Tesla earnings plunge as AI expenses pile up and sales fall

expect stock price to surge

“Daddy’s going to wose money from this. Better invest my next paycheck” - Average Tesla investor.

And yet, their share price went up. "So, our insane share price is based on an expectation that we'll make a bunch more money in the future. But we're actually making *less* money. Hope thats ok" Idiot share holders: buy buy buy

better value for the shorts, thank you elmo. Keep pushing the goalposts to mars and beyond?!

Man I wish I had the money to short test la right now

Tesla can't scale without losing money. That's a given. Tesla will be negative if they roll out self driving. No one will be profitable at the start Actually deploying self driving is billions of dollars a year regardless of how good your software is

Of course the stock is moving up after hours, probably based on promises he'll never keep.

S and X are dead, more time for sex robots.

It always pumps after a bad quarter

Woke people are so mean they stopped buying my products because I am a nazi asshole :(

When will you all learn Tesla's stock price has nothing to do with the company. Elon Musk has openly threatened people who sell his stock and lock them out of investing in other things he and his buddies do. Investors hate losing access as their LPs get angry on why they weren't in on certain deals. It's bribery and a Ponzi scheme now backed with political power.

Cumming to every home in America by end of year.

Optimus 3 in a few months. Guess we will find out the meaning of “few” in 2028

‘Looks like Musk’s wage package was worth every cent’, anonymous Tesla board member nicknamed Elmo…🤫

No no no, you just don’t understand the value of their data. I mean who can pass up a company trying to build robots, flying cars, and self driving AI after it built itself as an EV manufacturer. Nevermind that promises of EV mandates are gone, carbon tax shenanigans no longer exist, the recharge team was torched. You gotta realize, you are buying the ideas. Only the ideas.

\> Tesla has ambitions to become an AI powerhouse, but meanwhile it needs EV revenue to pay the bills. Normally a company with such a hyperinflated valuation could use that to actually acquire assets and fund their research. The fact that they aren't rolling that money into the company show it for what it is, the world's biggest pump & dump. \> Yes, but: The market is largely focused on Tesla's future, not its current finances. No, the market is playing out the Greater Fool Theory. They no longer care about the company or its lies. They just know the line keeps going up. \> The company also said Wednesday that it was investing $2 billion in the preferred shares of xAI, Musk's AI startup. The shell game. \> The company faced a consumer backlash in early 2025 to Musk's involvement with the Trump administration. He eventually withdrew from leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency. A backlash that have permanently poisoned the brand, alienating a huge portion of the company's customer demographic. Regardles they not only didn't get rid of that problem, but responded by voting to give Felon the biggest compensation package in history. \> Tesla shares were up more than 3% in after-hours trading. Just more news to confirm my status as a misanthrope. This company is doomed!

And with a P/E of 300:1, it's a really bad idea to put money into any company.

I do but unfortunately it's hard to predict exactly when the epiphany will hit "investors" that triggers the mass selloff.

Never short a meme stock under this lawless admin. Fraud is basically legal now.

Tesla's stock price behaves inversely proportional to calamitus, disastrous or otherwise financially crpipling news that destroys any normal corporation. We need a mathematical formula for this ...

Elon hurts sales but pumps the stock. As the board no doubt have stock and stock options, they're not looking at sales, just the hyperinflated market valuation so rewarding Muskrat by making him the world's first trillionaire makes sense to them.

Worse than 300 now...

On this positive news, 2T any day now

It was Elon himself who undermined the company with his political charade, losing a lot of goodwill in the process, turning Tesla cars into a toxic brand in many markets.

I don't think he's pumping anything anymore. Anyone with half a brain has figured out by now that he's just a big bag of wind. It's all about that line that keeps going up and how long investors will continue to believe it will keep going up. The sock is running on Full Self Delusion.

It really did! Lol

One of many things undermining the company, and yes will accelerate the inevitable crash. His lies aren't going to hold things together forever.

The board may think what they like, but people will make up their own minds. But Elon has definitely damaged the brand, his fascist salute plunged him into minus territory, that there is no crawling out of. But other things like SpaceX are largely unaffected. Also Tesla power and Tesla robots are still seen as OK.

Retail investors are not a big portion of the market. What drives major stocks is large institutional investors like pension funds. Ethical and qualfied managers would not be dumping anyone's money into a company so hyperinflated, and almost devoid of fundamentals.

