SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attends a cabinet meeting held by U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on March 24, 2025.
Win McNamee | Getty Images
Tesla shares fell almost 6% on Monday, a day ahead of the electric vehicle company’s first-quarter earnings report, as analysts fret over “ongoing brand erosion.”
The stock closed at $227.50 leaving it less than $6 above its low for the year on April 8. The shares are now down 44% for the year after wrapping up their worst quarter since 2022 in March. It’s the 12th time this year the stock has dropped by at least 5% in a single session.
CEO Elon Musk’s many distractions outside of Tesla, especially his role within the Trump administration, are in focus, along with the company’s progress on a long-delayed robotaxi and self-driving technology for its existing cars.
In the online forum that Tesla uses to solicit investor inquiries in advance of its earnings calls, more than 300 questions were submitted pertaining to Tesla’s self-driving systems, around 200 came in about the company’s Optimus humanoid robots in development, and more than 160 questions poured in about Musk individually. One investor asked, “What steps has the board of directors taken to mitigate the brand damage caused by Elon’s political activities?”
After spending $290 million to help return Trump to the White House, Musk is now leading an initiative to slash tens of thousands of federal jobs, sell off or end leases for federal office buildings, and reduce U.S. government capacity.
Musk’s politics and antics have elicited a massive backlash in Europe and parts of the U.S. This year, the company has been hit with waves of protests, boycotts and some criminal activity that targeted Tesla vehicles and facilities in response to Musk.
Earlier this month, Tesla reported 336,681 vehicle deliveries in the first quarter, a 13% decline from the same period a year earlier.
The company is expected to report revenue of $21.24 billion for the first quarter, according to LSEG, which would mark a slight drop from the same period last year. Analysts expect earnings per share of 40 cents. Investors will be paying particularly close attention to any commentary about Trump’s widespread tariffs and the potential impact on revenue and earnings as the year progresses.
Oppenheimer analysts wrote in a note out Monday that “ongoing brand erosion” for Tesla in the U.S. and Europe is weighing on sales already, but a “bigger issue for the company is potential weakness in China demand and margin impact due to the Trump tariffs.”
They wrote that competition in China, coupled with “nationalistic” consumer trends there, could “drive sales toward domestic brands.” Tesla would then have to export more of its China-made cars, which could lead to “downward pressure on pricing,” the Oppenheimer analysts said.
Caliber, a research firm that tracks how U.S. consumer sentiment is shifting around major brands, found that only 27% of its survey respondents in March would consider purchasing a Tesla, compared to 46% in January 2022.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, a longtime Tesla bull, is hoping for a “turnaround vision” from Musk on Tuesday’s earnings call.
“Tesla has now unfortunately become a political symbol globally of the Trump Administration/DOGE,” he wrote, noting that “Tesla’s stock has been crushed since Trump stepped back into the White House.”
Ives estimated 15% to 20% “permanent demand destruction for future Tesla buyers due to the brand damage Musk has created” by working for Trump.
Late last week, Barclays maintained the equivalent of a sell rating and slashed its price target on Tesla to $275 from $325, citing a “confusing set-up” on the first-quarter with “weak fundamentals.” The firm said it could see a positive reaction if Musk is more focused on his automaker, and depending on what the company discloses about an anticipated “FSD event,” referring to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving offering.
Tesla said in announcing its reporting date that, in addition to earnings, it will provide a “live company update,” language the company hasn’t typically used in disclosures.
Tesla’s vice president of hardware design engineering, Pete Bannon, is leaving the company after first joining in 2016 from Apple, CNBC has confirmed.
Bannon was leading the development of Tesla’s Dojo supercomputer and reported directly to Musk. Bloomberg first reported on Bannon’s departure, and added that Musk ordered his team to shut down, with engineers in the group getting reassigned to other initiatives.
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Since early last year, Musk has been trying to convince shareholders that Tesla, his only publicly traded business, is poised to become an an artificial intelligence and robotics powerhouse, and not just an electric vehicle company.
A centerpiece of the transformation was Dojo, a custom-built supercomputer designed to process and train AI models drawing on the large amounts of video and other data captured by Tesla vehicles.
Tesla’s focus on Dojo and another computing cluster called Cortex were meant to improve the company’s advanced driver assistance systems, and to enable Musk to finally deliver on his promise to turn existing Teslas into robotaxis.
On Tesla’s earnings call in July, Musk said the company expected its newest version of Dojo to be “operating at scale sometime next year, with scale being somewhere around 100,000 H-100 equivalents,” referring to a supercomputer built using Nvidia’s state of the art chips.
Tesla recently struck a $16.5 billion deal with Samsung to produce more of its own A16 chips with the company domestically.
