Tesla's First Quarter Earnings Are Out, And They're Real, Real Bad

Call it a fork in the road for Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Tesla released its first quarter financial results Tuesday after the markets closed, and they’re a doozy. The electric car company’s total revenue for the quarter fell 9.4% from the year prior, missing Wall Street expectations by around $1.8 billion.

Profits fell dramatically as well, with Tesla reporting 71% less net income ($409 million) compared to a year ago, when it earned $1.39 billion.

The one bright spot on Tesla’s balance sheet was regulatory credits, where it tallied up $595 million in sales. Were it not for those credits, noted the electric vehicle blog Electrek, Tesla would have lost money this past quarter.

Deliveries of the Model 3 and Model Y, Tesla’s most popular vehicles, fell 16% year over year, while the category for “other models,” which includes the Cybertruck, fell 24%.

In a letter to investors, Tesla said without a hint of irony that global market turbulence and its political unpopularity were at least partially to blame.

“Uncertainty in the automotive and energy markets continues to increase as rapidly evolving trade policy adversely impacts the global supply chain and cost structure of Tesla and our peers,” the company wrote. “This dynamic, along with changing political sentiment, could have a meaningful impact on demand for our products in the near-term.”

Based on Tuesday’s earnings report, it doesn’t seem they’ve had many takers. Though Tesla stock, which has long been decoupled from rational trading behavior, spiked 5% after hours.

Musk seemed to shrug off the bad financials, posting a “man shrugging” emoji on social media along with a video clip of him arguing that all press is good press.

“I remember, for three years straight, it would just be headlines trashing Tesla. Over and over and over again. And our sales went up,” he says in the clip.

“So I’m like, okay, yeah. So I guess keep trashing us.”

That sentiment carried over to his earnings call with investors Tuesday evening, where he downplayed the results as not that bad.

“We are not on the ragged edge of death,” he said.

The CEO also claimed that first quarters have historically been slow for Tesla because would-be car buyers don’t want to go kick the tires “during a blizzard.”

Musk also used the call to announce that his work with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency is “mostly done” and predicted he’ll spend one to two days a week on government matters beginning in May.