Speaker 1: Well, Elon Musk gives now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 1: More than half the satellites in space are owned and
Speaker 1: controlled by one man, starting his own artificial intelligence company.
Speaker 2: Well, he's a legitimate super genius, I mean legitimate.
Speaker 1: He says.
Speaker 3: He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will
Speaker 3: be different. He'll vote Republican.
Speaker 1: There is a reason the US government is so reliant
Speaker 1: on him.
Speaker 4: Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Speaker 2: Anything he does is fascinating the people. Welcome to Elon, Inc.
Speaker 2: Where we discuss Elon Musk's vast corporate empire, his latest
Speaker 2: gambits and antics, and how to make sense of it all.
Speaker 2: I'm Joe Webber, sitting in for David Papa Duplas for
Speaker 2: the first time on Eloni. We're gonna get you ready
Speaker 2: for Tesla's earnings called this Wednesday, and we have a
Speaker 2: little surprise to take the fun factor to ludicrous mode.
Speaker 2: To help us prep the popcorn will convene Dana Hole,
Speaker 2: who's covered more Tesla earnings call than any other reporter
Speaker 2: I know. Hi, Dana, Good morning. Sarah Fryar, who leads
Speaker 2: the Big Tech team here at Bloomberg News. Hello, and
Speaker 2: Max Chafkin, Senior reporter at Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Hey, but first,
Speaker 2: some recent topics we've discussed on elon ink have been
Speaker 2: back in the news. A big one anti Semitism. Both
Speaker 2: X and Musk have been accused of amplifying hate speech
Speaker 2: on the platform. On Monday, Musk got a private tour
Speaker 2: of the Aschwitz concentration camp in southern Poland. Later he
Speaker 2: participated in a discussion hosted by Ben Shapiro, a controversial
Speaker 2: media pundit. Let's listen, why as.
Speaker 4: Many Jewish friends as non Jewish friends. I'm like Jewish
Speaker 4: by association, I'm aspirationally.
Speaker 2: Jewish, Sarah, what do you make of this visit to
Speaker 2: Aschwitz and sort of this Musk non apology apology.
Speaker 4: It's extremely crn to go to a concentration camp to
Speaker 4: try to launder your image and say that you are
Speaker 4: aspirationally Jewish, basically like this happened to your people by association.
Speaker 4: I mean, I can't believe it happened.
Speaker 1: Just welcome to the tribe, brother, Thank you. As a
Speaker 1: Jewish American, I'm just so happy to have encountered another
Speaker 1: Jewish American. Elon Musk I also agree, why is doing
Speaker 1: this cringe? So our editor Naomi joke yesterday that you know, normally,
Speaker 1: if you commit an anti Semitic faux pa, you have
Speaker 1: to go to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: If you commit a world historical anti Semitic foe pa,
Speaker 1: if you allow hundreds or maybe even thousands of crazy
Speaker 1: anti Semitic accounts, if you buy into crazy conspiracy theories,
Speaker 1: if you, as the world's richest man, promote all this nonsense,
Speaker 1: then you have to actually go to Ashwitz. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, he's like attempting to make things right, I guess,
Speaker 1: but of course doesn't seem to be really addressing any
Speaker 1: of the normal stuff, and is claiming Jewish identity in
Speaker 1: an extremely depressing and cringe worthy way.
Speaker 3: In my opinion, just struck me as like a very
Speaker 3: political It's like all optics. It's like there's Elon Musk
Speaker 3: looking somber with let us note his three year old
Speaker 3: toddler on his shoulders.
Speaker 2: And an Auschwitz survivor standing next to him too, and an.
Speaker 3: Oshwitz survivor standing next to him, and then like the
Speaker 3: images that were released, it very much struck me. It
Speaker 3: looked like a political campaign.
Speaker 1: Stop.
