Investor's Corner
Tesla’s Q2 2018 earnings call showed a more mature Elon Musk leading a more mature company
Tesla’s Q2 2018 financial results and earnings call were not only a pleasant surprise because of the encouraging figures in the company’s Update Letter. Contrary to what critics of the company have predicted in the weeks leading up to the Q2 2018 earnings call, the Elon Musk that showed up on Wednesday was not the same person that attended Q1’s now infamous Q&A session.
To say that Elon Musk has courted controversy over the past few months is an understatement. During the company’s Q1 earnings call, Musk lost patience and cut off analysts from Bernstein and RBC Capital Markets, dubbing their questions as “dry,” “boring” and “boneheaded.” The ensuing fallout from Musk’s dismissal of the analysts’ inquiries was significant, with Tesla’s stock taking a steep nosedive. Musk’s actions online became subject to criticism as well, particularly after he was involved in the rescue attempt of a soccer team stranded in a flooded cave network in Thailand. Facing criticism from internet trolls and a rude comment from a cave explorer, Musk snapped back with a retort that was equally uncalled-for. Just like his actions during Tesla’s Q1 earnings call, his Twitter reaction then was negatively reflected in Tesla’s stock.
Elon Musk is at his best when he is calm and calculating and at his worst when he is combative and emotional. While his actions over the past few months on Twitter suggested that he would attend Wednesday’s Q&A session as the latter, his behavior during the Q2 earnings call itself was clearly the former. Musk was restrained, readily admitting his mistakes and directly apologizing for his behavior.
“Yeah, I’d like to apologize for being impolite on the prior call. Obviously, I think there’s no excuse for bad manners, and I was kind of violating my own rule in that regard. I have some excuse; there are reasons for it. I’ve gotten no sleep, and I’ve been working 100, 120-hour weeks, but nonetheless, there’s still no excuse. My apologies for not being polite on the prior call.”
Tesla seemingly made it a point to address questions asked by Toni Sacconaghi from Bernstein and Joseph Spak of RBC Capital Markets, the two analysts who were on the receiving end of Musk’s frustration in the first-quarter earnings call. Musk was polite, humble even, at one point reiterating a direct apology to the RBC Capital Markets analyst.
“I would like to apologize for being impolite on the last call with you. It was not right. I hope you accept my apology,” Musk said.
Apart from Musk’s apology for his errors, Tesla’s Q2 2018 earnings call also featured the CEO sharing the spotlight with members of Tesla’s executive and Autopilot team. As questions were asked, they were addressed by individuals whose expertise corresponded directly to the inquiries. This was quite a departure from Musk’s behavior in Q1’s Q&A session, when he dominated much of the discussion. Targets and timelines mentioned during the call were also realistic, a departure from Musk’s usual bold promises and claims. When Musk was asked about Tesla’s coast-to-coast Autonomous drive, for example, the CEO admitted that the company is currently focusing its attention on releasing Software V9, which would introduce the company’s first Full Self-Driving features.
A look at Tesla’s Q2 2018 Update Letter shows that the electric car and energy company is growing at a rapid rate — and it’s just getting started. With the Model 3 sustaining a 5,000 per week production rate for several weeks in July, Tesla is now looking to raise the electric car’s manufacturing to even greater heights. Tesla plans to ramp the production of the vehicle to 7,000 per week, and steadily improve it from there until it reaches 10,000 Model 3 per week. Overall, Tesla’s potential is vast, but as the company matures into a full-fledged carmaker, Elon Musk must also mature to become a more well-rounded leader.
In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek last month, Elon Musk promised that he would do better when it comes to responding to the company’s critics and trolls on Twitter. While Musk’s recent tweets — two of which involved a snarky message to Tesla bear Montana Skeptic and hedge fund owner David Einhorn — still showed his tendency to poke fun at his detractors, his actions in the Q2 2018 earnings call shows that he is willing to take a step towards change.