Yes - but in which direction ?

There are probably some quants out there who have already worked this out.

Because the demand to buy an expensive robot to walk with you to go get a Coke from the refrigerator is extremely high?

I'd be afraid of losing my .... in one of those.

Yeah. Your average Tesla investor

$856M net income, of which $542M is from (non-US) regulatory credits. Once Stellantis gets its EV game on and the EU regulatory market evaporates....

And the stock goes up.

So they booked $372Mil in revenue this quarter for self driving. 70% of that was actual sales of FSD rather than subscription...shouldn't that revenue be recognized over some future life rather than recognized right away??? The answer is yes of course, can't believe auditors signed off on immediate revenue recognition.

After hours touched near $20 higher at one point. Now only $7.5 higher, but still...

Nah. It's just because he's an asshole in general. The Nazi part is collateral damage

But if it's FSD sales then yes, it can be recognized now. Subscription that answer is no way.

It's a pity, but there's so much institutional investors in Telsa stock it feels like it has hit the 'too big to fail' point. If they readjusted to a more realistic stock value it would be a bloodbath on so many pensions.

There's no such thing as too big to fail. That's political doublespeak used as an excuse to give out corporate welfare.

That's exactly what's happened. A "realistic" price point would be 70 to 80% lower than current. I doubt it's even possible at this point for them to offload enough to be able to hedge even if they spent like 3 years doing it. The word would get out and spark a race to the bottom, taking retirements along for the plunge. This shit is so fucked up.

You're all gonna look ridiculous when I buy two sex droids and make them fuck each other in a hotel room while I just relax.

The sources that I can find put retail ownership of TSLA at around 35-40%, which seems fairly significant.

to the moon and then to mars

Vanguard and BlackRock are among the largest institutional investors, often controlling substantial portions of the outstanding shares.

Fair point. I could definitely see a scenario where Tesla stock starts to seriously slide and Elon starts to bug Trump for the American government to help stabilise it, using 'too big to fail' and 'all our rich friends will lose out' reasons to justify it and maybe more publicly 'oh and pensions I guess idk'.

Already up 1.4% in after hours trading

I mean if you and thousands of others are willing and able to pay them $2MM for the pleasure then maybe it makes sense

Stick with CGI animation. It's much cheaper and a lot more realistic looking.

That would probably make a lot of money if you put it on the internet.

AI expenses? Is he funnelling money to xAI into his pocket?

I could picture the scenario and know how politicians operate, there could very well be a bailout that sticks the public with the tab.

Animation doesn't stink

Myself or the robots?

🤪

Either way.

But their *revenue* is down, not just profit. Thats not losing money to grow, thats shrinking

Well subscription is very easy. Joe Blow pays $100 in January for FSD...that is obviously January revenue. If one pays $8000 for FSD outright, that should be amortized over the life of ownership and that ownership basis would be based on fleet data. This is basic US GAAP, but I guess I'm wrong as auditors signed off

Don't worry, his Robotaxi fleet and his robots will earn him passive income and free labor soon. Most likely by the end of the year I bet.

AI costs are either going to tank the market or have corporations have us foot the bill somehow.

It’ll get swallowed up by Space X right before the IPO. Just watch.

How stupid is Europe to keep forcing its legacy auto makers to prop up Tesla with credits. Blows my mind this was ever a thing.

Currently up in after hours as I write this lol

It was supposed to be « flip of a switch » and « every time a Tesla drives the accuracy improves ». Now the software is not good enough…

the deferral might depend if there is active support costs on the sale.

Only one thing to do! Stocks do your thing and go up based on this news!!!

Just more proof that Optimus is the future and will make more money than a car!

my last OTM put expires in May and that's all I can do for now

Thats low management fee, passive index fund investing for you. Rip.

That literally happened last spring with the white house lawn sale

And pumping it directly into their various dog shit 401k funds. Many bag holders don’t even know they own it in their retirement.

Pension Funds are required by law to deploy their capital. As long as Tesla is a big portion of the S&P 500, funds will buy the shares.

AI is solved. Ready for release Q3, 2026. Q4 at the latest.

Wasn't there something about funneling a $2 billion investment into xAI? World's wealthiest man has to play shell games with his money rather than just invest directly?

