Mark Johnson

Engineer, data hunter, happier outdoors. Be open to analysis that challenges your current view.

[Mark Johnson @MarkJohnsonTw]

@jimstewartson Pumping ready for SpaceX listing, close to fraud

[George Noble @gnoble79]

Last night was the biggest disaster in the history of Tesla.

Let me walk you through what actually happened on that earnings call, because the headlines are doing you a disservice:

Elon Musk got on the call and admitted (his words) that Hardware 3 "simply does not have the capability to achieve unsupervised FSD."

He said he wished it were otherwise. He said the memory bandwidth is one-eighth of what Hardware 4 has. And that's the end of the conversation.

Approximately 4 million Tesla vehicles on the road right now have Hardware 3. Many of those owners paid $8,000 to $15,000 for Full Self-Driving capability based on Musk's repeated promises (going back to 2016) that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. As recently as 2022, Musk was publicly assuring owners that HW3 had the processing power to get it done.

BUT IT DIDN'T

Those promises are now officially broken.

The solution is a "discounted trade-in" toward a new car with Hardware 4.

Not a refund or a free upgrade...
A discount on buying ANOTHER Tesla.

Investor Ross Gerber said it too - all HW3 owners got screwed, and with roughly 285,000 FSD purchasers affected, the potential liability runs into the BILLIONS.

But that's not even the worst part.

Musk was asked if the current FSD v14.3 was ready for unsupervised deployment. He said yes. Then immediately walked it back and admitted Tesla has "major architectural improvements" in the pipeline that would significantly improve safety.

What he really means: the software isn't SAFE ENOUGH to deploy without a human watching. Full unsupervised FSD for consumer cars is pushed to Q4 2026. At the earliest... Maybe.

How many times has this deadline been pushed? I've lost count. And trust me, I've seen a lot of broken promises. But this one takes the cake.

Now let's talk about the numbers everyone is celebrating:

Tesla reported $22.4 billion in revenue and $0.41 in non-GAAP earnings. A "double beat." The stock popped 4% after hours. Victory, right?

WRONG

Dig into the actual filing:

The number one driver of operating income improvement wasn't cost reductions, wasn't volume growth, wasn't FSD revenue. It was - and Tesla listed this FIRST in their own shareholder letter - "one-time benefits related to warranty and tariffs."

They released warranty reserves. They booked tariff refund windfalls. They stretched supplier payments by 10 days. They took on billions in new debt. Then they presented everything through non-GAAP metrics that strip out over $1 billion in stock-based compensation.

GAAP net income was $477 million on $22.4 billion in revenue. That's a 2.1% net margin. On a $1.4 trillion market cap.

Let me put that in perspective:

3.75 billion shares outstanding. Annualize the Q1 GAAP profit and you get roughly $1.9 billion. That's a trailing P/E ratio north of 700. Use the adjusted number - strip out stock comp, which is a REAL cost to shareholders through dilution - and you're still at around 250x earnings.

All of this is extremely bad, but I didn't even talk about the CAPEX BOMB yet...

3 months ago, Tesla guided to "over $20 billion" in 2026 capital expenditure. Last night they raised it to over $25 billion. A $5 billion increase in a single quarter. That's 3x their historical annual capex run rate - $8.5 billion in 2025, $11.3 billion in 2024. The CFO confirmed on the call that Tesla expects NEGATIVE free cash flow for the rest of the year.

So you have a company generating roughly $6 billion in annual free cash flow on a good year, and they're about to spend $25 billion.

The math doesn't work.

They will almost certainly need to issue equity. Which means dilution. Which means the $1.9 billion in annual earnings gets spread across even MORE shares.

The core auto business is literally deteriorating in real time:

Tesla delivered 358,000 vehicles in Q1 (missed estimates again).

They produced 408,000. That's 50,000 cars sitting on lots that nobody bought.

Inventory days jumped from 10 to 27 in just a few quarters. California (their most important US market) saw registrations crash 24% year over year.

Their market share in the state fell from 9.2% to 7.7%. That's on top of a Q1 2025 that was ALREADY weak from Model Y retooling. They're declining off a decline.

And here's what really kills the bull case...

The entire valuation rests on robotaxis, Optimus robots, and autonomy. So let's put numbers on it:

Waymo - the actual leader in autonomous driving with 15 million completed rides in 2025 alone, over 127 million autonomous miles driven, operating commercially across 6 US cities with plans to expand to 20 more - just raised $16 billion at a $126 billion valuation.

That's the market's verdict on what the LEADING robotaxi company is worth. $126 billion.

And Waymo is YEARS ahead of Tesla in actual deployment.