Ultimately, the stock market appears to have appreciated Musk’s change of pace. Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) popped after hours, at one point rising as high as 10%. As of Thursday’s pre-market, the company’s shares were up 8.06%, trading at $325.10.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk calls Earth’s data centers “peanuts” next to what SpaceX is planning in orbit
Elon Musk says SpaceX capex efficiency is underestimated as orbital data centers loom by 2028.
Elon Musk is pushing back on one of the biggest worries hanging over SpaceX stock. In a reply on X on Sunday, Musk said the company’s capital expenditure efficiency is severely underestimated. He was responding to a Milk Road Stocks post citing analyst Kyle Reidhead, who estimates SpaceX will need to spend roughly $470 billion over the next five quarters.
Reidhead built that figure around the target SpaceX set on its third quarter earnings call: 13 gigawatts or more of compute by the end of 2027. In his breakdown, Nvidia captures 83 to 89 percent of the spending. SpaceX ended the quarter with 1.7 GW of nameplate compute and guided to $35 billion to $40 billion in fourth quarter capex, as Teslarati reported.
Musk did not attach a number to his claim, but the earnings call shows the argument. CFO Bret Johnsen said new compute currently pays for itself in under a year at today’s pricing, and Musk said that window could shrink to six months next year. Using that pace, Reidhead argues about $230 billion of the $470 billion could come from operating cash flow and about $60 billion from SpaceX’s roughly $90 billion cash pile, leaving around $180 billion to borrow. Musk confirmed last week that SpaceX had already closed a new $40 billion debt raise to buy GPUs.
The ground buildout is not the end goal. It is what is meant to pay for the move to orbit. Replying on Friday to charts built from Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire’s SpaceX model, Musk wrote that “Terrestrial compute will be peanuts compared to orbital compute,” adding that orbital compute deployed per month “probably exceeds terrestrial around the end of 2028 and then far exceeds it in 2029.”
Maguire’s model shows how steep that path is. It has capex climbing from $88 billion this year to $290 billion in 2027 and $369 billion in 2028, with SpaceX burning $77.8 billion in cash this year and $122.6 billion next year before turning $114.9 billion cash positive in 2028. Musk’s response to the model was, “I think we can do better.”
The orbital half runs through Starmind. SpaceX plans to operate up to 1 million AI satellites flying in clusters of about 10, linked by roughly 10 terabits of bandwidth, with deployment of thousands of units starting as soon as late 2027 out of its Gigasat factory in Bastrop, Texas, according to SpaceX’s space safety page. Musk has said each Starmind spacecraft will carry more than 250 kW of solar power.
Getting there depends on launch volume. Maguire’s model assumes 250 Starship flights in 2028, up from two this year and 38 next year. The nearer test is financial: SpaceX guided to $33 billion to $37 billion in first quarter 2027 revenue, more than double the $14.58 billion it booked in Q3, and Musk reposted that guidance again on Sunday morning.
Elon Musk
SpaceX President to gift Trump Accounts her SpaceX stock
Gwynne Shotwell’s 2 million SpaceX shares are headed to children’s Trump Accounts starting this December.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said Friday that more than 2 million SpaceX shares belonging to her and her husband, Robert, will be distributed to children’s Trump Accounts in December, turning a pledge she made over the summer into an actual transfer. “Robert and I are thrilled that our gift of over 2 million shares of SpaceX stock will be distributed to children’s Trump accounts in December!” Shotwell wrote on X, adding that the shares are “transferring to escrow as we speak.”
The first round goes to children aged 11 to 17 who live in ZIP codes where the median family income is $57,000 or less, along with kids in ZIP codes with too few residents for the Census to report that figure. Shotwell said those families should receive a notice by Monday, Reuters reported.
A second gift is expected to be finalized in the next few weeks. That round will cover eligible children in military families serving overseas, children in foster care, and more kids in Texas counties near the Shotwells’ home where median family income is $90,000 or less. Elon Musk replied to the announcement with “Cool” and a heart emoji.
Shotwell first announced the donation on July 6, less than a month after SpaceX priced its record IPO at $135 per share on the Nasdaq. IPO filings showed Shotwell owned about 12.6 million SpaceX shares, Quartz reported at the time, which makes the gift roughly one sixth of her stake. At the roughly $146 per share used to value Musk’s own pledge earlier this month, 2 million shares are worth about $290 million.