Abundance: unless you're talking about earnings or the number of car models for sale.

yep, but that is from the good of his heart. He wants the other TSLA shareholders to partake in the opportunity

But you don’t get it! Tesla is about AI and robots now. Optimus is right around the corner! Elmo said so himself. she said thousands would be built in 2025! He always keeps his deadlines, you know.

Just read that the model s and x are kaput. Using factory space for optimus robots.

Yeah, that's the reason why Cathie Wood still holds such a large TLSA position even after her analysts got a very embarrassing experience with FSD a few months ago. She wants SpaceX so badly.

No, according to SaaS recognition rules according to the SEC, if you buy an annual subscription (and I don't know if FSD are annual or not), you can only recognize the usage for the reporting period. Example: if I sign a client to an annual SaaS contract Jan 1 for $100, I can only recognize $25 for Q1.

What drives the stock is manipulation.

I wonder if anyone has done the legwork to compare if the credits paid out match the ones Tesla has reported?

Shocking it is. Any thing I can do to not help, let me know. Dick weed.

Uh .. Yeah okay.

On this news, Tesla stock up 10%...

The biggest TSLA holders are BlackRock and Vanguard. Do they know something we don’t know?

TSLA is 2.31 % of S&P index. If Tesla drops big, any S&P index fund should only lose 2.31% value if they’ve write off all their TSLA investment to zero.

Yeah but alot of pension funds aren't in s&p indexed vehicles.

The public already footed the bill to subsidise Tesla.

If any pension fund is more than few percentage in any single stock, they are not doing their fiduciary duties. By law, Pension funds are heavily regulated and required to meet prudent investor standards under ERISA. Their focus is on safety and diversification. There are limits to max investments in different asset type

Are all retirement funds regulated the same as government pensions? Could be I'm mistaken but I swear I've read about some private equity firms which offer retirement accounts being heavily invested into Tesla in particular

How much will that subscription be? haha

Or both.

I read that as “He always keeps his headlines, you know.” Which also works. 🤣🤘

I read that as “He always keeps his headlines, you know.” Which also works. 🤣🤘

I read that as “He always keeps his headlines, you know.” Which also works. 🤣🤘

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smell-O-Vision

As if people weren't already lazy and obese.

Keep your eye on the pea because it's siphoning off investor money.

While dumping CyberToasters onto his other companies.

Came here to say this.

Maybe there is some cvna type shit that keeps tsla up

The basic sp500 index fund in my 401k is up 24%,23% and 16% the last 3 years. 250% in the last 10 years. How do you define a “dog shit” fund?

> > The company also said Wednesday that it was investing $2 billion in the preferred shares of xAI, Musk's AI startup. >The shell game. This is so crazy. xAI is also the first AI to get a government bailout, via a new DoD contract, which it didn't earn because it's garbage and nobody uses it. The market has chosen Google/OpenAI/Anthropic, but his political connections made him the preferred contractor.

Anything heavy tsla would be a good indicator. Throw in cvna and a few pay day loan “fintechs” and “it’s gone” when it happens. Which is on the horizon. I actually know people that killed themselves in 2009 over this kind of stuff. Not reallocating = providing exit liquidity.

They granted themselves $3B in stock. [https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/tesla-board-made-3-billion-via-stock-awards-that-dwarfed-tech-peers-2025-12-15/](https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/tesla-board-made-3-billion-via-stock-awards-that-dwarfed-tech-peers-2025-12-15/) Median compensation for F100 companies is about $335k/yr. [https://www.capartners.com/cap-thinking/director-compensation-pay-increases-again-led-by-larger-equity-grants/](https://www.capartners.com/cap-thinking/director-compensation-pay-increases-again-led-by-larger-equity-grants/) That just means, they've paid themselves the equivalent of about \~50X the typical annual board member comp for every year since Tesla's founding even though none of have been there that long and Tesla only became a F100 company in 2021.

Good thing they gave him a pay package to figure it out! /s

Gamblers that got lucky that don’t run for the exits after making stupid but unrealized returns always make me lolz. “It’s different this time” , “The gains are permanent!”

meme stock

Good

At least they are designing robot surgeons ….

Buy electric cars. EVs are great! But not from a Nazi.

And it’s gone!

Every Tesla owner provided the money Musk used to get Trump elected president.

It did surge. And every time it does it gets even harder to understand. Stock beats eps estimates. Yaaay a 400+ stock managed 0,50 eps. Better go all in with highest leverage available

So how did they built their 5000 robots last year? Lmao

He’s more incentivized now! Incentivize him!!!

