DealBook: Musk sees “rough” times ahead
Good morning. Andrew here. The big conversation on Wall Street this morning is about Elon Musk's Tesla. The stock is falling after the company reported disappointing earnings and Musk cautioned that the next couple of quarters could be tough. We're also looking at Google's parent company, Alphabet, which surprised investors with better-than-expected earnings — defying concerns that ChatGPT and other A.I. models would hurt its search business — and raising the amount of money it plans to spend on capital expenditures, including on data centers, to $85 billion. (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)
Selling TeslaShares in Tesla are sinking in premarket trading this morning after the electric vehicle maker reported its worst quarterly revenue drop in over a decade, and after Elon Musk warned on a call with analysts of the potential for "a few rough quarters" ahead. Fresh off his contentious stint in Washington, Musk tried to hook investors by claiming that technologies like robotaxis and humanoid robots would make the struggling automaker "the most valuable company in the world by far." Some on Wall Street are concerned. Growth in its core business looks rocky. The company's problems resemble those of traditional carmakers, which typically have much smaller market valuations. Similar to Stellantis and General Motors, Tesla warned of the hit from "a sustained uncertain macroeconomic environment resulting from shifting tariffs, unclear impacts from changes to fiscal policy and political sentiment." There are other factors, too: Competition from Chinese rivals is fierce, E.V. demand is softening in key markets and tax credits for American buyers of these vehicles will end as the Trump administration continues its assault on green transport. The numbers:
Expectations were already low. But its slump of declining profits — extending back to the the third quarter of last year — has investors on edge. They fear that Musk's bets on self-driving taxis and autonomous driving could distract him from growing the car business. "There was a lot of uncomfortable realism mixed in with the futurism," Steve Sosnick, the chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, told DealBook. A lot rests on the robotaxi. The self-driving taxi service, which began last month in Austin, Texas, in a limited capacity, has roused investors who see it as a potential huge business. Musk emphasized Tesla's plans to expand the service elsewhere in the country this year. But not everybody is sold. "There wasn't enough there to excite," Sosnick said. Politics isn't helping. Even with (or because of) Musk being on the outs with President Trump, protesters appear bent on disrupting the tech mogul's business empire. And the Republican policy bill will scrap at the end of September the lucrative federal tax credit that has helped bolster overall E.V. sales. Musk initially played down the effect on its business, but analysts estimate the credits' removal could cost Tesla as much as $1 billion in annual profit. "We are in this transition period where we will lose a lot of incentives in the U.S.," Musk conceded on the earnings call. But some analysts see a silver lining. Losing the tax credit could accelerate efforts to bring forward a low-cost model to better compete with the likes of China's BYD, Tom Narayan, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a research note yesterday. Tesla said that production started last month, and that the model would begin sales later this year.
President Trump plans to visit the Fed today. That comes as the White House criticizes Jay Powell, the central bank's chair, over the renovation of the Fed's headquarters that has ballooned to $2.5 billion. Trump has been unrelenting in his attacks on the Fed and Powell for standing pat on interest rates, a divide that has become a major focus of global investors. Columbia agrees to pay more than $200 million to settle its clash with Trump. The agreement, which includes a pledge to ban the consideration of race in admissions and hiring, and commit to reducing antisemitism on campus, would restore hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding. The deal could provide a template, as other schools, including Harvard, remain locked in similar disputes with the Trump administration. The World Economic Forum reportedly digs up wrongdoing by its founder. As part of a preliminary investigation, the organization found a series of red flags involving Klaus Schwab, including unauthorized spending by him and his wife, bullying staff and inappropriate treatment of others, according to The Wall Street Journal. The forum did not respond to The Journal report and a spokesman for Schwab broadly rejected the findings, but tensions between Schwab and trustees have been growing, clouding the organization's future. Big spenderThings look far rosier for Google's Alphabet this morning. Investors are driving the tech giant's shares higher in premarket trading on optimism that its hugely expensive bet on artificial intelligence