00:00 Speaker A
It’s Tesla earnings day after the close and while you are on that earnings call listening to Elon Musk, I think it’s important to keep something in mind. You are listening to a human with some superpowers. Former Tesla President John McNeal told me in a recent episode of my opening bid Unfiltered podcast.
00:18 John McNeal
So I think what Elon constantly does is he looks at what is the existential threat to the business right now. And in the car business, he’s determined that uh to be a survivor in this business as Tesla, you have to be two things. You have to have autonomous cars because nobody’s going to choose a car that doesn’t become a a chauffeur if they have a choice.
00:41 John McNeal
And the second is uh is you’ve got to be a low-cost manufacturer and the proxy for that is robotics.
00:51 Speaker A
My question of the day is this, Tesla’s first half of the year is probably going to suck. Do you bet against Tesla or go all in on superhuman Musk and his ability to see the future. George, what say you?
01:07 George
I’ve I’ve I’ve never owned Tesla. I’ve never bet against it. It’s been an unbelievable stock. I would never bet against Elon Musk, but I would not want to buy a company that’s that’s in a soft spot and is incredibly overvalued. So I’d just pass and do something different that I feel more confident about.
01:29 Speaker A
So George, your play on Mag 7 is more focused on some of the other plays, like the the hyperscalers.
01:36 George
Exactly. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, so forth and so on. I’m sticking in there meta. We just added a lot to meta too.
01:44 Speaker A
Ines, this is going to be an interesting earnings release. The one thing that we know that the first quarter was was under pressure. We got those delivery numbers, but Elon’s going to hop on there. He may drop some SpaceX uh SpaceX references to get everybody all excited. You may talk about humanoid robots, that might get people excited, but I I am curious on how much they’re going to focus on those those results that we know already.
02:08 Ines
Right. And robotaxis is what the street is going to be looking at. You’ve got B of A that just reaffirmed their buy rating. They have a $460 price target on the stock and talking about robotaxis and the fact that they recently announced that they’ve extended to Dallas and to Houston. But anything that Elon Musk also says about uh chipmaking, what they’re going to be spending on that. And of course, Optimus, Optimus, that is going to really uh fuel investor enthusiasm as well. I mean, this stock is really about Elon Musk. If you’re betting on Tesla, you’re betting on him.
02:55 Speaker A
He should really just call it OptaMusk. a little bit of a mouthful, but uh yeah, digging it. Brooke, I know you’re uh you’re manning Polymarket uh and you got an interesting Elon Musk Tesla angle.
03:07 Brooke
Yeah, the the interesting part here, Polymarket’s users are saying that there’s only an 8% chance that Musk will be out as Tesla CEO before 2027. And this was something that I feel like in 2025, we discussed so much, especially within his involvement within Doge, uh the government efficiency uh program that he was overseeing partnering with President Trump. There was just so much discussion about what does Tesla look like if Elon Musk is no longer the CEO. But based upon what Polymarket users are saying, based upon what we’re hearing from the street, and based upon, you know, what what even we’re discussing right now is that this is a company that is so fundamentally ingrained with Elon Musk at the helm. He joined back in October of 2008 as CEO. He was then a member of the board since April of 2004. This is a company that is so intertwined with Elon Musk, with his visionary uh nature that he brings forward to the company when it comes to these humanoid robots or these autonomous vehicles, that it seems like investors can’t even think of Tesla without him at the helm. And there’s a big question mark there is that is that how big of a problem is that at the end of the day?
04:23 Speaker A
Well Brooke, I can tell you what it would look like. It would look like uh Kia or Hyundai. I mean both snoozefest. How often have you talk about those two companies? I mean, give me a break.
04:31 Brooke
Not very often.
04:32 Speaker A
Not very often.