Tesla has 3.75 billion shares outstanding. So even if you assign $126 billion in robotaxi value (giving Tesla full credit for matching Waymo despite being nowhere close) that's $33 a share. Add the auto business at generous auto-industry multiples, maybe $20 a share. Throw in energy storage and services, $10-15.

Sum of the parts gets you to roughly $65-70 a share if you're feeling generous. Maybe $50 if you're not.

The stock is $387.

So what exactly are you paying for?

You're paying for a STORY. You're paying for PROMISES that keep getting pushed back, technology that keeps falling short, and a business plan that requires spending $25 billion a year while the core product sells fewer units at declining margins in a market where California sales just fell 24% and the federal EV tax credit is gone.

I managed the number one mutual fund in America. I founded two billion-dollar hedge funds. I've been doing this since 1981.

And I am telling you:

Tesla at $387 is one of the most egregious mispricings I have seen in my entire career.

THE CRASH WILL BE EPIC

[Mark Johnson @MarkJohnsonTw]

@Barchart More pumping for SpaceX listing

[George Noble @gnoble79]

Last night was the biggest disaster in the history of Tesla.

Let me walk you through what actually happened on that earnings call, because the headlines are doing you a disservice:

Elon Musk got on the call and admitted (his words) that Hardware 3 "simply does not have the capability to achieve unsupervised FSD."

He said he wished it were otherwise. He said the memory bandwidth is one-eighth of what Hardware 4 has. And that's the end of the conversation.

Approximately 4 million Tesla vehicles on the road right now have Hardware 3. Many of those owners paid $8,000 to $15,000 for Full Self-Driving capability based on Musk's repeated promises (going back to 2016) that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. As recently as 2022, Musk was publicly assuring owners that HW3 had the processing power to get it done.

BUT IT DIDN'T

Those promises are now officially broken.

The solution is a "discounted trade-in" toward a new car with Hardware 4.

Not a refund or a free upgrade...
A discount on buying ANOTHER Tesla.

Investor Ross Gerber said it too - all HW3 owners got screwed, and with roughly 285,000 FSD purchasers affected, the potential liability runs into the BILLIONS.

But that's not even the worst part.

Musk was asked if the current FSD v14.3 was ready for unsupervised deployment. He said yes. Then immediately walked it back and admitted Tesla has "major architectural improvements" in the pipeline that would significantly improve safety.

What he really means: the software isn't SAFE ENOUGH to deploy without a human watching. Full unsupervised FSD for consumer cars is pushed to Q4 2026. At the earliest... Maybe.

How many times has this deadline been pushed? I've lost count. And trust me, I've seen a lot of broken promises. But this one takes the cake.

Now let's talk about the numbers everyone is celebrating:

Tesla reported $22.4 billion in revenue and $0.41 in non-GAAP earnings. A "double beat." The stock popped 4% after hours. Victory, right?

WRONG

Dig into the actual filing:

The number one driver of operating income improvement wasn't cost reductions, wasn't volume growth, wasn't FSD revenue. It was - and Tesla listed this FIRST in their own shareholder letter - "one-time benefits related to warranty and tariffs."

They released warranty reserves. They booked tariff refund windfalls. They stretched supplier payments by 10 days. They took on billions in new debt. Then they presented everything through non-GAAP metrics that strip out over $1 billion in stock-based compensation.

GAAP net income was $477 million on $22.4 billion in revenue. That's a 2.1% net margin. On a $1.4 trillion market cap.

Let me put that in perspective:

3.75 billion shares outstanding. Annualize the Q1 GAAP profit and you get roughly $1.9 billion. That's a trailing P/E ratio north of 700. Use the adjusted number - strip out stock comp, which is a REAL cost to shareholders through dilution - and you're still at around 250x earnings.

All of this is extremely bad, but I didn't even talk about the CAPEX BOMB yet...

3 months ago, Tesla guided to "over $20 billion" in 2026 capital expenditure. Last night they raised it to over $25 billion. A $5 billion increase in a single quarter. That's 3x their historical annual capex run rate - $8.5 billion in 2025, $11.3 billion in 2024. The CFO confirmed on the call that Tesla expects NEGATIVE free cash flow for the rest of the year.

So you have a company generating roughly $6 billion in annual free cash flow on a good year, and they're about to spend $25 billion.

The math doesn't work.

They will almost certainly need to issue equity. Which means dilution. Which means the $1.9 billion in annual earnings gets spread across even MORE shares.

The core auto business is literally deteriorating in real time:

Tesla delivered 358,000 vehicles in Q1 (missed estimates again).

They produced 408,000. That's 50,000 cars sitting on lots that nobody bought.

Inventory days jumped from 10 to 27 in just a few quarters. California (their most important US market) saw registrations crash 24% year over year.

