To The Moon

The post that I am about to share, squarely sums up $Tesla Motors(TSLA)$ in terms of its valuation and the bubble-hype surrounding it.

Despite another quarter of disappointment, it is still thriving but for how long ?

Without further delay, let’s find out.

Quarterly Earnings Summary.

TSLA did not post the kind of quarter that usually lifts a stock.

Profit fell sharply, deliveries declined, and margins stayed under pressure.

However, after-hours trading on Wed, 28 Jan 2026, told a different story.

It was up +4% initially and it had (a) less to do with cars and (b) more to do with the future - that investors still want to believe in.

By the numbers, the quarter was bruising: (see below)

Financial Performances.

• Total Revenue: Came in at $24.9 billion vs Q4 2024’s $25.7 billion, that’s a -3% YoY decline. Despite the drop, it has ‘marginally’ beaten analyst expectations of $24.78 billion. (see below)

• Earnings Per Share Non-GAAP (Adjusted): was $0.50 /share vs Q4 2024’s $0.73 /share, that’s a -31.51% YoY loss. Again, it has beaten analyst’s $0.45 expectations and that was enough to keep the stock moving.

• Net Income (GAAP): Plummeted to $840 million vs Q4 2024’s $2.32 billion, that’s a -61% YoY loss.

• Gross Margin: Reached 20.1%, its highest level in 2 years and a significant improvement from 16.3% YoY.

• Operating Margin: Contracted slightly to 5.7%, down from 6.2% YoY. It was primarily due to higher research and development spending on AI.

Operational Metrics.

The real nightmare and bright sparks are found here.

• EV Deliveries: TSLA delivered 418,227 vehicles in Q4, a -16% YoY decline.

• Model 3/Y: 406,585 deliveries (down -14% YoY).

• Other Models (S, X, Cybertruck): 11,642 deliveries (down -51% YoY).

• Vehicle Production: Totaled 434,358 units, a -5.5% YoY decrease.

• Services & Other Revenue: Grew 18% YoY to $3.4 billion, driven by the expansion of the Supercharger network and the “growing” Full Self-Driving (FSD) fleet.

Energy Generation & Storage:

This segment remains a glowing, bright spot, with revenue increasing +25% YoY to $3.8 billion and storage deployments reached a record for the quarter.

Energy, continues to behave like a business with momentum.

• Revenue rose by +25% to $3.84 billion.

• Storage deployments hit a record 14.2 gigawatt hours, and the segment posted its 5th straight quarter of record gross profit ($1.1 billion).

In a quarter defined by softness elsewhere, energy looked scalable, profitable, and easier to model without heroic assumptions.

Energy has overtime assumed the part of TSLA that looks at least like a bet.

Full Year 2025 Earnings.

The “annual” numbers are:

• Revenue: came in at $94.8 billion, that’s a -3% YoY decline from FY 2024’s $97.7 billion. It is the first annual decline in the company's history.

• Net Income: was $3.8 billion, a -46% YoY fall from FY 2024’s $7.1 billion.

• Deliveries: In total, 1.636 million vehicles were delivered; that’s a -8.6% YoY decrease.

Strategic Highlights & Future Outlook

• xAI Investment: TSLA announced a $2 billion investment in Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI, to accelerate the development of "physical AI" products.

• Humanoid Robotics: TSLA plans to begin mass production of the Optimus humanoid robot by the end of 2026, with an unveiling of "Optimus 3" expected in the coming months.

• Capital Expenditure: Management projected 2026 Capex to exceed $20 billion, focused on AI infrastructure and new factory production lines.

• Robotaxi & Autonomous Driving (AD): The company confirmed plans to launch the Cybercab (a two-seater autonomous vehicle) in April 2026. It also began “removing” safety monitors from its Robotaxi fleet in Austin, Texas.

Just so we’re clear about TSLA’s AD.

TSLA has once again suggested that it has Robotaxis operating in the San Francisco Bay Area, despite the company cannot legally operate autonomous vehicles in the state of California.

This included mention of its progress (?) in Austin, where the company recently offered a small number of rides where it had moved the driver to a chase vehicle to create the illusion of a true, driverless robotaxi.

Also the “small number of rides” seems to be extremely limited, as some riders have tried and failed to find any unoccupied vehicle, since the announcement. (see below)

To further confuse analysts and investors alike during earnings conference:

• TSLA said it will publish an ambitious map of cities it hopes to serve by mid-2026.

• These include Texas -

  Dallas & Houston, Arizona - Phoenix, Florida - Miami, Orlando & Tampa, Nevada - Las Vegas.