Speaker 3: Obviously, Musk is not running for any kind of office,
Speaker 3: but it had all of the stage craft of a
Speaker 3: political moment during the week when Tesla's reporting earnings and
Speaker 3: so for him to sort of take the time to
Speaker 3: fly to Poland and fly back. Why now it's all
Speaker 3: because of X and advertising, right, Sarah, I mean, this
Speaker 3: is still sort of an effort to lure the advertisers back.
Speaker 4: It's wild because this is the only thing that Elon
Speaker 4: Musk and Linda Yakarino are talking about. Linda's the CEO
Speaker 4: when they speak publicly like they're just doubling down on
Speaker 4: the how could you think we were ever anti semitic? Meanwhile,
Speaker 4: if you look at what Elon Musk is tweeting, there's
Speaker 4: there it runs the gamut. There's there's all sorts of
Speaker 4: anti immigrant sentiments, all sorts of of you know, other
Speaker 4: race t stuff, and he's promoting a lot of these
Speaker 4: accounts that are the worst of the worst. It is
Speaker 4: not just anti semitism. It is a wholesale embrace of
Speaker 4: people who were banned before were considered dangerous to have
Speaker 4: on the platform in the name of his his free
Speaker 4: speech initiative and So.
Speaker 1: The funniest thing about this about this event was that
Speaker 1: Elon Musk and the European Jewish Association which hosted it,
Speaker 1: started with this kind of thought experiment like what if
Speaker 1: we had X during the late Weimar period in Germany,
Speaker 1: maybe we would never have had the Holocaust? And Elon
Speaker 1: Musk claimed essentially that, yes, if we'd only had Twitter,
Speaker 1: you know, back in the late thirties, early nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: a Holocaust never would have happened, which, like I guess,
Speaker 1: you know, pay sign up for groc guys.
Speaker 2: Okay. Elsewhere in current events, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis dropped
Speaker 2: out of the Republican presidential race ahead of the New
Speaker 2: Hampshire primary. One of our mini Elon in pilots was
Speaker 2: all about DeSantis announcing his campaign on X with Elon,
Speaker 2: which was glitchy, shall we say, I.
Speaker 1: Think we've got.
Speaker 2: Just a massive number of people online, so it's serve
Speaker 2: as as training somewhat so very glitchy, Sarah Fryar Howell history,
Speaker 2: remember that Musk DeSantis embrace just a you know.
Speaker 4: A bad bet, right, but you know, it wasn't the
Speaker 4: only candidate that he has aligned himself with. He also
Speaker 4: did one of those for RFK Junior, the known anti
Speaker 4: vax conspiracy theorist. He's also been in spaces with the
Speaker 4: vik Ramaswami. This is is all kind of wishful thinking
Speaker 4: on his part, because he would really like it if
Speaker 4: he didn't have to cozy up to either Trump or Biden.
Speaker 4: But sounds like that's what he's going to have to do.
Speaker 4: And he's already We've already discussed on this podcast that
Speaker 4: he has said he will not vote Biden. And so
Speaker 4: we do see a lot more Trump aligned rhetoric these
Speaker 4: days on X, including voting conspiracy theories.
Speaker 2: Max if Runda Santis is out of the race. Who
Speaker 2: is Elon's horse? Now?
Speaker 1: I mean we've we're already seeing I looked at Elon's
Speaker 1: X page earlier today, and you know, he's he's tweeting
Speaker 1: about twenty twenty election stuff. We've talked about this on
Speaker 1: the podcast before. He's been stopped to steal curious, you know,
Speaker 1: for some time, and he is, you know, reiterating those concerns,
Speaker 1: sort of rebroadcasting or or promoting what essentially amount to
Speaker 1: like willful misreadings by Donald Trump and Donald Trump type
Speaker 1: supporters of the twenty Tony voting results, among many other things.
Speaker 1: I mean, he is essentially, you know, moving towards Trump.
Speaker 1: As Sarah said, I mean, I think I think we're
Speaker 1: already seeing it. I'm guessing we'll see it more like Frankly,
Speaker 1: like many billionaires who affiliate with the right right, where
Speaker 1: like there were other candidates that they might have preferred.