How the stock would actually reach the accounts had been an open question since July. Treasury guidance acknowledged that stock donations could flow into Trump Accounts, but it did not explain the mechanics for a program whose contributions default into an S&P 500 index fund. Shotwell thanked the Treasury, the IRS, the Dell Foundation, Greater Horizons, Invest America and the law firms Morgan Lewis and Gibson Dunn for “working over the past few months to make this happen.”
The transfer also works as a dry run for a far larger gift. On October 19, Musk said he would give one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America next year and called it “the first of many.” With roughly 72 million children in the country, that pledge is worth about $10.5 billion. President Donald Trump thanked Musk the same day and said the shares would go through Trump Accounts, though neither SpaceX nor the Treasury has published how or when that distribution will happen.
Shotwell’s recipients also fill a gap in the program itself. Trump Accounts launched on July 4, and the $1,000 Treasury deposit only goes to babies born between 2025 and 2028. Teenagers aged 11 to 17 receive no government seed money, so for many of the families getting a notice on Monday, SpaceX stock will be the first asset in the account. The accounts convert into retirement accounts when the child turns 18.
Investor's Corner
Tesla has a Cybercab problem nobody saw coming
Tesla’s Cybercab line now builds robotaxis faster than Tesla can deploy them, Lars Moravy says.
Tesla’s Cybercab line in Texas can now build the two seat robotaxi faster than the company can put it into service, according to Lars Moravy, Tesla’s Vice President of Vehicle Engineering. “We don’t run every day because the line can run so fast. It’s currently outpacing our deployments,” Moravy said in a new Cybercab deep dive from Munro Live. “So, it’s a bit of a race right now. Who’s going to go faster? Right now the manufacturing line’s ahead.”
Tesla’s official Robotaxi account shared a Cybercab analysis video on X on Monday, calling it a “Cybercab engineering deep dive.” Moravy’s comments go further than what he told analysts on the Q3 earnings call last week, when he said the Cybercab line’s listed capacity of more than 125,000 units a year undersells what it can actually run.
The tour shows where that speed comes from. Tesla’s unboxed process splits the Cybercab into front, rear, side and center modules that are built and tested on their own before they meet on a short final line. That final line has just 25 fully automated stations, which Tesla’s team estimated is a fifth to a tenth of what a Model Y needs. The full line is about 78% automated, the framing line is already at 100%, and the layout uses roughly 50% less floor space per vehicle. The stated goal is “100% automation in 10 second cycle time,” or one finished Cybercab every 10 seconds.
Tesla also deleted the paint shop. Only the side modules are coated, and the exterior panels get their color inside the molding machine. Engineers said the car is designed to run at least 500,000 miles, which matters for a vehicle that will spend most of its day carrying riders.
The battery got the same treatment. The Cybercab uses an 88S6P pack of 4680 cells in a steel enclosure, a first for Tesla, with each module potted separately so a single failed module can be swapped instead of the whole pack. Wireless battery management boards replace a wiring harness, and new contactors are fast enough to drop the pyro fuse entirely. Tesla’s battery director graded the pack an A minus, compared with a D for the Model Y structural pack and a B minus for Cybertruck. Up front, the drive unit runs an 11:1 gear ratio versus roughly 9:1 on most Teslas, since the Cybercab does not need a high top speed.
Cybercab engineering deep dive — Robotaxi (@robotaxi) October 26, 2026
The deployment side is now the bottleneck Moravy described. Tesla had more than 50 Cybercabs working the Formula 1 weekend in Austin, and Texas records show 463 Cybercabs registered. Tesla said on its earnings call that Cybercab service will launch in Dallas next month, and Moravy said the company is aiming to get Cybercabs to customers by the end of 2026. Every unit built so far has gone into Tesla’s own fleet since the line moved into volume production in April.
Munro Live also asked when it could get a Cybercab to tear down. Tesla’s answer: “Not yet.”
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