An expensive robot that needs 2m spacial clearance around it, walks slower than you while looking like it's shit itself and making a lot of noise. Yes everyone will prefer getting one of them to grab them a Coke rather than just getting it themselves for free.

Next step Musk will announce pink flying cars with unicorn logos and Swastika design!

You purchased the Full Self Reproduction package, so by buying 2 robots, you are really buying thousands, once it finally releases. The current hardware will work just fine for FSR, and if a new package comes in, it'll be upgraded for free.

And if the bottom falls out, it'll take the whole house of cards Musk has built with it.

Because Tesla is ready to start delivering the hundreds of thousands or robots that are apparently needed? Boston Dynamics has products that actually work...

The EU is not forcing them to do this, they are doing this to themselves, in the hopes that this whole EV thing is a passing fad. Stellantis could also have chosen to develop competent BEVs, but instead they chose to pay Leon off.

music to my ears

Calls!

Being in the S&P forces buys to balance the indices.

I live in Germany and just read an article about the Q4 report in one of our biggest investment media rags „Der Aktionär“ (the Shareholder). It regurgitates the typical Tesla Propaganda from the report uncritically. But at the end even their recommendation is: Don’t buy.

2008 calls

Nah I got two males.  It's a power thing.

Where the shares go up or down or sideways, as long as the companies own the S&P, they do not get into trouble. Who cares about investors?

At 58, I've seen this before. If you're young and aren't aware of it, look up Enron. All through the 80's and 90's they did the same thing. It finally came crashing down in 2001. This is a small snippet from their Wikipedia page. It should look very familiar to you all: In August 2000, Enron's stock price attained its greatest value, closing at $90 on the 23rd. At this time, Enron executives, who possessed inside information on the hidden losses, began to sell their stock. At the same time, the general public and Enron's investors were told to buy the stock. Executives told the investors that the stock would continue to increase until it attained possibly the $130 to $140 range, while secretly unloading their shares. As executives sold their shares, the price began to decrease. Investors were told to continue buying stock or hold steady if they already owned Enron because the stock price would rebound shortly. Kenneth Lay's strategy for responding to Enron's continuing problems was his demeanor. As he did many times, Lay would issue a statement or make an appearance to calm investors and assure them that Enron was doing well. In March 2001 an article by Bethany McLean appeared in Fortune magazine noting that no one understood how the company made money and questioning whether Enron stock was overvalued.

I think there are two factors. 1) Index funds, people today invest in Tesla by default whenever they buy the S&P 500. Nobody is advising to sell S&P 500 which is over 2% Tesla. And 2) major government funds (Norway, Saudi Arabia) must have bought a lot of Tesla in the past. They could sell but what would they buy instead? Also they might trigger a crash by themselves if they sell.

Is it possible that a Tesla sell off would also pop the AI bubble and affect other tech stocks?

It just means that a sell off would cause collateral damage, basically. Not that it'll never happen, but that 'innocent' parties would be affected and might need bailing out.

That 35-40% also contains Musk buddies and shell companies used to prop up the price, nobody knows.

If they don’t comply and want to penalize then pay the government, not Elon or any competitor.

You know what, this CEO deserves a Billion dollar pay package, whoever is in charge there is just winning so much! Earnings are just silly talk, the world runs on vibes now.

Gotta wonder if he just dumps a few billion of his own money into $TSLA to pump it every time it seems like it should tank. He has every reason to pump it as much as possible.

lmao stock's up by $10 in pre-market.

I am confused. Other news articles are reportung that tesla earnings are good and stock has surged.

The whole idea of CO2 emissions trading is of course that rich countries can buy emission rights from poor countries. Now it's backfiring, because the old European car manufacturers are buying emission rights AND are lobbying against the zero emission mandate. This, instead of innovating on a new energy paradigm.

Amen

Sucks for them, but that’s what gambling gets you.

As if anyone with half a brain didn't see that coming. $250B well spent!

Let's start a new fund: S&P 500, minus TSLA. \> They could sell but what would they buy instead? Old stable companys that don't have astronomical P/Es, and are driven by sound fundamentals. A crash is more properly called a correction.

And each sex droid will require 2 humans in the room, holding puppetry equipment, as the robots are of course fully independent and perfect. The so-called "drivers" are just some local red tape.They will be human free in 3 months -justyouwaitandsee.