Speaker 1: We have a new Hampshire primary today. It doesn't look
Speaker 1: great for NICKI Haley, and I think we're gonna see
Speaker 1: this same evolution playing out among other people, not just Elon.
Speaker 2: Musk, Max any Musk Trump predictions. Obviously, Trump was a
Speaker 2: prolific tweeter before Musk purchased the platform. Trump obviously has
Speaker 2: not been active on X but there's sets up this
Speaker 2: dynamic where you've got Musk and Trump.
Speaker 1: Perhaps another first of all, to me, Musk supporting Trump
Speaker 1: is like a four on conclusion. Basically, I think it's
Speaker 1: it's going to happen. I think you could argue it is,
Speaker 1: it has already happened. The real question to me is
Speaker 1: like what happens. You know after twenty twenty, there were
Speaker 1: all of these right leaning social networks that launched, you know,
Speaker 1: one of which was truth Social, Donald Trump's company, and
Speaker 1: then another one of them is X essentially, and it
Speaker 1: does seem like X has a chance of like claiming
Speaker 1: that market. You do sort of wonder, you know, this
Speaker 1: is kind of a deep cut. I mean, you really
Speaker 1: have to be the interested in sort of right wing
Speaker 1: media and media landscape to care like what happens to
Speaker 1: truth Social, parlor Getter, what's the right wing dating site
Speaker 1: of the right stuff?
Speaker 2: Like, they're all these sort of.
Speaker 1: Media business media adjacent businesses that seem like their reason
Speaker 1: for being doesn't quite doesn't exist as much now that
Speaker 1: now that Elon Musk has so firmly turned X to
Speaker 1: that market.
Speaker 2: So in that sense, you know, it's like all gravy
Speaker 2: for Elon.
Speaker 1: I think I think the consolidation of the Republican Party
Speaker 1: probably allows, you know, X honestly to consolidate this sort
Speaker 1: of ecosystem.
Speaker 4: But let's be clear, Trump does not need X the
Speaker 4: way he needed Twitter in twenty twenty or twenty sixteen.
Speaker 4: It is a completely different platform now and Trump has
Speaker 4: managed to build up his own network that he has
Speaker 4: control over of email addresses, of phone numbers, of people
Speaker 4: who will hand him those five dollars donations when he
Speaker 4: sends a scary thought. I think that that's really how
Speaker 4: we are seeing political fundraising evolve, and the idea that
Speaker 4: a politician needs to use X in order to rally
Speaker 4: their base may still be in Musk's mind, which is
Speaker 4: why he rewarded the candidates that we're leaning into it.
Speaker 4: But as we've seen, that hasn't been successful for them.
Speaker 4: And I think that what Trump is seeing with a
Speaker 4: platform is the same thing we're all seeing. It is
Speaker 4: not as effective anymore for driving results with an audience.
Speaker 4: The followers that it shows you you have are not
Speaker 4: all visiting the platform anymore. So I think in that sense,
Speaker 4: maybe Musk needs Trump more than Trump needs Musk at
Speaker 4: this point.
Speaker 1: I one hundred percent agree with that, And I do
Speaker 1: think there's some question about whether Trump ever needed Twitter,
Speaker 1: like I think there was a there has been a
Speaker 1: tendency to kind of like overstate the impact of social media,
Speaker 1: and a lot of times media kind of chases like
Speaker 1: whatever people are into rather than like setting the agenda.
Speaker 1: But with Trump, it definitely is kind of has reached
Speaker 1: a different dynamic where he's basically been absent from this
Speaker 1: platform for a very long time, and it hasn't seemed
Speaker 1: to make a huge difference.
Speaker 2: One more fallout of DeSantis exiting the race, there was
Speaker 2: a potential Few of the Week max from Elon Musk
Speaker 2: trolling economist Paul Krugman, who's a commist at the New
Speaker 2: York Times. What happened?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I'm a little as an Elon feud connoisseur,
Speaker 1: I am sad to report that Paul Krugman, the Nobel
Speaker 1: Prize winning economists Princeton University, New York Times columnist, well
Speaker 1: known progressive liberal commentator, did not take the bait.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of a fake.