Tesla is running a test Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, and a related car service in San Francisco. In Austin, the company’s vehicles require a human safety supervisor in the front passenger seat ready to intervene if necessary. In San Francisco, the car service is operated by human drivers, though invited users can hail a ride through a “Tesla Robotaxi” app.
On the earnings call, Musk faced questions about how he sees Tesla and his AI company, xAI, keeping their distance given that they could be competing against one another for AI talent.
Musk said the companies “are doing different things.” He said, “xAI is doing like terabyte scale models and multi-terabyte scale models.” Tesla uses “100x smaller models,” he said, with the automaker focused on “real-world AI,” for its cars and robots and xAI focused on developing software that strives for “artificial super intelligence.”
Musk also said that some engineers wouldn’t join Tesla because “they wanted to work on AGI,” one reason he said he formed a new company.
Tesla has experienced an exodus of top talent this year due to a combination of job terminations and resignations. Milan Kovac, who was Tesla’s head of Optimus robotics engineering, departed, as did David Lau, a vice president of software engineering, and Omead Afshar, Musk’s former chief of staff.
Here’s how the company did based on average analysts’ estimates compiled by LSEG:
Loss: Loss per share of 24 cents.
Revenue: $61 million vs. $55.2 million expected
The virtual care company’s revenue increased 49% in its second quarter from $41.21 million a year earlier. The company reported a net loss of $5.31 million, or a 24-cent loss per share, compared to a net loss of $10.69 million, or $1.40 loss per share, during the same period last year.
“We believe our Q2 performance reflects Omada’s ability to capture tailwinds in cardiometabolic care, to effectively commercialize our GLP-1 Care Track, and to leverage advances in artificial intelligence for the benefit of our members,” Omada CEO Sean Duffy said in a release.
Read more CNBC tech news
For its full year, Omada expects to report revenue between $235 million to $241 million, while analysts were expecting $222 million. The company said it expects to report an adjusted EBITDA loss of $9 million to $5 million for the full year, while analysts polled by FactSet expected a wider loss of $20.2 million.
Omada, founded in 2012, offers virtual care programs to support patients with chronic conditions like prediabetes, diabetes and hypertension. The company describes its approach as a “between-visit care model” that is complementary to the broader health-care ecosystem.
The stock opened at $23 in its debut on the Nasdaq in June. At market close on Thursday, shares closed at $19.46.
Omada said it finished its second quarter with 752,000 total members, up 52% year over year.
The company will discuss the results during its quarterly call with investors at 4:30 p.m. ET.
WASHINGTON, DC August 6: US President Donald Trump shakes hands with CEO of Apple Tim Cook during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on Wednesday August 6, 2025.
Demetrius Freeman | The Washington Post | Getty Images
Apple CEO Tim Cook is doing what he can to appease the commander in chief, without making that ultimate concession.
Cook on Wednesday appeared at the White House with President Trump to announce plans to spend about $600 billion over four years in the U.S. Apple didn’t announce the made-in-USA iPhone that Trump wants, but Cook got to tout Apple’s position on U.S. production.
Some of Apple’s most valuable parts, such as its glass and facial recognition sensor, are made by U.S. companies that Apple has worked with for years. Final assembly is only a small, though very critical, part of iPhone production.
“The final assembly that you focus on, that will be elsewhere for a while,” Cook said Wednesday in the Oval Office.
Trump appeared happy enough, for now.
“He makes many of the components here, and we’ve been talking about it,” Trump said. “The whole thing is set up in other places, and it’s been there for a long time in terms of cost and all, but I think we may incentivize him enough that one day he’ll be bringing that back.”
Experts said Cook’s announcement seemed designed to get Apple out of Trump’s crosshairs with respect to tariffs. Trump announced during the public meeting that the administration planned to place a tariff on chips that would double their price, but Apple — which relies on hundreds of different chips for its devices — would be exempt.
“CEOs are realizing that they do have to do something, and what they’ve discovered is that if they give the president something to brag about without destroying their company, that the problem might go away for a certain amount of time,” said Peter Cohan, professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at Babson College who has written case studies on Apple.
The gambit worked. Apple stock rose 5% on Wednesday and another 3% on Thursday.
“What Tim Cook demonstrated in the first administration was a real savvy navigation of the treacherous waters,” said Nancy Tengler, CEO of Laffer Tengler Investments, which holds a position in Apple. “I thought this announcement was super-important symbolically, because the president is looking for headlines.”
What Apple announced
A gift given by Apple CEO Tim Cook to U.S. President Donald Trump stands on President Trump’s table, as they present Apple’s announcement of a $100 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 6, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
The centerpiece of Apple’s announcement was the so-called American Manufacturing Program, which Apple said was designed to incentivize other companies to make parts for computers in the U.S.