• Fans and investors will do well to take down these notes and watch for its usual no-launch.

The details announced immediately sparked debate about (1) what counts as “unsupervised,” (2) how constrained the rollout remains, and (3) how far TSLA is still from a scalable commercial service.

Fortunately or unfortunately, that debate did not slow the post-earnings rally, only reinforced the point that TSLA is still being priced on optionality, not confirmation.

When it comes to TSLA or its CEO words - like Trump, they need to be verified and double-verified as it is often laced with lies & deceptions.

Earnings Analysis.

• TSLA’s car business looked stuck in a familiar grind of pricing pressure, higher expenses, and softer demand.

• It was a rough way to close out a year that was TSLA’s most difficult in a long time.

• With the company posted its first-ever annual revenue decline, it just goes to show how far this Magnificent 7 company has fallen from its most magnificent high-growth era.

Although the post might come across as being negatively laced, it also showed that the EV maker has an innate ability to keep the market focused on what it wants the market to see and that is “what comes next”, rather than focus on what just happened.

TSLA’s EV business, once the unquestioned centerpiece of the TSLA story, now feels like the part investors skim.

Automotive revenue fell again, and margins remain thin by the company’s own historical standards.

The excuses-cum-explanations were familiar - (a) pricing, (b) costs, (c) tariffs, (d) incentives.

The result was harder to ignore: Selling cars has become a tougher, more competitive business, and TSLA no longer looks insulated from that reality.

If not for the “trade barriers” erected to prevent Chinese EVs from reaching US shore, TSLA would have been decimated long ago - just think about that for a second !

Pivot away from EV.

During the earnings call, CEO Elon Musk said:

• TSLA plans to end Model S and Model X production in Q2 2026.

• The freed-up space will be dedicated to produce its Optimus humanoid robot.

• Doing so enables TSLA to turn the “physical AI” pitch into an actual factory schedule.

Afterall, TSLA’s Model 3 & Model Y have already cannibalize the business, making up about 97% of TSLA’s roughly 1.64 million EV delivered in 2025, leaving Model S and Model X as brand artifacts with shrinking strategic weight.

Smoke Screens In The Mix.

In true Elon Musk style, there are subplots.

With a weak set of earnings, next action is to drum up “hope” and TSLA disclosed plans to invest about $2 billion in xAI, Musk’s AI company, alongside a framework agreement to explore collaboration. (see below)

That, of course, bundles several unresolved questions into one line item: (a) governance, (b) capital allocation, and (c) how tightly TSLA’s fate is now tied to Musk’s broader AI ambitions.

Like it or not, this would pull TSLA, more firmly into the AI trade, a place the market continues to reward generously and vice versa.

As if that is not confusing enough.

On 29 Jan 2026, it was also rumoured that Musk’s soon-to-IPO company SpaceX is also mulling a merger with TSLA & xAI or with xAI (as reported by other media outlets). (see below)

SpaceX is expected to go public by mid-2026 at a valuation potentially exceeding $1 trillion.

Both positionings come with a cost, a BIG one.

TSLA’s operating expenses climbed sharply, driven in part by its expanding AI and research efforts.

The company has highlighted its growing AI compute footprint and future chip plans, framing higher spending today as a bridge to higher-margin software and fleet revenue tomorrow.

It’s a story investor know well by now and one that they keep choosing to fund.

TSLA can still find ways to feed the narrative the market still values: autonomy edging closer to operations, energy compounding quietly, and AI positioned as the long-term payoff.

The risk, hanging over the entire print again, is how long are investors willing to look past a car business under pressure while waiting for those future bets to harden into something concrete and hopefully profitable.

TSLA Shareholders - Beware !

If you are a TSLA shareholder, you should be very concerned about what the impending merger implies.

SpaceX is weighing two potential paths - (1) A merger with TSLA and (2) A merger with xAI (that owns Twitter).

Self-dealing Problem

With Musk mulling over one of his companies acquiring another one, and himself leading the “negotiations” on both sides - should already raise red flags.

It’s the “same” playbook repeated over-and-over:

• In 2016, TSLA absorbed Musk’s Solarcity.

• In 2025, xAI acquired X (Twitter) for $33 billion, effectively bailing out Musk’s private investors who had watched their investment crater from $44 billion to roughly $9 billion.

• Last week, TSLA invested $2 billion in xAI - that is using public shareholder money to prop up his private AI company

With a possibility of SpaceX absorbing xAI, TSLA, or both at the horizon (where Musk owns a significantly higher percentage of xAI and SpaceX than he does of TSLA) - things become even more complicated.