Their market share in the state fell from 9.2% to 7.7%. That's on top of a Q1 2025 that was ALREADY weak from Model Y retooling. They're declining off a decline.

And here's what really kills the bull case...

The entire valuation rests on robotaxis, Optimus robots, and autonomy. So let's put numbers on it:

Waymo - the actual leader in autonomous driving with 15 million completed rides in 2025 alone, over 127 million autonomous miles driven, operating commercially across 6 US cities with plans to expand to 20 more - just raised $16 billion at a $126 billion valuation.

That's the market's verdict on what the LEADING robotaxi company is worth. $126 billion.

And Waymo is YEARS ahead of Tesla in actual deployment.

Tesla has 3.75 billion shares outstanding. So even if you assign $126 billion in robotaxi value (giving Tesla full credit for matching Waymo despite being nowhere close) that's $33 a share. Add the auto business at generous auto-industry multiples, maybe $20 a share. Throw in energy storage and services, $10-15.

Sum of the parts gets you to roughly $65-70 a share if you're feeling generous. Maybe $50 if you're not.

The stock is $387.

So what exactly are you paying for?

You're paying for a STORY. You're paying for PROMISES that keep getting pushed back, technology that keeps falling short, and a business plan that requires spending $25 billion a year while the core product sells fewer units at declining margins in a market where California sales just fell 24% and the federal EV tax credit is gone.

I managed the number one mutual fund in America. I founded two billion-dollar hedge funds. I've been doing this since 1981.

And I am telling you:

Tesla at $387 is one of the most egregious mispricings I have seen in my entire career.

THE CRASH WILL BE EPIC

[Mark Johnson @MarkJohnsonTw]

@SPCX100T Says the man with an astronaut as his picture. You are not buying a start up and not buying a rocket company but a valuation based 90% AI market.

Barron is pumping a stock he already owns.

[George Noble @gnoble79]

This is the most OUTRAGEOUS deal I've seen in my 45 years on Wall Street.

SpaceX just disclosed Musk's new compensation package:

He gets up to 200 million super-voting shares if SpaceX hits a $7.5 trillion valuation, establishes a permanent human settlement of at least ONE MILLION people on Mars, and deploys roughly 100 terawatts of space-based computing power.

Let me put the 100 terawatts in perspective:

The entire electricity generation capacity of the United States is around 1.2 terawatts. The comp plan asks Musk to build more than 80x America's entire power grid... in orbit.

This is a science fiction screenplay that somehow landed in front of the SEC.

But here's why it actually matters for your portfolio...

The S-1 reportedly claims a $28.5 trillion total addressable market, with over 90 percent attributed to AI. CapeFearAdvisors flagged this one cleanly: when Palantir went public, it disclosed a $119 billion TAM and the SEC reviewed and accepted it.

SpaceX is claiming a market roughly 240x BIGGER.

Now let's talk about what is actually being sold here:

Reported 2025 revenue is approximately $15.5 billion. Starlink delivers around $11 billion of that with healthy margins, and the launch business is genuinely dominant. The problem is xAI - the AI piece doing all the heavy lifting in the trillion-dollar valuation pitch.

xAI generated just $210 million of revenue in the first 3 quarters of 2025 while burning through $9.5 billion in cash.

Ben Brey and Rupert Mitchell - a former Fidelity portfolio manager and a former head of equity capital markets at Goldman and Citi between them - ran a serious discounted cash flow on the actual operating businesses and arrived at roughly $400 billion. Lawrence Fossi covered their work recently and the math holds up.

The IPO is being marketed at $1.75 TRILLION.

The gap between what these businesses support and what Musk is asking the public to pay is roughly $1.35 trillion of pure narrative.

Then layer on what we just learned last week...

The New York Times investigation revealed Musk personally borrowed $500 million from SpaceX between 2018 and 2020 at rates as low as 1%, while bank prime rates sat around 5%. The same SpaceX has been used to bail out SolarCity, prop up Tesla during cash crunches, and absorb xAI when the AI losses became unmanageable.

This is the same playbook he's run for two decades.

Use a privately controlled entity as a personal piggy bank, and when the bills come due, find new investors to absorb the losses.

The IPO is structured to keep that game going FOREVER.

The Texas reincorporation strips away Delaware's fiduciary protections. Controlled-company status on the Nasdaq eliminates independent board requirements. And retail is being offered up to 30% of the offering (3x the normal allocation) because the institutions who actually do the math are quietly stepping away.

Here is the part that finishes the case for me:

Roughly $40 billion of the IPO proceeds are already spoken for before a single dollar reaches operations. About $23 billion retires SpaceX debt. Another $17 billion retires the high-interest debt sitting on xAI and X.