Speaker 1: Krugman trolled DeSantis, essentially saying like, let's not forget how
Speaker 1: wrong Rondistances was on covid, pointing to long standing criticisms
Speaker 1: among the left that Dessant has kind of ignored you know,
Speaker 1: basic CDC guidelines and so on, and Elon must responded like,
Speaker 1: you are a disgrace to the economics profession, which Krugman
Speaker 1: sadly did not take the bait. And I'm mostly sad
Speaker 1: because it was sort of amusing to think of Elon
Speaker 1: as a connoisseur of like academic economics, Like he's like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: you know, you're just like disgracing canes or like like
Speaker 1: Elon has no idea who like it does not follow
Speaker 1: the deep nuances of economics, like he follows the Wait.
Speaker 3: He's starting university and he has an economics degree from
Speaker 3: or business degree from Wharton. Come on, he has like
Speaker 3: some grounding in business as a point, But.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean he's like some kind of connoisseur of
Speaker 1: who you know, like academic economic academia. Yeah, he doesn't
Speaker 1: know what whether Krugman's or disgraced anything. He's just responded
Speaker 1: to the vibes.
Speaker 3: It's not a few if it's not what's below a feud?
Speaker 3: Is it like a schoolyard scrap. It's like a it's like.
Speaker 2: A we have I think it's a big nothing burger.
Speaker 2: It's like it's like.
Speaker 1: On the hurricue, you have the one to five on
Speaker 1: the hurricane scale, but below that it's like a tropical storm.
Speaker 1: This is like a tropical depression. Maybe I guess as
Speaker 1: far as fews go.
Speaker 2: Maybe watch yeah Witchery mix And now for our main
Speaker 2: event earnings. Okay. Publicly traded companies like Tesla get to
Speaker 2: do these quarterly meetings where they reveal how much money
Speaker 2: they made or lost. It's to face the music moment
Speaker 2: that gives investors, analysts, and journalists a better look at
Speaker 2: what's happening in a given companies business. Dana, you are
Speaker 2: the Tesla pro here. How many earnings have you done?
Speaker 2: And can you give us a short history of Tesla's
Speaker 2: earnings calls?
Speaker 3: So I've covered Tesla since two thousand and nine. They
Speaker 3: went public in June of twenty ten, and I don't
Speaker 3: think I've ever missed an earnings call. So that's what
Speaker 3: ten years, four times year, I don't know, I've done
Speaker 3: like over forty maybe fifty that rest in my life.
Speaker 3: And they're pretty wild because if you so, like, most
Speaker 3: corporate earnings calls are pretty boring, frankly, like the CEO
Speaker 3: reads scripted remarks, the CFO reads scripted remarks that basically
Speaker 3: repeat what they've just put out in the shareholder letter,
Speaker 3: and then they take questions from analysts that are like,
Speaker 3: congratulations on a good quarter, Bob, like can you give
Speaker 3: us some color about the YadA YadA? And it's just like,
Speaker 3: very frankly, it's very boring. Like test Le earnings calls
Speaker 3: are not like that at all, like Elon is not scripted.
Speaker 3: He gets really pissed off at the analysts. He gets
Speaker 3: bored and like a big question like when this call
Speaker 3: starts is like ooh, what kind of mood is dear
Speaker 3: leader in? And we've had some really wild earnings calls
Speaker 3: over the years. I mean, at one point in twenty
Speaker 3: eighteen he called Tony Secanagi, who's like a great analyst
Speaker 3: at Bernstein, like you know that his question he like
Speaker 3: didn't answer his question. He was like this is boring
Speaker 3: and boneheaded. At one point he went to YouTube and
Speaker 3: took spent twenty five minutes talking to like a millennial
Speaker 3: who has like a YouTube channel, and they're just really
Speaker 3: they're very interesting calls, and so much of like how
Speaker 3: Stock reacts is to what does Elon say? And then
Speaker 3: like what's the actual news from the call? Because it's
Speaker 3: all about like what does he say about, you know,
Speaker 3: things going forward? And the January call is always really
Speaker 3: important because it kind of sets out the expectations for
Speaker 3: the year. So tomorrow the question is like are we
Speaker 3: going to get embulent, expansive, like wonderful Elon or is
Speaker 3: he going to be like morose Elon talking about how
Speaker 3: they're digging their own grave, Like that's the big question
Speaker 3: on everybody's mind.
