Investor's Corner
Tesla (TSLA) short-sellers’ media publicity called out by high-profile finance veteran
The past few months have been challenging for Tesla and Elon Musk. As the company attempted to make progress in its efforts to ramp the production of the Model 3, a consistent stream of attacks from short-sellers and critics, as well as aftereffects of Musk’s own behavior on Twitter, have weighed heavily on Tesla stock.
Amidst the constant stream of negative reports against the company coming from mainstream media, James Anderson, co-manager of Scottish Mortgage and a senior partner at Baillie Gifford in Edinburgh, noted that while some of Elon Musk’s actions, particularly against British diver Vernon Unsworth, were “ethically unacceptable,” the CEO is not really one of the biggest problems of the company. Rather, it is the prevalent — and at times aggressive — attacks it consistently receives from critics and short-sellers.
Anderson was recently featured in a segment of Citywire Money, where he discussed Tesla’s expenses as it ramped the Model 3, the peculiar amount of publicity given to TSLA short-sellers, and Elon Musk’s actions online. The Baillie Gifford senior partner noted that it wasn’t particularly surprising to his firm that Telsa is spending a lot as it grows, considering that the electric car maker is “building a car company in a completely different way with a completely new technology.”
That being said, the financial industry veteran opted to call out the media coverage of Tesla’s short-sellers and critics, who have been given a surprisingly generous amount of publicity. Anderson noted that the media needs to ask itself a lot of questions, particularly regarding the rhetoric of TSLA short-sellers, as well as their “vicious” hypothesis against the electric car maker.
“I feel the media in general needs to ask itself a lot of questions – which is the extraordinary level of publicity given to the claims and rhetoric of the absolutely vicious short investment hypothesis and individuals behind them. I think that they are not to be viewed as a beneficial force for allowing a convenient avenue to attack over enthusiasm,” Anderson said.
The Scottish Mortgage co-manager further noted that while some of Elon Musk’s actions on Twitter were ethically unacceptable, it should be noted that the actions of some of the company’s short-sellers and critics against Tesla and Elon Musk are just as unethical.
“I think these people try and make their claims come true in ways that to me seem. I said Mr. Musk behaved unethically — I believe many of these people do as well, and I do wish that many of our most prominent media personalities and institutions would examine the claims and records of many of these people. And in some cases there is a lot of evidence through court cases of just how malignant they can be,” he said.
Anderson’s observations about the behavior and prevalence of Tesla’s critics in the media are quite accurate. Rarely does a day go by, after all, when Tesla sees few negative stories about its business, or about Elon Musk himself. Last week, for example, the departure of Tesla’s CAO ended up being augmented by Elon Musk’s single whiff of cannabis during a podcast, causing the company’s stock to drop.
Even small-time Tesla short-sellers are beginning to gain support from mainstream media. Late last month, Reuters published a report celebrating the sleuthing work being conducted by several TSLA shorts, including an anonymous Twitter user known for posting misogynistic, aggressive, and racist comments against Tesla supporters. Michelle Price, one of the writers of the piece, later clarified in a follow-up Twitter post that they did multiple and varied checks on the anonymous TSLA short that they featured before considering the person as a valid source.
As of writing, Tesla shares (NASDAQ:TSLA), in which Baillie Gifford holds a 7.8% stake and which accounts for 5% of Scottish Mortgage assets, is trading up 1.67% at $294.27 per share.
Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.
Investor's Corner
Tesla (TSLA) Q4 and FY 2025 earnings results
Tesla’s Q4 and FY 2025 earnings come on the heels of a quarter where the company produced over 434,000 vehicles, delivered over 418,000 vehicles, and deployed 14.2 GWh of energy storage products.
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) has released its Q4 and FY 2025 earnings results in an update letter. The document was posted on the electric vehicle maker’s official Investor Relations website after markets closed today, January 28, 2025.
Tesla’s Q4 and FY 2025 earnings come on the heels of a quarter where the company produced over 434,000 vehicles, delivered over 418,000 vehicles, and deployed 14.2 GWh of energy storage products.
For the Full Year 2025, Tesla produced 1,654,667 and delivered 1,636,129 vehicles. The company also deployed a total of 46.7 GWh worth of energy storage products.
Tesla’s Q4 and FY 2025 results
As could be seen in Tesla’s Q4 and FY 2025 Update Letter, the company posted GAAP EPS of $0.24 and non-GAAP EPS of $0.50 per share in the fourth quarter. Tesla also posted total revenues of $24.901 billion. GAAP net income is also listed at $840 million in Q4.
Analyst consensus for Q4 has Tesla earnings per share falling 38% to $0.45 with revenue declining 4% to $24.74 billion, as per estimates from FactSet. In comparison, the consensus compiled by Tesla last week forecasted $0.44 per share on sales totaling $24.49 billion.