will pay off handsomely. (So far, the outlays haven't torn a hole in its bottom line.) The company yesterday reported better-than-expected quarterly results that are giving a lift today to the chipmakers at the heart of the A.I. revolution, Nvidia and AMD. Google, in the first wave of the Magnificent Seven grouping of tech companies to report earnings this period, suggests that spending on A.I. has room to grow as the Trump administration signals its support. There's been a stampede of tech lobbyists, and tech C.E.O.s like Sam Altman of OpenAI, descending on Washington to influence policy around A.I. so far this year, The Financial Times reports. But there's a high cost. Google said that its capital expenditures, mostly tied to investments to help it keep pace in the cutthroat race to dominate the tech, would hit $85 billion this year — up $10 billion from its previous estimate. Expect similar statements when Microsoft, Amazon and Meta report next week, Christopher Danely, a Citigroup analyst, wrote in a research note yesterday. "Google's capex guidance supports our view that A.I. spending remains strong," he added. The company sought to soothe fears that A.I. will cannibalize its core search business. "A.I. is positively impacting every part of the business, driving strong momentum," Sundar Pichai, the company's C.E.O., said in a statement. It comes as the Trump administration continues to embrace the tech giants — and the A.I. boom. With Nvidia's Jensen Huang in attendance at a Washington event, Trump yesterday signed three executive orders and introduced an "A.I. Action Plan" that seeks to cut "red tape and onerous regulation" to help companies build out A.I. infrastructure. Trump's stated aim is to make America a world leader in the fast-growing sector. But the tech has to play by rules core to conservative politics, he said. One idea: the government should revise guidelines to ensure that A.I. systems strip out mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion as well as climate change and misinformation. That gives rise to concerns that the "chatbot culture wars" have arrived.
Chart of the dayMeme-stock mania is back, with investors sending shares in a basket of otherwise overlooked stocks on a roller-coaster ride this week. Retail investors have christened this one with a new acronym: "DORK." It refers to the first letters of stock symbols for the latest big movers: Krispy Kreme (DNUT), Opendoor (OPEN), Rocket Mortgage (RKT) and Kohl's (KSS). Otherwise, the trading action largely resembles past meme-stock rallies — and crashes. Traders talk up individual shares on popular investor discussion forums, such as Reddit's "wallstreetbets," in the hopes the buzz will lead to others buying into the shares. Krispy Kreme, which has seen wild price spikes this week, is the latest. On wallstreetbets, it has had "pretty much doughnut mentions most days," Ivan Cosovic, the managing director of Breakout Point, a market data company, told DealBook. "Then with latest retail crowd's storm — over 1,000 mentions in a day." More deals?Trade deal optimism has added fuel to a record-breaking run for global stocks. A drip-drip of news has turned into a torrent, with reports from The Financial Times and Bloomberg yesterday that the European Union was closing in on an agreement with President Trump's negotiators for a 15 percent tariff on most U.S. imports. And Trump signaled yesterday that he was setting a floor on levies, with a plan to impose "a straight simple tariff" of 15 to 50 percent on countries. The latest: The Stoxx Europe 600 climbed this morning as hopes grow that the region will dodge Trump's bigger threats of levies around 30 percent. European automakers, such as Mercedes, were among those leading the way higher. S&P 500 futures point to a decent open, but the benchmark index is still in record territory. "We are hearing this very minute that there could be a decision," Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany said to President Emmanuel Macron of France as the two met in Berlin yesterday, The F.T. reported. That said, Trump's Truth Social feed, where these deals tend to get announced, is quiet on the matter this morning. The reported terms appear to resemble what the White House struck with Japan this week. According to Bloomberg, the bloc's steel and aluminum shipments would face a 50 percent levy above a certain quota, and negotiators were still working on terms for automobiles. An agreement could affect central bank policy. "If the two sides indeed conclude such a deal, it would support our call that the eurozone economy can regain momentum from Q4 2025 onward, and that the European Central Bank will not need to cut rates further," Holger Schmieding, the chief economist at Berenberg, wrote in a research note yesterday. Today, the central bank is expected to keep rates on hold. Watch for what Christine Lagarde, its president, has to say about the effect of Trump's trade war on growth, inflation and interest rate policy. Elsewhere:
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