This raise is not funding the future. It's just plugging existing holes that retail investors will now own.

In my 45 years I've never seen a deal where the comp hurdle is colonizing another planet.

I've never seen a disclosed TAM that exceeds verified comparables by two orders of magnitude.

I've never seen a company asking the public to fund the retirement of debt incurred by separate private entities controlled by the same individual.

Every red flag I've watched precede a major bust over four decades is sitting in this prospectus, in plain sight.

The Tesla mispricing is being repeated on a far larger scale.

And this time the bag is being handed directly to retail.

Don't be the one holding it.

[Mark Johnson @MarkJohnsonTw]

@MarioNawfal The rocket business is amazing and profitable but you are paying 90% of the price for a notional future AI business.

[George Noble @gnoble79]

This is the most OUTRAGEOUS deal I've seen in my 45 years on Wall Street.

SpaceX just disclosed Musk's new compensation package:

He gets up to 200 million super-voting shares if SpaceX hits a $7.5 trillion valuation, establishes a permanent human settlement of at least ONE MILLION people on Mars, and deploys roughly 100 terawatts of space-based computing power.

Let me put the 100 terawatts in perspective:

The entire electricity generation capacity of the United States is around 1.2 terawatts. The comp plan asks Musk to build more than 80x America's entire power grid... in orbit.

This is a science fiction screenplay that somehow landed in front of the SEC.

But here's why it actually matters for your portfolio...

The S-1 reportedly claims a $28.5 trillion total addressable market, with over 90 percent attributed to AI. CapeFearAdvisors flagged this one cleanly: when Palantir went public, it disclosed a $119 billion TAM and the SEC reviewed and accepted it.

SpaceX is claiming a market roughly 240x BIGGER.

Now let's talk about what is actually being sold here:

Reported 2025 revenue is approximately $15.5 billion. Starlink delivers around $11 billion of that with healthy margins, and the launch business is genuinely dominant. The problem is xAI - the AI piece doing all the heavy lifting in the trillion-dollar valuation pitch.

xAI generated just $210 million of revenue in the first 3 quarters of 2025 while burning through $9.5 billion in cash.

Ben Brey and Rupert Mitchell - a former Fidelity portfolio manager and a former head of equity capital markets at Goldman and Citi between them - ran a serious discounted cash flow on the actual operating businesses and arrived at roughly $400 billion. Lawrence Fossi covered their work recently and the math holds up.

The IPO is being marketed at $1.75 TRILLION.

The gap between what these businesses support and what Musk is asking the public to pay is roughly $1.35 trillion of pure narrative.

Then layer on what we just learned last week...

The New York Times investigation revealed Musk personally borrowed $500 million from SpaceX between 2018 and 2020 at rates as low as 1%, while bank prime rates sat around 5%. The same SpaceX has been used to bail out SolarCity, prop up Tesla during cash crunches, and absorb xAI when the AI losses became unmanageable.

This is the same playbook he's run for two decades.

Use a privately controlled entity as a personal piggy bank, and when the bills come due, find new investors to absorb the losses.

The IPO is structured to keep that game going FOREVER.

The Texas reincorporation strips away Delaware's fiduciary protections. Controlled-company status on the Nasdaq eliminates independent board requirements. And retail is being offered up to 30% of the offering (3x the normal allocation) because the institutions who actually do the math are quietly stepping away.

Here is the part that finishes the case for me:

Roughly $40 billion of the IPO proceeds are already spoken for before a single dollar reaches operations. About $23 billion retires SpaceX debt. Another $17 billion retires the high-interest debt sitting on xAI and X.

This raise is not funding the future. It's just plugging existing holes that retail investors will now own.

In my 45 years I've never seen a deal where the comp hurdle is colonizing another planet.

I've never seen a disclosed TAM that exceeds verified comparables by two orders of magnitude.

I've never seen a company asking the public to fund the retirement of debt incurred by separate private entities controlled by the same individual.

Every red flag I've watched precede a major bust over four decades is sitting in this prospectus, in plain sight.

The Tesla mispricing is being repeated on a far larger scale.

And this time the bag is being handed directly to retail.

Don't be the one holding it.

[Mark Johnson @MarkJohnsonTw]

@Reuters Reuters: retail investors would be taking a "very big risk".

“It is a company that is making huge losses and at the price it’s coming to market, it’s at 100 times price to sales, which is extremely high...Normally about twice to three times is very good

Better headline

[Mark Johnson @MarkJohnsonTw]

@rishiviate Very few pure cargo flights into LHR

East Midlands Airport is the UK’s busiest ‘pure’ cargo airport and second in country in terms of total cargo.

