Hatem Dhiab on TSLA Earnings Sell-Off: Not Enough Focus on Here & Now

in the S&P 500 today down almost 14%. So for more on the major takeaways from this quarter, we're joined by Tam Diab, managing partner at Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management. Tam, always love to get your thoughts on the latest from Tesla. Let's start with one of the major concerns. I mean, delivering record volume but profitability collapsed. So at what point does volume growth stop mattering if, say, the core auto business is barely generating earnings? It's good to see you Jenny. Absolutely. Great point. We knew the business was not doing as well. And especially when you stop selling the model S and model X, which were their highest margin vehicles. But you know, ASP, the average selling price has gone down quite a bit. And they are in a massive, massive investment phase right now. So you have free cash flow. So you're basically owning a company that is not growing, that is trading at a massive, massive valuation. And you know, investors just don't like that. And more importantly, I think with SpaceX going public, you know, if you wanted to be involved with the Elon kind of sphere, Tesla is just not that exciting anymore. You own space. So I think that's what you're seeing is a lot of investors are just over being owners of Tesla, which is really sad and unfortunate. And just moving on to SpaceX and other companies, how Tam is a lot of the reason that you see the collapse in margin, the collapse in free cash flow, because they're spending on other things like robotics and these things that you if you're an investor in Tesla, you know, broadly the royal you that you're generally excited about. So in some ways, aren't we should we expect this? Well, Elon has done a good job for the last two years telling us that Tesla is no longer an EV company and is a robotics company. So I think investors were were warned that this was happening. Right. The problem is Optimus is nowhere to be there. And there is nothing exciting that's going to happen in the next few months, next couple years really. They talked a lot about how hard it is to build robots and how hard it is to get memory. And, and they're building the tariff app, which is basically a chip company that takes years to, to set up, right. So everything that Tesla is working on, despite how hard it is, is not going to, is not going to materialize in years. Right? So that's what's happening with, with with with with with investors. They're saying, hey, listen, you know, yeah, this may be cool, but it's going to take some years to unfold. The, the irony also is, you know, gas prices are like five bucks here. I live in California. It's almost $6 right now. Driving an EV is really the smartest thing you could do. And Tesla has the best cars, but they are not spending any time trying to sell more cars and really make margins there. So so that's really the unfortunate part too. Okay. And in previous conversations, we have discussed the lack of clear robotaxi execution, the lack of specific timelines. And so this earnings call, did it give investors any clarification or would you say that most were left with, say, more unanswered questions than not? I think anybody that's been investing in Tesla for many years should not look at any timelines that Elon gives. They always miss them. But there was no clarity. I think they have some, some, some, some, some cars that are unsupervised in Texas and other places. But again, like the they have to be perfect, right? With with these cyber gaps. And Waymo has been doing this for years and Tesla hasn't. So for, for, for me. And even if they if they execute on this, I don't see that business being massive. I think Uber is $140 billion market cap company. Is that is that what we're looking after? So for me, the cyber cap business, how I, I don't care how cool it is, I don't think there's going to be a massive lift for for, for Tesla shareholders. All right. If someone who's a steward of capital for your, your clients and your investors and you're thinking about investment management, I'm sure you do a lot of these discussions with your teams about, okay, give me the bull case. What are we excited about? And then what are we, where are we wrong if we're going to be wrong? So assuming you're a Tesla bull, if you are, what has you most excited? And then on the flip side, what are you worried about? What will will kind of change that thesis if you see it? I mean, we haven't been bullish on Tesla for a few years, unfortunately. So it's really hard to see. Again, it's really the robotics optimist story is really what you're buying and you're buying. That's going to be executed flawlessly over the next year to, to, to, to buy Tesla at these ridiculous valuations today. The bear the bear is really that, you know, it's really hard when they're trying to do and it's going to take some time. There's a lot of competition. They announced $25 billion in CapEx. I think they're going to have to spend a lot more than that. They have 30 billion in cash on the on the books right now. So it's going to be, I think, a lot of money and a lot of effort to do what they're doing. That's just how hard it is. So for us, really, it's hard to be able. I think the only thing that's going to happen, and this is my prediction, is that SpaceX will have to buy Tesla. They have so much synergies together, and it's just much easier for Iran to run both companies. And I think that's really one of the reasons why people will own the stock is really because there's going to be a combination of both companies, regardless of how expensive they both are. Yeah. And I mean, he did very intentionally, not really give any details on that, which I thought was interesting because I think it's the question we're all asking of like, how long or when do we see those companies combined forces? I mean, under just, you know, one leader, but I mean, robotics is an interesting theme. And I will say I'm a bit surprised with the extent of today's pressure, because, as you said, this narrative has been understood. I mean, it's been the bullish thesis or the thing that the Bulls are at least hanging on to for now, I mean, years at this point. So say robotics is of course the priority. Then what proof point do investors need to believe optimists can be a real business rather than just another long dated promise? I mean, they spoke a lot about how hard it is to create the hands for optimism and dexterity of that. It's a big, big problem. And for me, even I don't even think the, the form factor of, of humanoid robot is really the best way to create robots if you want, if you're trying to accomplish different tasks. And are we all going to have robots running in our households going upstairs and things like that? So again, you have to really believe this long dated kind of theme that's going to work out and we're going to have millions of robots. I just don't don't see it happening. Okay. Let's take a step, you know, kind of bigger picture than bird's eye view, more macro holistically. It seems like the key change was about a quarter ago when we got some of these megacap earnings. Alphabet, Microsoft, meta. On the same day, they all announced more and more CapEx. Alphabet, of course just did that yesterday as well. But it seems the big difference is, is now that the free cash flows have flipped negative, that's no longer a good thing, at least in terms of the stock reaction. It still seems that the AI infrastructure names are reacting positively. Do you see a world where those two trades, the hyperscalers and the infrastructure trade, can kind of come back together as a correlated trade. Or is that inverse here to stay, at least for now? You're making a very good point for me. I live in a world where if you're investing in innovation, that's eventually going to work out nicely. So when you see Google or Microsoft spending a ton of money on infrastructure, I think ultimately those are going to be very, very good. The very, very big winners over the long run. You just have to go through the cycle, right? The best part of the Tesla call yesterday is the shout out to micron, Samsung and TSMC. Right? It really kind of solidifies the fact that this infrastructure trade is here to stay. They've announced $25 billion in CapEx. That's really good for the whole chip slash infrastructure trade. And really, you should not really swim against the tide. Really. That's where the money is going. Those are the companies that are doing well. And ultimately, if you believe in AI like we do, this CapEx is going to turn out to be a fantastic thing for our economy and for these investments. So I'm not worried long term. If anything, I'm more bullish on this. And I think the hyperscalers, they start trading at a very, very attractive valuations will be a great winner because they're investing in the right places. Yeah I totally agree. I actually think that that was the brightest spot of this report. Not even to do with Tesla necessarily. But really, I mean, like the way it was touting other technologies and utilizing these other technologies, which only makes that that case a bit more bullish for those names that have been on a fantastic