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Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk speaks during an unveiling event for Tesla products in Los Angeles, California, U.S. October 10, 2024

Source: Tesla | Youtube

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, already the world’s richest person, added another $26 billion in paper wealth on Thursday after his company’s stock had its biggest rally since 2013.

Musk is now worth about $269 billion, according to Forbes, putting him more than $50 billion ahead of good friend and former Tesla board member Larry Ellison, who remains the largest shareholder in Oracle.

Musk controls close to 13% of Tesla’s outstanding shares, accounting for the bulk of his net worth, though he also owns a big chunk of SpaceX, which is valued on the private markets at over $200 billion. Additionally, he’s the controlling owner of X, formerly Twitter, and artificial intelligence startup xAI.

Musk’s wealth could be even higher depending on the outcome of a shareholder lawsuit surrounding his 2018 pay package that’s winding its way through court.

The pop on Thursday followed Tesla’s better-than-expected earnings report late Wednesday and Musk’s comments on the call suggesting that “vehicle growth” will be 20% to 30% next year. Tesla shares soared 22% at the close, their second-biggest gain since the company’s IPO in 2010.

Prior to the earnings announcement, Tesla shares had been slumping and were headed for their worst month since January. But the stock erased its loss for the year and is now up 5% in 2024, compared to the Nasdaq’s 23% gain.

Tesla reported earnings per share of 72 cents, topping the average analyst estimate of 58 cents. Profit was boosted by $739 million in revenue for environmental regulatory credits and $326 million in revenue from FSD, the company’s Full Self-Driving Supervised system.

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Musk spent much of the earnings call touting what he promises will be Tesla’s autonomous future, including a ride-hailing service that he says will open to the public as early as next year in Texas and California. Two weeks earlier, Tesla held its long-awaited robotaxi event, showcasing the concept of its Cybercab.

However, while Alphabet’s Waymo has been operating a commercial driverless service to the public since June, Tesla has consistently missed its own projections for getting a product to market. The company still doesn’t produce or sell cars that are safe to use without a human at the wheel, ready to steer or brake at all times.

And while Musk unveiled both a heavy-duty Semi truck and a Roadster refresh in 2017, the Roadster design is still not finalized, and the company is only in “pilot production” with the Semi.

One topic Musk didn’t address on Wednesday’s call was his campaigning and hefty spending in support of Donald Trump.

Since publicly endorsing Trump shortly after the first assassination attempt on the former president in July, Musk has stepped up his rhetoric, most notably on X, and has contributed tens of millions of dollars to a political action committee that’s supporting the Republican nominee.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk speaks with former president Donald Trump during a campaign event at the Butler Farm Show, Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024, in Butler, Pa. 

Jabin Botsford | The Washington Post | Getty Images

Musk has been campaigning in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania, which he’s called the “linchpin” in this election. Over the weekend, he said he would randomly award $1 million a day to registered voters who sign a petition for his pro-Trump PAC in an effort to get his fans in battleground states to the polls.

The U.S. Department of Justice has warned the PAC that Musk’s voter sweepstakes may violate federal election law, a source familiar with the matter told NBC News on Wednesday.

Ahead of the earnings call, many investors had questions about Musk’s political activities.

“Elon Musk has the right to express his political views, but his public activism seems at odds with his responsibility as CEO to protect shareholder value,” an anonymous retail investor wrote on a forum that Tesla uses to solicit investor questions. “How does Tesla address this, and can it confirm Musk’s actions are not harming sales or growth?”

The comment had received 168 upvotes prior to the call. Another question, which had received 527 upvotes, asked if Tesla’s board is doing anything to ensure Musk’s “political engagement doesn’t detract from Tesla’s core mission and protects shareholder value and brand integrity.”

In a post on X earlier this week, Musk wrote, “I think this election is existential to the United States.”

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Digital physical therapy provider Hinge Health files for IPO

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Digital physical therapy provider Hinge Health files for IPO

Hinge Health’s Enso product.

Courtesy: Hinge Health

Hinge Health, a provider of digital physical therapy services, filed to go public on Monday, the latest sign that the IPO market is starting to crack open.

Hinge Health uses software to help patients treat musculoskeletal injuries, chronic pain and carry out post-surgery rehabilitation remotely. The company’s revenue last year increased 33% to $390 million, according to its prospectus, and its net loss for the year narrowed to $11.9 million from $108.1 million a year earlier.

The IPO market has been quiet across the tech sector for the past three years, but within digital health it’s been almost completely silent, as companies have struggled to adapt to an environment of muted growth following the Covid-19 pandemic. No digital health companies held IPOs in 2023, according to a report from Rock Health, and last year the only notable offerings were Waystar, a health-care payment software vendor, and Tempus AI, a precision medicine company.

“We have many decades of work ahead,” Hinge Health CEO Daniel Perez said in the filing Monday. “We hope you join us on this journey.”