394,000 tonnes of cargo each year, and is a major global hub for DHL, UPS, FedEx and Royal Mail.

https://t.co/rwjf8cScSO

[Mark Johnson @MarkJohnsonTw]

@stevenmarkryan They are all hyping SpaceX….because they will personally make money

[Merlijn The Trader @MerlijnTrader]

THE CEO OF THE WORLD'S MOST VALUABLE COMPANY JUST TOLD RETAIL TO BUY THE IPO. HERE'S THE PROBLEM.

🇺🇸 Jensen Huang said on CNBC that buying SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic at IPO will be like buying Amazon, Google or Meta in the early days.

But look closer. Amazon's early buyers paid $0.09. Meta's paid $38. They bought cheap, before the world noticed.

SpaceX is targeting a $2,000,000,000,000 valuation at IPO. That's not the early days. That's the late innings, priced for perfection.

The early money already made its return in private. Retail gets to buy the exit.

[Mark Johnson @MarkJohnsonTw]

@WallStreetMav Impressive how interlinked all the deals are. If one unravels we are all in trouble

[Jim Stewartson, Decelerationist 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇺🇸 @jimstewartson]

It’s called INVESTOR FRAUD.

Google is buying GPUs from Nvidia through SpaceX to boost revenue IN ITS OWN INVESTMENT.

Google owns 5% of SpaceX.

It’s more circular bullshit financing to justify an INSANE valuation. These people are just stealing from us.

[Mark Johnson @MarkJohnsonTw]

@HedgeyeComm Hopefully not because it’s all going to blowup and Mon & Pop’s 401k also going pop

[Jim Stewartson, Decelerationist 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇺🇸 @jimstewartson]

It’s called INVESTOR FRAUD.

Google is buying GPUs from Nvidia through SpaceX to boost revenue IN ITS OWN INVESTMENT.

Google owns 5% of SpaceX.

It’s more circular bullshit financing to justify an INSANE valuation. These people are just stealing from us.

[Mark Johnson @MarkJohnsonTw]

@DominicRinaldi9 @Tesla @elonmusk Really without the magic Elon multiplier Tesla is worth 1/10x $133bn

Sales fall every Q, lost subsidies, massive excess inventory, Cybertruck low sales, FSD does not work, no robotaxi yet. Huge challenge from Chinese EVs

[George Noble @gnoble79]

Last night was the biggest disaster in the history of Tesla.

Let me walk you through what actually happened on that earnings call, because the headlines are doing you a disservice:

Elon Musk got on the call and admitted (his words) that Hardware 3 "simply does not have the capability to achieve unsupervised FSD."

He said he wished it were otherwise. He said the memory bandwidth is one-eighth of what Hardware 4 has. And that's the end of the conversation.

Approximately 4 million Tesla vehicles on the road right now have Hardware 3. Many of those owners paid $8,000 to $15,000 for Full Self-Driving capability based on Musk's repeated promises (going back to 2016) that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. As recently as 2022, Musk was publicly assuring owners that HW3 had the processing power to get it done.

BUT IT DIDN'T

Those promises are now officially broken.

The solution is a "discounted trade-in" toward a new car with Hardware 4.

Not a refund or a free upgrade...
A discount on buying ANOTHER Tesla.

Investor Ross Gerber said it too - all HW3 owners got screwed, and with roughly 285,000 FSD purchasers affected, the potential liability runs into the BILLIONS.

But that's not even the worst part.

Musk was asked if the current FSD v14.3 was ready for unsupervised deployment. He said yes. Then immediately walked it back and admitted Tesla has "major architectural improvements" in the pipeline that would significantly improve safety.

What he really means: the software isn't SAFE ENOUGH to deploy without a human watching. Full unsupervised FSD for consumer cars is pushed to Q4 2026. At the earliest... Maybe.

How many times has this deadline been pushed? I've lost count. And trust me, I've seen a lot of broken promises. But this one takes the cake.

Now let's talk about the numbers everyone is celebrating:

Tesla reported $22.4 billion in revenue and $0.41 in non-GAAP earnings. A "double beat." The stock popped 4% after hours. Victory, right?

WRONG

Dig into the actual filing:

The number one driver of operating income improvement wasn't cost reductions, wasn't volume growth, wasn't FSD revenue. It was - and Tesla listed this FIRST in their own shareholder letter - "one-time benefits related to warranty and tariffs."

They released warranty reserves. They booked tariff refund windfalls. They stretched supplier payments by 10 days. They took on billions in new debt. Then they presented everything through non-GAAP metrics that strip out over $1 billion in stock-based compensation.

GAAP net income was $477 million on $22.4 billion in revenue. That's a 2.1% net margin. On a $1.4 trillion market cap.