Speaker 2: Elon is such a fixture here, right, Like how many
Speaker 2: of these has he missed in your time covering the company?
Speaker 3: He's only missed one. He made this big show a
Speaker 3: couple of years ago about how he's like not going
Speaker 3: to be in the earnings calls unless he has big
Speaker 3: news to announce. And then there was one call that
Speaker 3: he missed that the CFO led that was great, and
Speaker 3: then Elon was back and he just can't stay out
Speaker 3: of the limelight, like he's got to be the main character. Like,
Speaker 3: so he's only he's been on every single call.
Speaker 2: Okay, So because this is a January call, this one
Speaker 2: is more year ahead leaning than a typical one, which
Speaker 2: would typically look back at the previous quarter. Is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially because Tesla has not given guidance for twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four. They have not said publicly how many vehicles
Speaker 3: they expect to deliver in twenty twenty four. We know
Speaker 3: that they delivered roughly one point eight million cars in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three through so like what is the forecast?
Speaker 3: Like we're seeing kind of slowing growth in the EV sector.
Speaker 3: Like evs are still growing as part of the overall
Speaker 3: auto market, but it's not this like blockbuster fifty percent
Speaker 3: year of year growth. So that's a big question for investors.
Speaker 3: Are they going to say that they're going to deliver
Speaker 3: two million or two point five? Like what is the
Speaker 3: growth trajectory? And then how much does Musk talk about
Speaker 3: all the other aspects of the business. Is he going
Speaker 3: to be like, we're an AI company, or is he
Speaker 3: going to talk about energy or insurance or you know,
Speaker 3: the optimist robot. I mean, there's all these different sort
Speaker 3: of aspects of the business that people are curious about.
Speaker 2: And and what do everybody who's watching the company, what
Speaker 2: do we think about what the twenty twenty four numbers
Speaker 2: could look like, especially after all the price cuts of
Speaker 2: last year but also possibly this slowing demand.
Speaker 4: Well did they tend to over promise? You know, because
Speaker 4: I know like a lot of companies have the opposite strategy,
Speaker 4: where they underpromise and then they try to beat that.
Speaker 4: But historically Tesla has said more good things are going
Speaker 4: to happen than actually end up happening. So what do
Speaker 4: we think?
Speaker 3: It's kind of weird they'll give like a range where
Speaker 3: a Musk will be like, well, like there could be
Speaker 3: a force measure and things that I can't control, like
Speaker 3: earthquakes and pandemics and tsunamis, and like, I don't really
Speaker 3: know how things are going to go. But he actually
Speaker 3: tends to blame the macroeconomic environment quite a bit, like
Speaker 3: you know, on previous startings calls, he's he's really bashed
Speaker 3: to FED and high interest rates and been like, look,
Speaker 3: you could sell more cars if interest rates were lower.
