*By Brigette Webb*
Tesla's stock is one of the most divisive on Wall Street, with bulls who subscribe wholeheartedly to CEO Elon Musk's vision and a legion of short sellers who say the electric carmaker is in for a rude financial awakening.
The company's second quarter earnings only widened the rift. Tesla posted a record net loss of more than $717 million on revenue of $4 billion. Musk vowed that Tesla would post its first quarterly profit this fall.
Galileo Russell, the founder of HyperChange TV, who also owns 60 Tesla shares, said Monday during a Cheddar roundtable discussion of Tesla's future that he has faith in Musk's outlook.
"I'm a long-term investor, this is a growth story," Russell said. "They are trying to double or triple production in a year, so they are losing money, it's not like they are losing money in perpetuity."
Mark Spiegel, the managing member of Stanphyl Capital, said he's less optimistic.
"They can't turn a profit the way they are," Spiegel said on Cheddar. "They have an insatiable need for cash, they will never be cash-flow positive until they stop growing."
The company's financials are not the only open question ー Musk's leadership is a big variable.
The outspoken CEO berated analysts in the company's [first-quarter earnings call] (https://cheddar.com/videos/elon-musk-versus-the-world-2call), and tried to atone for his rude behavior [in the second-quarter call](https://cheddar.com/videos/musk-apologizes-for-impolite-behavior-stock-surges).
Though some investors may view his contrition as the start of a new era for Musk and the company, Spiegel said he's not so sure.
"He's 47 years old, tigers don't change their stripes," Spiegel said. "He can put on an act, but we've all seen who the real Elon Musk is plenty of times."
For more on this story, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/bull-vs-bear-is-tesla-stock-a-boom-or-a-bust).
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