Let me put that in perspective:

3.75 billion shares outstanding. Annualize the Q1 GAAP profit and you get roughly $1.9 billion. That's a trailing P/E ratio north of 700. Use the adjusted number - strip out stock comp, which is a REAL cost to shareholders through dilution - and you're still at around 250x earnings.

All of this is extremely bad, but I didn't even talk about the CAPEX BOMB yet...

3 months ago, Tesla guided to "over $20 billion" in 2026 capital expenditure. Last night they raised it to over $25 billion. A $5 billion increase in a single quarter. That's 3x their historical annual capex run rate - $8.5 billion in 2025, $11.3 billion in 2024. The CFO confirmed on the call that Tesla expects NEGATIVE free cash flow for the rest of the year.

So you have a company generating roughly $6 billion in annual free cash flow on a good year, and they're about to spend $25 billion.

The math doesn't work.

They will almost certainly need to issue equity. Which means dilution. Which means the $1.9 billion in annual earnings gets spread across even MORE shares.

The core auto business is literally deteriorating in real time:

Tesla delivered 358,000 vehicles in Q1 (missed estimates again).

They produced 408,000. That's 50,000 cars sitting on lots that nobody bought.

Inventory days jumped from 10 to 27 in just a few quarters. California (their most important US market) saw registrations crash 24% year over year.

Their market share in the state fell from 9.2% to 7.7%. That's on top of a Q1 2025 that was ALREADY weak from Model Y retooling. They're declining off a decline.

And here's what really kills the bull case...

The entire valuation rests on robotaxis, Optimus robots, and autonomy. So let's put numbers on it:

Waymo - the actual leader in autonomous driving with 15 million completed rides in 2025 alone, over 127 million autonomous miles driven, operating commercially across 6 US cities with plans to expand to 20 more - just raised $16 billion at a $126 billion valuation.

That's the market's verdict on what the LEADING robotaxi company is worth. $126 billion.

And Waymo is YEARS ahead of Tesla in actual deployment.

Tesla has 3.75 billion shares outstanding. So even if you assign $126 billion in robotaxi value (giving Tesla full credit for matching Waymo despite being nowhere close) that's $33 a share. Add the auto business at generous auto-industry multiples, maybe $20 a share. Throw in energy storage and services, $10-15.

Sum of the parts gets you to roughly $65-70 a share if you're feeling generous. Maybe $50 if you're not.

The stock is $387.

So what exactly are you paying for?

You're paying for a STORY. You're paying for PROMISES that keep getting pushed back, technology that keeps falling short, and a business plan that requires spending $25 billion a year while the core product sells fewer units at declining margins in a market where California sales just fell 24% and the federal EV tax credit is gone.

I managed the number one mutual fund in America. I founded two billion-dollar hedge funds. I've been doing this since 1981.

And I am telling you:

Tesla at $387 is one of the most egregious mispricings I have seen in my entire career.

THE CRASH WILL BE EPIC

[Mark Johnson @MarkJohnsonTw]

@muskonomy The rocket business is profitable but you are paying 90% of the price for a notional future AI business

[Dami-Defi @DamiDefi]

Realising Apple went public at under $2 billion and 15 times revenue in 1980.

SpaceX wants you to buy at $2 trillion and 100 times revenue in 2026.

That is not getting in early. That is being the exit for venture capitalists who have held this equity for years at a fraction of what you are being asked to pay.

Almost none of the retail investors buying this IPO will read the 300 pages before the book closes on June 11.

That is your entire competitive advantage right there.

[Mark Johnson @MarkJohnsonTw]

@EvasTeslaSPlaid @Tesla Without the magic Elon multiplier Tesla is worth 1/10x $133bn

Sales fall every Q, lost subsidies, massive excess inventory, Cybertruck low sales, FSD does not work, no robotaxi. Huge challenge from Chineses EVs

Eva bio ‘Elon Musk supporter’

[George Noble @gnoble79]

Last night was the biggest disaster in the history of Tesla.

Let me walk you through what actually happened on that earnings call, because the headlines are doing you a disservice:

Elon Musk got on the call and admitted (his words) that Hardware 3 "simply does not have the capability to achieve unsupervised FSD."

He said he wished it were otherwise. He said the memory bandwidth is one-eighth of what Hardware 4 has. And that's the end of the conversation.

Approximately 4 million Tesla vehicles on the road right now have Hardware 3. Many of those owners paid $8,000 to $15,000 for Full Self-Driving capability based on Musk's repeated promises (going back to 2016) that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. As recently as 2022, Musk was publicly assuring owners that HW3 had the processing power to get it done.

BUT IT DIDN'T

Those promises are now officially broken.