Speaker 3: The fact that interest rates are high is making the
Speaker 3: cars too expensive for people, which is why they made
Speaker 3: this big gambit to chase volume over profit margins. And
Speaker 3: they could do that again. He could say we're going
Speaker 3: to continue to dominate and we're going to cut prices,
Speaker 3: and I mean that would be one strategy. It's just
Speaker 3: that then the margins are much smaller. But you know,
Speaker 3: Tesla has room to play with their margins, and we
Speaker 3: could see that again in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: It also seems like there's like a real guidance and
Speaker 1: then an Elon Musk guidance. Elon will throw in hey,
Speaker 1: like anything's possible, like full self drive. There's this whole
Speaker 1: other category of stuff that doesn't relate to like number
Speaker 1: of units sold or like margins where the guidance is
Speaker 1: whacked out, and kind of everyone agreed. Everyone understands that
Speaker 1: this is like, these are not real timelines. These are
Speaker 1: Elon Musk timelines. You know. I was reading an analyst
Speaker 1: note that Dana sent me just before we went on,
Speaker 1: and they're talking about the question of robotaxis as anywhere
Speaker 1: from three years to a decade out like that. That's
Speaker 1: the timeline that this analyst was suggest which is like
Speaker 1: a huge range, and it reflects the fact that Elon
Speaker 1: Musk has essentially said robotaxis are just around the corner
Speaker 1: basically every year for almost a decade. So it's like
Speaker 1: very confusing and analysts have just learned to, I think,
Speaker 1: just kind of ignore slash discount some of those wilder promises.
Speaker 2: And now for the really fun part. The brains behind
Speaker 2: Elon Inc. Have created a special bingo card which you
Speaker 2: can download at Bloomberg dot com, slash Elon Inc. Or
Speaker 2: on the Mini BusinessWeek social media accounts. Max, what is
Speaker 2: earnings bingo and how do I play along? Okay, so
Speaker 2: earnings bingo is this is a thing that exists.
Speaker 1: We did not invent this you know, all credit to
Speaker 1: the Elon stands out there on Twitter as well as
Speaker 1: the Elon critics, the tesla Q army. Basically anyone who
Speaker 1: has an opinion about this guy has been making these
Speaker 1: bingo cards for years.
Speaker 2: And the idea is you.
Speaker 1: Have a card the one that we have, which you
Speaker 1: can go to Bloomberg dot com slash Elon Inc. And
Speaker 1: download and it's twenty four squares. It's plus I love it,
Speaker 1: plus the free space. I'll just tell you, so, some
Speaker 1: of these are are ones that I think are definitely
Speaker 1: gonna happen like these are. This is like easy money
Speaker 1: some of these. So so for instance, through the Okay,
Speaker 1: so we've got B I n G G four that's
Speaker 1: cyber truck.
Speaker 2: That's come on. That's a gimme. That's practically a free space.
Speaker 1: Now B one is definitely less likely, I would say,
Speaker 1: and that one's audibly puffs joint. So, as I understand it,
Speaker 1: like my job at Bloomberg now, at least part of
Speaker 1: my job anyway, is I'm gonna be listening to that
Speaker 1: podcast as the you know, person who has to listen
Speaker 1: for the audible joint puffing. By the way, sorry, B
Speaker 1: two because It's not enough to just puff a joint.
Speaker 1: It has to be it has to be audible.
Speaker 2: Dan, do you have a favorite on here that you're
Speaker 2: gonna hopefully get to scratch out.
Speaker 3: Yes. I think what's really interesting is, you know, Elon
Speaker 3: just has this very peculiar way of speaking that all
Speaker 3: of his fans then adopt. And I am a big fan.
Speaker 3: I forget what the square is, but reasonably optimistic, because
Speaker 3: you know, Elon will say I'm reasonably optimistic that we'll
Speaker 3: have full self driving at the end of the year,
Speaker 3: or I'm reasonably optimistic that we will, you know, sell
Speaker 3: fifty thousand cyber trucks in twenty twenty four. And so
Speaker 3: the Bingo card is really about Musk and his language
Speaker 3: and his very unique use of language and how he
Speaker 3: invents all these words that then enter the lexicon, like
Speaker 3: gigafactory is not a real word, but Elon started calling
Speaker 3: his battery plant a gigafactory, and now every automaker in
Speaker 3: every battery company on the planet talks about how they
Speaker 3: have a gigafactory. Similarly, megapack like what the hell is
Speaker 3: a mega pack? It's Tesla's name for their like utility
Speaker 3: scale battery products. So I mean, I would love to
Speaker 3: get a like linguist on the phone someday to talk
Speaker 3: to us all about this. But his use of language
Speaker 3: is very unique and it is adopted by his life
Speaker 3: regions of fans. And the other thing about the earnings
Speaker 3: calls is that like tens of thousands of people listen
Speaker 3: to them, like employees listen to them, fans listen to them,
Speaker 3: like a lot of people dial in and listen. And
Speaker 3: it's not just like Wall Street analysts. It's like hundreds
Speaker 3: of thousands of people.
