Tesla's Stock Trouble Ain't the Whole Story

Now, I don’t reckon there’s a more jittery breed of creature on this Earth than a Wall Street investor with a fresh chart in his hand and a nervous tick in his eye. Why, a squirrel in a thunderstorm has a steadier constitution. And this week, those fellers got it in their heads that Tesla, that electric chariot outfit run by the ever-combustible Mr. Elon Musk, was teetering on the very precipice of doom because its profits took a tumble quicker than a greased pig on a marble floor.

Let me lay it out plain–Tesla’s profits for the first quarter dropped some 70 percent, down to a meager $409 million, which in most counties still counts as a pretty pile of money—unless you’re Wall Street, where anything less than last year’s loot like a funeral dirge. Revenue dropped to $19.3 billion, enough to make a banker flinch but not enough to call the undertaker.

Now folks are all aflutter, saying Mr. Musk is spending more time politickin’ with Washington bigwigs than tending to his fleet of battery buggies. There’s hand-wringin’ about his support of firebrand politicians and his moonlighting in the Trump administration, which has some buyers stomping off in protest or burnin’ showrooms like they’ve seen a ghost.

But here’s the rub, and it’s worth remembering–one bad quarter, or even three, does not sink a ship, particularly when that ship’s still hauling cargo and dreaming up self-driving carriages. A drop in the stock market don’t mean the company’s gone belly-up.

That’s just the stock market being what it always has been—an excitable fellow prone to fits and spasms, dancing like a cat on a hot stove. The market ain’t the business; it’s the gossip about business.

For all its stumbles, Tesla is still building cars, planning robotaxis, and scheming up cheaper models for the commoner. And while Mr. Musk may be half-mad and wholly occupied, he’s also the sort of fellow who can summon more headlines with a post than most kings can with a war.

So before you write Tesla’s epitaph or light the funeral pyre, take a breath and remember–in business, as in life, fortunes rise and fall like a river in Spring.

And there’s more to a company than a red number on Tuesday.