The solution is a "discounted trade-in" toward a new car with Hardware 4.

Not a refund or a free upgrade...
A discount on buying ANOTHER Tesla.

Investor Ross Gerber said it too - all HW3 owners got screwed, and with roughly 285,000 FSD purchasers affected, the potential liability runs into the BILLIONS.

But that's not even the worst part.

Musk was asked if the current FSD v14.3 was ready for unsupervised deployment. He said yes. Then immediately walked it back and admitted Tesla has "major architectural improvements" in the pipeline that would significantly improve safety.

What he really means: the software isn't SAFE ENOUGH to deploy without a human watching. Full unsupervised FSD for consumer cars is pushed to Q4 2026. At the earliest... Maybe.

How many times has this deadline been pushed? I've lost count. And trust me, I've seen a lot of broken promises. But this one takes the cake.

Now let's talk about the numbers everyone is celebrating:

Tesla reported $22.4 billion in revenue and $0.41 in non-GAAP earnings. A "double beat." The stock popped 4% after hours. Victory, right?

WRONG

Dig into the actual filing:

The number one driver of operating income improvement wasn't cost reductions, wasn't volume growth, wasn't FSD revenue. It was - and Tesla listed this FIRST in their own shareholder letter - "one-time benefits related to warranty and tariffs."

They released warranty reserves. They booked tariff refund windfalls. They stretched supplier payments by 10 days. They took on billions in new debt. Then they presented everything through non-GAAP metrics that strip out over $1 billion in stock-based compensation.

GAAP net income was $477 million on $22.4 billion in revenue. That's a 2.1% net margin. On a $1.4 trillion market cap.

Let me put that in perspective:

3.75 billion shares outstanding. Annualize the Q1 GAAP profit and you get roughly $1.9 billion. That's a trailing P/E ratio north of 700. Use the adjusted number - strip out stock comp, which is a REAL cost to shareholders through dilution - and you're still at around 250x earnings.

All of this is extremely bad, but I didn't even talk about the CAPEX BOMB yet...

3 months ago, Tesla guided to "over $20 billion" in 2026 capital expenditure. Last night they raised it to over $25 billion. A $5 billion increase in a single quarter. That's 3x their historical annual capex run rate - $8.5 billion in 2025, $11.3 billion in 2024. The CFO confirmed on the call that Tesla expects NEGATIVE free cash flow for the rest of the year.

So you have a company generating roughly $6 billion in annual free cash flow on a good year, and they're about to spend $25 billion.

The math doesn't work.

They will almost certainly need to issue equity. Which means dilution. Which means the $1.9 billion in annual earnings gets spread across even MORE shares.

The core auto business is literally deteriorating in real time:

Tesla delivered 358,000 vehicles in Q1 (missed estimates again).

They produced 408,000. That's 50,000 cars sitting on lots that nobody bought.

Inventory days jumped from 10 to 27 in just a few quarters. California (their most important US market) saw registrations crash 24% year over year.

Their market share in the state fell from 9.2% to 7.7%. That's on top of a Q1 2025 that was ALREADY weak from Model Y retooling. They're declining off a decline.

And here's what really kills the bull case...

The entire valuation rests on robotaxis, Optimus robots, and autonomy. So let's put numbers on it:

Waymo - the actual leader in autonomous driving with 15 million completed rides in 2025 alone, over 127 million autonomous miles driven, operating commercially across 6 US cities with plans to expand to 20 more - just raised $16 billion at a $126 billion valuation.

That's the market's verdict on what the LEADING robotaxi company is worth. $126 billion.

And Waymo is YEARS ahead of Tesla in actual deployment.

Tesla has 3.75 billion shares outstanding. So even if you assign $126 billion in robotaxi value (giving Tesla full credit for matching Waymo despite being nowhere close) that's $33 a share. Add the auto business at generous auto-industry multiples, maybe $20 a share. Throw in energy storage and services, $10-15.

Sum of the parts gets you to roughly $65-70 a share if you're feeling generous. Maybe $50 if you're not.

The stock is $387.

So what exactly are you paying for?

You're paying for a STORY. You're paying for PROMISES that keep getting pushed back, technology that keeps falling short, and a business plan that requires spending $25 billion a year while the core product sells fewer units at declining margins in a market where California sales just fell 24% and the federal EV tax credit is gone.

I managed the number one mutual fund in America. I founded two billion-dollar hedge funds. I've been doing this since 1981.

And I am telling you:

Tesla at $387 is one of the most egregious mispricings I have seen in my entire career.