For FY 2025, Tesla posted GAAP EPS of $1.08 and non-GAAP EPS of $1.66 per share. Tesla also posted total revenues of $94.827 billion, which include $69.526 billion from automotive and $12.771 billion from the battery storage business. GAAP net income is also listed at $3.794 billion in FY 2025.
xAI Investment
Tesla entered an agreement to invest approximately $2 billion to acquire Series E preferred shares in Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI, as part of the company’s recently disclosed financing round. Tesla said the investment was made on market terms consistent with those agreed to by other participants in the round.
The investment aligns with Tesla’s strategy under Master Plan Part IV, which centers on bringing artificial intelligence into the physical world through products and services. While Tesla focuses on real-world AI applications, xAI is developing digital AI platforms, including its Grok large language model.
Below is Tesla’s Q4 and FY 2025 update letter.
TSLA-Q4-2025-Update by Simon Alvarez
Tesla has scheduled its Earnings Call for Q4 and Full Year 2025 for next Wednesday, January 28, at 5:30 p.m. EST, and investors are already preparing to get some answers from executives regarding a wide variety of topics.
The company accepts several questions from retail investors through the platform Say, which then allows shareholders to vote on the best questions.
Tesla does not answer anything regarding future product releases, but they are willing to shed light on current timelines, progress of certain projects, and other plans.
There are five questions that range over a variety of topics, including SpaceX, Full Self-Driving, Robotaxi, and Optimus, which are currently in the lead to be asked and potentially answered by Elon Musk and other Tesla executives:
- You once said: Loyalty deserves loyalty. Will long-term Tesla shareholders still be prioritized if SpaceX does an IPO?
- Our Take – With a lot of speculation regarding an incoming SpaceX IPO, Tesla investors, especially long-term ones, should be able to benefit from an early opportunity to purchase shares. This has been discussed endlessly over the past year, and we must be getting close to it.
- When is FSD going to be 100% unsupervised?
- Our Take – Musk said today that this is essentially a solved problem, and it could be available in the U.S. by the end of this year.
- What is the current bottleneck to increase Robotaxi deployment & personal use unsupervised FSD? The safety/performance of the most recent models or people to monitor robots, robotaxis, in-car, or remotely? Or something else?
- Our Take – The bottleneck seems to be based on data, which Musk said Tesla needs 10 billion miles of data to achieve unsupervised FSD. Once that happens, regulatory issues will be what hold things up from moving forward.
- Regarding Optimus, could you share the current number of units deployed in Tesla factories and actively performing production tasks? What specific roles or operations are they handling, and how has their integration impacted factory efficiency or output?
- Our Take – Optimus is going to have a larger role in factories moving forward, and later this year, they will have larger responsibilities.
- Can you please tie purchased FSD to our owner accounts vs. locked to the car? This will help us enjoy it in any Tesla we drive/buy and reward us for hanging in so long, some of us since 2017.
- Our Take – This is a good one and should get us some additional information on the FSD transfer plans and Subscription-only model that Tesla will adopt soon.
Tesla will have its Earnings Call on Wednesday, January 28.
Elon Musk
Tesla locks in Elon Musk’s top problem solver as it enters its most ambitious era
The generous equity award was disclosed by the electric vehicle maker in a recent regulatory filing.
Tesla has granted Senior Vice President of Automotive Tom Zhu more than 520,000 stock options, tying a significant portion of his compensation to the company’s long-term performance.
The generous equity award was disclosed by the electric vehicle maker in a recent regulatory filing.
Tesla secures top talent
According to a Form 4 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Tom Zhu received 520,021 stock options with an exercise price of $435.80 per share. Since the award will not fully vest until March 5, 2031, Zhu must remain at Tesla for more than five years to realize the award’s full benefit.
Considering that Tesla shares are currently trading at around the $445 to $450 per share level, Zhu will really only see gains in his equity award if Tesla’s stock price sees a notable rise over the years, as noted in a Sina Finance report.
Still, even at today’s prices, Zhu’s stock award is already worth over $230 million. If Tesla reaches the market cap targets set forth in Elon Musk’s 2025 CEO Performance Award, Zhu would become a billionaire from this equity award alone.
Tesla’s problem solver
Zhu joined Tesla in April 2014 and initially led the company’s Supercharger rollout in China. Later that year, he assumed the leadership of Tesla’s China business, where he played a central role in Tesla’s localization efforts, including expanding retail and service networks, and later, overseeing the development of Gigafactory Shanghai.
Zhu’s efforts helped transform China into one of Tesla’s most important markets and production hubs. In 2023, Tesla promoted Zhu to Senior Vice President of Automotive, placing him among the company’s core global executives and expanding his influence beyond China. He has since garnered a reputation as the company’s problem solver, being tapped by Elon Musk to help ramp Giga Texas’s vehicle production.
With this in mind, Tesla’s recent filing seems to suggest that the company is locking in its top talent as it enters its newest, most ambitious era to date. As could be seen in the targets of Elon Musk’s 2025 pay package, Tesla is now aiming to be the world’s largest company by market cap, and it is aiming to achieve production levels that are unheard of. Zhu’s talents would definitely be of use in this stage of the company’s growth.
Tesla announces massive investment into xAI
Tesla (TSLA) Q4 and FY 2025 earnings results