By Apple committing to purchase parts and expand its relationship with U.S. suppliers, it could give those companies the skills and capacity to expand their business. And it lets Apple take some credit for supporting the 450,000 total jobs at its suppliers.
A closer look at the members of the program shows that Apple is leaning on some of its longest-tenured partners. All together, Apple said that its U.S. suppliers are on track to make 19 billion chips for its products this year. That level of business doesn’t appear overnight.
For example, Apple said that all of its cover glass for iPhones and Apple Watches would be made by Corning, in Kentucky, and that it would spend $2.5 billion on that effort. It’s a powerful symbol — while the phone might be screwed together in China or India, the surface that users touch around the world will be made in the U.S.
But Apple has pointed to Corning as a critical American supplier in the past. The company’s glass has been used on the iPhone since its first version in 2007. While Apple typically doesn’t let its suppliers talk about their relationships, former COO Jeff Williams hailed Corning’s glass in 2017, when it got an “investment” from the Apple Advanced Manufacturing Fund. Apple followed that up with a $250 million commitment in 2019, and $45 million in 2021.
Analysts are skeptical that the partnership could substantially improve Corning’s revenue. Morgan Stanley analysts wrote on Thursday that Corning “already produces 100% of the cover glass for Apple’s phones and tablets,” adding that Corning’s glass business called Specialty Materials is worth about $2 billion per year.
Apple also highlighted its partnership with Coherent, a longtime supplier of lasers for Apple’s facial recognition hardware, which is made in Texas. Morgan Stanley pegged the business at about $100 million per year, and said Apple has options including Lumentum and Sony.
The iPhone maker said it expanded a partnership with Texas Instruments to make chips in Texas and Utah. Texas Instruments has long supplied chips for the iPhone, such as circuits to control USB interfaces or power displays. Apple said it would partner with Samsung, another key supplier of parts like iPhone displays, to launch an “innovative new technology for making chips,” without offering additional details.
Apple declared that it will partner directly with companies in the semiconductor chain, even if they typically sell services or goods to Apple suppliers. Other partnerships are with Applied Materials, a tooling company, GlobalFoundries, a chip foundry, and GlobalWafers America, which is suppling Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Texas Instruments with made-in-USA wafers, the starting point for a batch of chips.
GlobalFoundries manufactures chips for Broadcom, which supplies wireless chips for iPhones. Both will work with Apple to develop and manufacture 5G components in the U.S.
Meanwhile, Apple will buy millions of advanced chips made by TSMC in Arizona, where it will be the factory’s largest customer. Cook joined former President Biden at the plant in 2022 and committed to buying chips from the factory.
Apple said it would invest in and become a customer at an Arizona Amkor facility, which packages and tests chips, the final stage before installation in a computer.
Apple also said it would expand existing data centers for artificial intelligence in North Carolina, Iowa, Nevada and Oregon. It’s highlighted these data centers in the past in spending commitments.
While Apple’s announcement sent partner stocks up, JPMorgan Chase analysts warned in a note on Thursday that “the new and expanded engagements might not be completely incremental to global revenues and outlook.”
Trump had a different take.
“Oh, I love that you’re doing this,” the president said, after reading a list of Apple’s commitments.
‘Cost of doing business’
Apple has little to worry about when it comes to who will hold the company accountable for its promises. The company doesn’t break out U.S. spending, and most of Apple’s suppliers are contractually required to keep the information secret. Apple doesn’t report how much its new campuses in Austin or North Carolina end up costing.
Additionally, the $600 billion headline number likely includes lots of regular expenses.
Apple said in February that its $500 billion commitment included payments to U.S. suppliers, direct employment, data centers for Apple Intelligence and corporate facilities, as well as spending on Apple TV+ productions in 20 states.
Apple started publicly announcing U.S. spending during Trump’s first administration in 2018, at a rate of about $70 billion per year. In February, the company committed to $125 billion per year. Wednesday’s announcement brings that figure to $150 billion annually.
That’s still a fraction of Apple’s total spending.
In Apple’s fiscal 2024, Apple spent $210 billion globally on cost of goods sold, $57.5 billion on operating expenses, and $9.45 billion in capital expenditures for nearly $275 billion in global spending during the period.
Teffler said she didn’t think the newly announced spending would be material to Apple’s profitability, especially since it already has relationships with the various companies such as Corning.
“They’re going to spend money somewhere,” Tegler said.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, who previously predicted a made-in-USA iPhone would cost billions to produce and would leave consumers paying $3,500, said the Wednesday announcements indicate a much different approach. He said it’s “the cost of doing business.”