THE CRASH WILL BE EPIC

[Mark Johnson @MarkJohnsonTw]

@Hughe_G_Reksin @SPCX100T @grok The valuation is based on 100xq

[Mark Johnson @MarkJohnsonTw]

@StockMKTNewz “Free stock market news” but forget to tell people SpaceX is wildly over valued as insiders will cash out

[Pepesso @0xPepesso]

🚨 $SPCX IPO IS THE BIGGEST LIQUIDITY TRAP IN MODERN HISTORY

Everyone thinks SpaceX IPO is free money

People said the exact same thing about Meta in 2012

However, after Meta went public, the stock dumped over 50% in the first 100 days

Retail bought the hype, insiders got their exit

Now the same scenario is repeating again

SpaceX goes public June 12 at $135/share - $1.75 to $2 TRILLION valuation

That would make it one of the 7 largest companies in the entire US market overnight

But here's the problem:

This is not an IPO but a $75 BILLION liquidity event

555 million shares × $135 = $75B that needs to be absorbed by someone

Insiders own 95% of SpaceX right now, public float is 5%

That means insiders are sitting on over $1.6 TRILLION in paper wealth

After June 12, they will start converting it into real cash

Lockup expires September–December 2026

That's when the real dumping begins

Michael Burry already warned about this

He said SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic could raise more capital than 300 dot-com IPOs in 2000 - COMBINED

And this isn't just words:

$912M in $PLTR puts + $186M in $NVDA puts extended into 2027

Connect the dots

This could be the largest coordinated insider cashout in market history

I've studied macro for 10 years and nailed the October BTC $126k ATH while everyone were screaming about supercycle

Follow + notifs on, I will keep you updated

[Mark Johnson @MarkJohnsonTw]

@ThemesETFs How’s your ‘seeking to provide investors with opportunities’ that are JUNK

https://t.co/EGnaz63m5U

[Pepesso @0xPepesso]

🚨 $SPCX IPO IS THE BIGGEST LIQUIDITY TRAP IN MODERN HISTORY

Everyone thinks SpaceX IPO is free money

People said the exact same thing about Meta in 2012

However, after Meta went public, the stock dumped over 50% in the first 100 days

Retail bought the hype, insiders got their exit

Now the same scenario is repeating again

SpaceX goes public June 12 at $135/share - $1.75 to $2 TRILLION valuation

That would make it one of the 7 largest companies in the entire US market overnight

But here's the problem:

This is not an IPO but a $75 BILLION liquidity event

555 million shares × $135 = $75B that needs to be absorbed by someone

Insiders own 95% of SpaceX right now, public float is 5%

That means insiders are sitting on over $1.6 TRILLION in paper wealth

After June 12, they will start converting it into real cash

Lockup expires September–December 2026

That's when the real dumping begins

Michael Burry already warned about this

He said SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic could raise more capital than 300 dot-com IPOs in 2000 - COMBINED

And this isn't just words:

$912M in $PLTR puts + $186M in $NVDA puts extended into 2027

Connect the dots

This could be the largest coordinated insider cashout in market history

I've studied macro for 10 years and nailed the October BTC $126k ATH while everyone were screaming about supercycle

Follow + notifs on, I will keep you updated

[Mark Johnson @MarkJohnsonTw]

@BBCNews When SpaceX has to be bought by tracker funds we all buy into this near scam

[Dami-Defi @DamiDefi]

Realising Apple went public at under $2 billion and 15 times revenue in 1980.

SpaceX wants you to buy at $2 trillion and 100 times revenue in 2026.

That is not getting in early. That is being the exit for venture capitalists who have held this equity for years at a fraction of what you are being asked to pay.

Almost none of the retail investors buying this IPO will read the 300 pages before the book closes on June 11.

That is your entire competitive advantage right there.

[Mark Johnson @MarkJohnsonTw]

@rabindraX238 @BBCNews You don’t understand this
You are not being sold a rocket company
90% of the crazy $1,75 bn valuation is based upon a notional $38T AI market. Their AI operations lost $5bn in a single year

[Mark Johnson @MarkJohnsonTw]

@FT Umm,so Goldman are hyping a stock they are underwriting

Come on FT where is your journalism vs being spoon fed a headline from an interested party.

[Mark Johnson @MarkJohnsonTw]

@Rocket_grly @SawyerMerritt You will be less grateful when the stock crashes but probably enough Elon fans and Goldman hype to keep the price high
But it will cost us all by sucking liquidity and downward pressure on other stocks

[Mark Johnson @MarkJohnsonTw]

@munster_gene @SpaceX The bigger number $1.75 Bn, the $75bn $40bn vanishes to pay off debt. Every time money runs out Elon releases a few more shares, sucks money out of the system, depresses other shares and with Index trackers takes money from Mon and Pop in their 401k

Core Tech holding, AI gamble