When Your Pumps Stop Working

While Tesla's Q2 results were in line with expectations, the stock sold off despite Musk's pumps about how Tesla will be the "most valuable company in the world".

While Tesla’s share price rallied by 52% in 5 weeks after printing a Q1 EPS miss of 29% in April, its in-line results for Q2 caused a sell-off. Musk’s tone on the call was very low-energy—like someone who woke up from a bender without his little “pick me up”—and some pretty negative things were said (more details below).

Even Tesla bulls agreed that this was one of the worst earnings calls in recent memory and it reminded me of the Q4 2021 call where Tesla beat consensus EPS by 4%, but Musk’s bad form on the call caused the stock to plummet by 12% the following day.

This is how bad Tesla’s Q2 numbers were: Despite the low hurdles from Q2 2024 when Tesla booked $622 million of restructuring charges, its Q2 2025 EPS was still down by 36% YoY (excluding Bitcoin gains) and adjusted EPS of $0.40 was down 23% YoY, yet bang in line with consensus estimates of $0.39 (see Figure 1 below). My non-GAAP EPS estimate of $0.35 was 12% too bearish, but I believe it may be a one-off before sliding back down from this quarter.

This report is a bit long, given the growing signs of the walls closing in on Tesla and Musk, and aside from the analysis of numbers below, there is a big section on Tesla’s deceitful claims that they’re expanding their “robotaxi” service to the San Francisco Bay Area. This company and its CEO are lying in broad daylight without even flinching and it’s becoming unbearable even among the Tesla bulls.