the result in investor confidence is apparent.
William is not an investor in Mercedes-Benz nor qualified to give financial advice.
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Investor's Corner
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
Tesla short seller Michael Burry, the subject of the film “The Big Short,” where he was portrayed by Steve Carell, has revealed he has opened a new bet against the stock.
In a new update to his Substack newsletter in a post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” Burry revealed a new set of bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, NVIDIA, Applied Materials Inc., and the iShares Semiconductor ETF.
In regard to Tesla, Burry wrote:
“And finally I shorted Tesla at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.”
This means Burry likely opened his new short position after the company’s recent rally on Wall Street, which saw Tesla shares sink in mid-May, only to recover to well over the $400 mark. Currently, shares trade at around $427.
The company saw a big Tuesday as shares climbed considerably, over 10 percent. The size of the Tesla short was not provided, nor did Burry give any information on the position’s structure, the number of shares, dollar value, or whether options were used in the short.
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
Over the years, Burry has been one of the more vocal critics of Tesla, calling its share price “media inflated,” and saying it was “ridiculously overvalued” as recently as December.
The company has largely transitioned away from being known as an automotive company and instead is much more widely regarded as an AI play, mostly due to its Full Self-Driving efforts, Optimus robot development, and data collection related to both.
This has not pulled those skeptics away from being vocal about their distaste for how Tesla is valued, but there’s no denying that the company is a global force in many things, including sustainable energy, automotive, and AI.
Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).
Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.
“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”
Elon Musk called it Epic: The full story of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12
Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.
It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”
Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.
There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:
“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”
SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.
For years, there have been images and videos across social media platforms that have reminded me of when I was a 15-year-old kid teased by “Xbox 720” videos on YouTube. These videos are of the supposed “Tesla Phone” that Elon Musk was secretly developing in between leading Tesla with its electric cars and SpaceX with its reusable rockets.
Would you buy a Tesla phone ? pic.twitter.com/aaTwvvIJit
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) October 6, 2023
Although Musk has put those rumors to bed several times, it was never completely out of the realm that he could get involved in cell phones in some capacity. Think outside the box and more macro-level, though. Instead of reinventing the computer, Musk reinvented connectivity by developing Starlink with SpaceX.
It could be something similar, TD Cowen analyst Gregory Williams said in a note last week, where he hinted SpaceX could be gathering some steam to acquire T-Mobile.
Williams said it would be the “clear choice” for SpaceX if it decided to go through with a network acquisition. He also suggested AT&T.
The move would be possible through selling more of its own stock, which would help SpaceX raise the money to purchase T-Mobile, which would cost roughly $300 billion. It could be one of the moves SpaceX makes post-IPO in terms of an acquisition: it already acquired Cursor AI for $60 billion.
Other analysts, like Dan Ives of Wedbush, believe SpaceX and Tesla will eventually merge into one anyway, and that conglomeration could come as soon as this year, some have said.
The implications of SpaceX purchasing T-Mobile are massive. A combined entity would create a truly ubiquitous network: T-Mobile’s terrestrial 5G towers and Starlink’s growing constellation of Direct-to-Cell satellites. This would essentially eliminate dead zones across the U.S. and potentially globally.
SpaceX would instantly become a full-scale facilities-based carrier with satellite differentiation; a huge advantage. This would pressure AT&T and Verizon heavily.
There are also concerns like a potential reduction in long-term competition, and of course, a deal of that size would face intense scrutiny from government agencies.
The strategic fit is compelling due to the existing Starlink–T-Mobile partnership and complementary technologies (space + terrestrial). It could create a dominant integrated communications player. However, the regulatory, financial, and execution hurdles are enormous — this remains highly speculative with no indication SpaceX is actively pursuing it right now.
Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
