*By Conor White*
The positive [news](https://cheddar.com/videos/tesla-stock-surges-after-q2-earnings-report) in Tesla's second quarter earnings report outweighed the negatives for most investors, sending shares up more than 12 percent to their highest level in a month.
The electric carmaker announced that Model 3 production is up, but it posted losses of more than $700 million.
Some analysts have fundamental doubts about Tesla's future.
"It's a story stock," said Mark Spiegel, managing member at Stanphyl Capital. "What you have here are: bulls who couldn't care less about balance sheets or profit and loss statements; and you've got bears, or as I would call them, realists, who care a lot about that kind of stuff."
Spiegel counts himself in the latter group. He said in an interview Thursday on Cheddar that Tesla didn't do nearly enough to assuage fears about its future ー and that doesn't even account for all the other car companies eager for a bigger slice of the electric vehicle industry.
"There's a massive amount of competition coming for this company," Speigel said. "Between the Jaguar that's out now and the Audi, Mercedes, and Porsche coming out next year, it's going to destroy Model S and X sales, and that's where \[Tesla's\] margin isーwhatever margin they have."
And even though [outspoken](https://cheddar.com/videos/will-elon-musk-behave-on-this-weeks-earnings-call) CEO Elon Musk behaved on this conference call, there's no telling what he will do next.
After reaching its production goal of 5,000 Model 3 cars per week, Tesla reports it now wants to churn out 10,000 per week, "as fast as we can."
Spiegel dismissed those numbers ー and Tesla more generally.
"They're a perennial over-promiser and under-deliverer," he said.
"The reason they keep putting out these aggressive numbers is it supports the stock, which is an absurd valuation. If Tesla were a normal car company losing this much money, the stock would be in the low single digits."
For more on this story, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/tesla-announces-biggest-loss-ever-but-shares-rally).
What do Alinea, Eleven Madison Park, and The French Laundry have in common? Aside from their Michelin stars, the restaurants all offer reservations through the booking platform Tock. Acclaimed restaurateur and [Tock](http://exploretock.com} founder and CEO Nick Kokonas hopes his software platform can wrestle the reservations monopoly from the almost 20-year grip of OpenTable and launch bookings into the 21st century.
Cloudera and Hortonworks, longtime cloud and data rivals, have decided it's better to take on Amazon Web Services together than apart. Cloudera CMO Mick Hollison told Cheddar how the merged company, with 2,000 customers, fits in the cloud wars.
Car-sharing and ride-hailing companies have changed the way we get around ー and now they're about to change the way we buy car insurance. In an interview with Cheddar at CES 2019 in Las Vegas, Nev., Allstate CEO Tom Wilson said that simply insuring your car will become a thing of the past, since many consumers are increasingly ditching the buy-and-drive model.
AT&T's ad division Xandr is beginning to flex its muscle as a potential advertising powerhouse by allowing brands to use customer data to advertise on WarnerMedia's Turner.
Apple has topped the charts once again ー but this time it's on buy-back site DeClutttr's list of 2018's most unwanted items. The iPhone 7 may have been the company's most traded-in item last year, but according to Anthony Catterson, DeClutttr's president and CEO, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Plaid, the company that connects consumer bank accounts to fintech apps like Venmo, Coinbase or Robinhood, is acquiring competitor Quovo, according to a Tuesday morning blog post by the Plaid founders.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2018.
Investor sentiment is easy to track on the public markets, but private trends are more opaque ー and tech investors are increasingly prioritizing profitability over valuation. That's good news for companies looking to go public, like Airbnb and Lyft, but Uber might want to consider an alternative path to liquidity, J. Michael Ostendorff, director for Lagniappe Labs, told Cheddar on Monday.
Vocera wants to get patients in and out of the hospital as quickly and efficiently as possible ー and it's using Star Trek-inspired, connected badges to achieve that ambition. "We believe that by delivering the right information to the right caregiver at the right point in time, we can really eliminate some of those frustrations and delays and interruptions ー and allow \[patients\] to have a more seamless path through the hospital," Vocera CEO Brent Lang told Cheddar Monday.
The world's biggest tech event, CES, is upon us. In past years, the Las Vegas-based trade show has presented such memorable innovations as the first-ever home VCR and the (short-lived) Nintendo PlayStation ー but this year will be all about 5G. "Just like the transition from 3G to 4G, this transition from 4G to 5G is inevitable ー it is happening," George Slefo, Ad Age technology reporter told Cheddar Monday.