Speaker 1: We talk a lot about on this podcast about like
Speaker 1: how to think about Elon, and I think on the
Speaker 1: last episode Davey Alba compared him to Donald Trump right
Speaker 1: as as sort of a political influencer and so on.
Speaker 1: But I was thinking, like with the looking at this
Speaker 1: BNGO card and thinking about the way, as Dana says,
Speaker 1: that Elon sort of remixes himself, like he has these
Speaker 1: tropes that he repeats and reuses, And you know, I
Speaker 1: think the sort of great oral poets, right, like the
Speaker 1: way that I think linguists believe that oral poetry Homer
Speaker 1: and so on was consumed was you'd have these like
Speaker 1: little like couplets or little bits of language that would
Speaker 1: then be arranged in order. And it's almost like that
Speaker 1: with Elon, where he's got these like catchphrases that just
Speaker 1: get tossed in and it becomes like a part of
Speaker 1: the fandom. As Dana said, it's something that the that
Speaker 1: his fans repeat and also that they look for, right
Speaker 1: and it's it is like the experience of like one
Speaker 1: of these Elon Musk Earnings calls. It's like not all
Speaker 1: that different from the Taylor Swift concert right where you
Speaker 1: see the snake and you're like, oh, the snake, Like
Speaker 1: here it is, except here, it's like it's like optimists
Speaker 1: or dojo or the phrase, you know, digging our own
Speaker 1: grave or whatever. My other favorite square here is not
Speaker 1: many people understand this, which is just like a thing
Speaker 1: that he says all the time and just really speaks
Speaker 1: to like this sense of inn Elon fandom, of that
Speaker 1: you're given access to this truth or really it's like
Speaker 1: a set of truths that are not well understood, and
Speaker 1: if you understand them, you are going to have You're
Speaker 1: gonna get rich, you're gonna you're gonna be a part
Speaker 1: of this. It's not only gonna be a source of
Speaker 1: cultural meaning, but it's gonna be a source of wealth.
Speaker 4: Now, I was just gonna say, like, I love O
Speaker 4: three refers to Earth as a market because that is
Speaker 4: just so how he talks about everything, like are you
Speaker 4: with humanity or against it? We're fighting for our consciousness,
Speaker 4: We're fighting for the future of Earth, and referring to
Speaker 4: Earth as a market implies that there will be future
Speaker 4: planetary markets, which is of course his worldview.
Speaker 3: And because he uses these tropes so often, part of
Speaker 3: the challenge of listening to a Tesla earnings call as
Speaker 3: a journalist or an analyst is that you almost get
Speaker 3: like a focus hangover, because you have to listen very
Speaker 3: carefully for any change in nuance because that's what the
Speaker 3: news is like. Is he slightly altering these tropes in
Speaker 3: a way that's either positive or negative for the future
Speaker 3: of the company, And is he backing away from you know,
Speaker 3: dojo or is he talking down cyber truck. I mean,
Speaker 3: on the last call he very famously said that with
Speaker 3: the cyber truck we dug our own grave. And it
Speaker 3: was like, ooh, like what is that about, man? So
Speaker 3: you have to listen very very carefully for any kind
Speaker 3: of change in nuance or tone.
Speaker 4: We dug our own grave.
Speaker 1: Every big things are gray better than themselves, and.