It may trigger a run in the market. But Tesla’s market cap is not AI hype. It’s self driving cars and taxis. Replacing all taxis in US with self driving Tesla wouldn’t generate enough revenue to justify the current price.

Tesla isn't quite the same as the AI investors like Oracle but to me the phenomenon is very similar. They are all talking up technology which doesn't exist (AGI, Optimus, non-geofenced self driving cars etc.) and either convincing people that they'll make it, or perhaps convincing people that enough other people will buy the stock to make it go up. I don't know why this strategy works, but apparently it does, and I also believe that if one of these massive companies begins to fall in value then others will follow.

does he even have a billion in available funds?

what was good about the earnings? Stock is up and reality are two things with Tesla.

I work for one of those old stable companies which has a market cap not much higher than its assets. It appears that the market can remain irrational for a very long time. In the meantime our executives undertake massive cost cutting to try and make the stock look more attractive, but kill off most of the future growth potential in the process.

The question is if there is an ongoing obligation to service delivery of FSD. I presume if Tesla servers went dark tomorrow then the cars would still be able to perform the FSD(supervised) function as delivered to the customer at point of sale. If the cars need Tesla to keep data center lights on for FSD to work, then yes they should defer revenue to reflect IMO. Saying that Tesla used to defer a portion of sales revenue for supercharging when they offered it free for life. I pulled the UK accounts back in the day and calculated they'd gone for an 8 year period on this (presumably because that's the battery warranty life). They then decided to push the projected free for life supercharging expenses into marketing and pull all the deferred revenue forward. I can only assume the main Tesla.com accounts did the same, it was just the UK filed accounts are at a more detailed level than we see from SEC filings. IOW Tesla has been playing accounting tricks with revenue recognition for a long time and PwC have been going along with it.

> Retail investors are not a big portion of the market. Not the market in total but they do make a hugely disproportionate share of meme stock owners.

Stock price is dropping. This time people choose not to believe Elon Musk's dreams.

As you already stated, the market is irrational. Greed is what is driving the TSLA bubble and if people want to play that casino game, let them but pension funds are supposed to be operated very conservatively because of what's at stake.

The best scenario is that Trump fixes all America's problem in his term and Vance doesn't have to finish his job.

RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES!

Much easier to be subsidized by tax dollars than appeal to end user consumers.

Wow, Elon is applying Adani's tactic.

That's a good point. So how do you explain the insane validation? Not pointing at you, but yeah it's crazy that any institutional investor would go into this stock. Did they also get caught in the hype? Hard to believe since they should have rules governing their strategy.

Look at the growing gulf between revenue and EBITDA This is a flim flam

They explicitly say this is not audited in the earnings paperwork

Buy the dip, people…if there ever is a dip lol

standing by to buy at $4.20

True but I doubt they are picking individual stocks. They are investing in US index funds where a huge amount of growth has been concentrated in the magnificent 7 in the last decade or so. It's easy to say 'diversify', but to take an example, the UK FTSE 100 had a period of extremely poor growth between ~2000 and ~2023 (literally only about 20% in over 20 years). That is a lot of cash to lose to inflation.

let me explain the problem with the business: no one is going to buy your shit ever again.

Oh but there are gonna be robots and zombies and rockets lions tigers and bears oh my.

Idiots stock should be $4

It's wild. Tesla is like a reverse start-up...Basically two or three good ideas (very generally speaking) got them up and running and since like 2015 they've been selling investors promises that they can achieve their goal of...whatever suits Elon that month or year. And always coming up short.

I thought I’d heard that a couple of the European major funds are starting to dump the stock? Or am I thinking about the US treasury bonds?

they don't own it. If you don't know that, it's going to be hard to school you on it....but a quickie. They don't own anything. You and I and people with accounts at these places own the stocks. When any VG investor buy the S&P or certain indexes, Vanguard has to buy the stock to cover it.

Honestly, the crazy thing is 2billion is nothing for him or Tesla or even xAI. More than doing this as an investment in xAI, he is doing this to preserve the narrative that Tesla is an AI company. Tesla isn't even Elon's ai company, much less the World's. Tesla really seems to be running into obstacles in the sense that–as they put it in the tv show Silicon Valley (heavy paraphrasing)–they have harmed their stock potential by trying to make money. The 1 trillion behemoth is less promising than the 200 billion "pure AI play."

Self-driving cars next year! /s