With him having far more skin in the game with his private companies (SpaceX & xAI) than with TSLA’s public shareholders - it is certain that his interests will not be equally distributed.

TSLS’s Shareholders hold the Short end

TSLA is a public company with fiduciary duties to its shareholders.

SpaceX and xAI are private companies where Musk has much larger ownership stakes and far more control.

Any merger involving TSLA would require Musk to somehow fairly value:

• A public automaker that just posted declining deliveries and revenue

• A private rocket company with government contracts and Starlink

• A private AI company that has been burning cash while racing to catch OpenAI and Google.

Are TSLA shareholders absolutely certain that Musk will be fair and objective in the negotiation process?

On 9 Jan 2026, it was reported that xAI has told investors it will build AI for TSLA’s Optimus robot. (see below)

The report has completely undermined the “TSLA is an AI company” narrative that Musk has been preaching for the longest time.

For years, and especially since TSLA’s EV sales have been declining, Musk has sold TSLA investors on the idea that the automaker is not just a car company, but the world’s leading real-world AI and robotics company.

TSLA’s high valuation has largely pegged to the (a) future value of Full Self-Driving (FSD) and (b) the Optimus humanoid robot.

Musk has famously stated that Optimus would be “the biggest product ever created by humanity”, implying that value would be captured by TSLA.

With the above report, we are learning that the “brain” of Optimus — the critical software that makes it valuable, might not be a TSLA asset after all.

If TSLA is just building the hardware shell while xAI provides the intelligence, overtime, TSLA will be relegated to become:

• Nothing more than a contract robot manufacturer for Musk’s private venture. OR

• A massive customer licensing his private company’s.

Investors need to ask themselves, if xAI owns the intelligence behind the robot, what exactly is TSLA owning?

• A collection of actuators and metal?

• That is not a multi-trillion dollar future; that’s a hardware commoditization trap.

Alternatively, if the SpaceX merger were to happen, xAI will have a “higher” value due to it being the “brain” of Optimus - thus getting a lionshare’s of TSLA cash, no ?

Either way, Musk is the ultimate winner anyway you look at it.

And he has planned this strategically a while back; when he diverted NVDA’s supply of AI chips from TSLA to xAI.

The lawsuit over Tesla’s xAI investment alleged breach of fiduciary duty.

If SpaceX swallows Tesla at a valuation favorable to Musk’s private holdings (highly probable due to his majority stake), that lawsuit will look like a warmup act.

This man’s incentives are misaligned. His interests are conflicted. And Tesla’s board has shown zero willingness to stand up to him on any of this.

TSLA’s YTD Performance.

Despite another falling quarterly earnings, TSLA is still faring quite ok - thanks in part to majority belief that the snake-oil salesman is still able to deliver on his promise of making TSLA relevant and profitable.

Simple Moving Averages.

Technically, looking at TSLA stock’s simple moving averages (SMA), its long term prospect remains intact as last Fri, 30 Jan 2026 closing price of $430.41 /share is still above its 200-day SMA ($377.19).

Although in the short term it is expected to remain volatile as stock price is still below its 20-day SMA ($437.00) and 50-day SMA ($443.50).

MACD.

Its MACD is exhibiting the same consistent short term volatility too:

• The MACD (12, 26) is at -5.58, remaining in negative territory below the signal line ( -0.33).

• The negative divergence (-1.43) indicates that downward momentum is still active.

RSI.

• TSLA’s 14-day RSI is currently at 45.68.

• This is a neutral territory, indicating the in-transition car maker is not "oversold" yet.

My viewpoints (mine only)

Perhaps a merger of SpaceX & TSLA may prove to be difficult due to the “private-public” companies statuses.

A SpaceX & xAI merger is more plausible as both are “private” businesses in nature. Furthermore xAI now desperately needs the fundings due to its high burn rate.

xAI’s relevance in the tech world is highly suspicious because if you look at all the benching marking reports, the comparisons have always been amongst ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity (least compared).

Afterall, it was born out of retaliation and spite (I might add) due to Musk’s fallout with Altman after losing out on the CEO-role.

With SpaceX’s impending IPO, this could be where the much needed resources is needed to be injected into xAI, to further its survival.

Maybe, just maybe after the SpaceX & xAI merger have been successfully completed and with SpaceX gone public - would the subject of SpaceX & TSLA merger be revisited; further fueling public enthusiasm all over again.

Investors might not be worried about being short-changed if TSLA stock price continues to rise to $500 /share ? What do you think ?

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