Speaker 3: It's kind of it's just really wild and usually but
Speaker 3: I'm on the calls, I'm like blowug and I'm listening
Speaker 3: and I've got my Bingo card. But I'm also like texting,
Speaker 3: like employees and analysts and like fans, and everyone's like,
Speaker 3: you know, did you catch when he said this? Did
Speaker 3: you catch when he said that? And you if you've
Speaker 3: never listened to an earnings call, we really encourage you
Speaker 3: to join along.
Speaker 2: And play and go to Bloomberg dot com slash elon
Speaker 2: and to download our first Bengo card. I think we'll
Speaker 2: do this again, will we? Okay, well we.
Speaker 3: Have to the great thing about the Bingo card is
Speaker 3: that everybody wins. We only made one card, so for
Speaker 3: everyone loses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, what happens if I win? Do I get
Speaker 2: all that money that you were talking about? Max?
Speaker 1: Well, I just want to say, like it sounds kind
Speaker 1: of superficial to be Dana opened this conversation talking about
Speaker 1: do we get dour elon? Do we get happy elon?
Speaker 1: But like that actually matters, and like that's what what
Speaker 1: Dan's kind of saying is that because he repeats these phrases,
Speaker 1: like it sounds like we're just we're doing like theater
Speaker 1: criticism or something. But like the fortunes of this company
Speaker 1: hundred it's of billions of dollars, you know, hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of jobs sort of depend on like what Elon projects,
Speaker 1: and like does he sound depressed, you know when he's
Speaker 1: talking to this audience of analysts and fans and like
Speaker 1: it's such a weird It's just such a weird world
Speaker 1: we live in, and like you can kind of understand.
Speaker 1: I doubt this is a cause for Elon to believe
Speaker 1: in the simulation, but it kind of makes me like
Speaker 1: question our reality when so much depends on you know,
Speaker 1: basically how Wall Street interprets Elon Musk's mood.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The other thing that's really fun fun to do if
Speaker 3: you have a terminal is while he's talking, watch gip
Speaker 3: post and you can see the stock trade after hours
Speaker 3: in real time. And if he gets like dark, and
Speaker 3: if we get like dark Elon, you will just see
Speaker 3: the stock completely tank. And then if he's like embulent
Speaker 3: and like very confident, you'll see the stock go up.
Speaker 4: So that's like another trick of the trade that a
Speaker 4: lot of people do. You all just learned to terminal function.
Speaker 1: I love that Dan and I are going to be
Speaker 1: live blogging on the terminal as well.
Speaker 2: You know, get ready.
Speaker 3: People are also already criticizing our Bingo card. We don't
Speaker 3: have a square that says the limiting factor. We don't
Speaker 3: have a square that says, you know, talks about population collapse.
Speaker 3: But to be fair, like he doesn't really talk about
Speaker 3: population collaps on the earnings calls. He talks about them
Speaker 3: like all the rest of the time.
Speaker 1: You know what, Listeners, tell us what's wrong with our
Speaker 1: Bingo card?
Speaker 2: Tell us what's missing?
Speaker 1: Make your own Bengo cards. We you know, yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: be back in qeqe Q one is only three months away, exactly.
Speaker 2: All right, enough, let's call it. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 2: Elon Inc. And thanks to our panel Dana, Sarah and Max,
Speaker 2: thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 3: Always a pleasure.
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Stacey Wong me and We
Speaker 2: Shaven and Rayhan Hermanchi are our senior editors. The idea
Speaker 2: for this very show came from Rayhan. Like Maple's handles
Speaker 2: engineering and we get special editing assistants from Jeff crocott.
Speaker 2: Our supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson. The Elon Inc. Theme
Speaker 2: is written and performed by Taka Yazazawa and Alex Sigira.
Speaker 2: Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcast and our
Speaker 2: executive producer. I'm Joe Webber covering for David pop Douglass.
Speaker 2: If you have a minute, please rate and review our show.
Speaker 2: It'll help other listeners find us. Also, let us know
Speaker 2: what you think of Tesla Bingo. See you next week.