The company plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “HNGE.”

Perez and Gabriel Mecklenburg, Hinge Health’s chairman, co-founded the company in 2014 after experiencing personal struggles with physical rehabilitation, according to the company’s website.

Members of Hinge Health can access virtual exercise therapy and an electrical nerve stimulation device called Enso. The company claims its technology can help users improve their pain, reduce the need for surgery and cut down health-care costs.

The San Francisco-based company has raised more than $1 billion from investors including Tiger Global and Coatue Management, and it boasted a $6.2 billion valuation as of October 2021. The biggest outside shareholders are venture firms Insight Partners and Atomico, which own 19% and 15% of the stock, respectively, according to the filing.

Hinge Health’s dual class stock structure gives each share of Class B common stock 15 votes. Almost all of the Class B shares are owned by the founders and top investors.

Employees across more than 2,250 organizations, including Morgan Stanley, Target and General Motors, can access Hinge Health’s offerings. The company had more than 532,000 members as of Dec. 31, and more than 20 million people are eligible to enroll, the filing said.

Hinge Health declined to comment.

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Fintech stocks plummet as Wall Street worries about consumer spending, credit

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Fintech stocks plummet as Wall Street worries about consumer spending, credit

People wait in line for t-shirts at a pop-up kiosk for the online brokerage Robinhood along Wall Street after the company went public with an IPO earlier in the day on July 29, 2021 in New York City.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

It was a bad day for tech stocks, and a brutal one for fintech.

As the Nasdaq suffered its steepest decline since 2022, some of the biggest losers were companies that sit at the intersection of Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

Stock trading app Robinhood tumbled 20%, bitcoin holder Strategy fell 17% and crypto exchange Coinbase lost 18%. Much of the slide in those three stocks was tied to the drop in bitcoin, which fell almost 5%, continuing its downward trajectory. The price of the leading cryptocurrency is now down 19% in the past month, falling after a big-post election pop in late 2024.

Beyond the crypto trade, online lenders and payments companies also fell more than the broader market. Affirm, which popularized buy now, pay later loans, dropped 11%, as did SoFi, which offers personal loans and mortgages. Shopify, which provides payment technology to online retailers, fell more than 7%.

JPMorgan Chase fintech analysts on Monday highlighted declining consumer confidence as a potential challenge for companies that rely on consumer spending for growth. In late February, the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index slipped to 98.3 for the month, down nearly 7%, the largest monthly drop since August 2021. Walmart recently reported a shift away from discretionary purchases, underscoring the potential trouble.

“Our universe has modestly outperformed the S&P 500 since the election, but sentiment has soured of late on declining consumer confidence and signs of slowing discretionary spend,” the JPMorgan analysts wrote.

The fintech selloff follows a strong rally in the fourth quarter, driven by Fed rate cut expectations and hopes for a more favorable regulatory environment under the Trump administration.

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Oracle misses on earnings but touts data center growth from AI

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Oracle misses on earnings but touts data center growth from AI

Larry Ellison, chairman and co-founder of Oracle Corp., speaks during the Oracle OpenWorld 2017 conference in San Francisco on Oct. 1, 2017.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Oracle issued quarterly results on Monday that trailed analysts’ estimates, but the company offered bullish comments on its cloud infrastructure segment.

Here is how Oracle did compared to LSEG consensus:

  • Earnings per share: $1.47 adjusted vs. $1.49 expected
  • Revenue: $14.13 billion vs. $14.39 billion expected

Revenue increased 6% from $13.3 billion in the same period last year. Net income rose 22% to $2.94 billion, or $1.02 a share, from $2.4 billion, or 85 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue in Oracle’s cloud services business jumped 10% from a year earlier to $11.01 billion, accounting for 78% of total sales.

The company’s cloud infrastructure segment, which helps businesses move workloads out of their own data centers, has been booming due to demand for computing power that can support artificial intelligence projects. Oracle said revenue in its cloud infrastructure unit increased 49% from a year earlier to $2.7 billion.

“We are on schedule to double our data center capacity this calendar year,” Oracle Chair Larry Ellison said in a release. “Customer demand is at record levels.”

In January, President Donald Trump announced plans to invest billions of dollars in AI infrastructure in the U.S. in collaboration with Oracle, OpenAI and SoftBank. The first initiative of the joint venture, called Stargate, will be to construct data centers in Texas — an effort that is already underway, Ellison said during the announcement at the White House.

Oracle’s cloud and on-premises licenses business contributed $1.1 billion in revenue during the quarter, down 10% year over year.

Oracle also said it is increasing its quarterly dividend to 50 cents a share from 40 cents.

As of Monday’s close, the stock is down almost 11% year to date.

Oracle will hold its quarterly call with investors and will share its outlook at 5 p.m. ET.

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