马斯克在SpaceX财报会暗示合并特斯拉与SpaceX

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Elon Musk has finally said the quiet part out loud. He's fully behind a historic combination of SpaceX and Tesla, his two most valuable companies, and what would be the biggest corporate transaction ever attempted. Here's what he said on the SpaceX earnings call. This was on Tuesday. But I do think there's a lot of merit to combining the companies um as we are pretty much in the super intelligence singularity um and uh and there's a lot to be gained from cooperating on developing super intelligence software uh uh chip design the the terraab obviously robotics uh mass to orbit with the you know with the star mind constellation um

connectivity

connectivity So, um I think it would be a good idea, but but it it's really up to the special committees of both companies.

It's a good idea, but it's not really my choice.

That's what I was going to say. It's a good idea.

Good idea. [laughter] Yeah. You know what else do

you know what else is a good idea?

Max Jaffin.

Yeah. It's always a good idea to talk to Max Chafkin. He's senior reporter for Bloomberg Business Week. He's the host of the Everyday Business Podcast. You can get it wherever you get your podcasts. I mean, did we all Is this going to happen? He's going to try. I mean, obviously that's clear from the comments that Elon Musk made on the earnings call during the SpaceX uh earnings call on Tuesday, but it's been clear for weeks and weeks that this this is the direction this has been going.

Um the uh the the the launch of Tesla's Roadster, the the quote unquote flying

the the launch

the Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I'm I'm doing my

what are these right an choice of words because it was held at a SpaceX facility with of course SpaceX rocket thrusters on the back kind of a a physical manifestation of the idea of of combining these companies which makes it does make a certain sense [clears throat] because of course you have one guy running both of them he seems to be at the moment running them as if they are one company we've seen and we've talked about this for years Tesla and SpaceX sharing exe executives uh sharing technology.

At times it's appeared that SpaceX has or Tesla they've sort of shared their supply chain as far as Nvidia chips. Um so it makes sense in that regard. I do think there are going to be a lot of Tesla shareholders in particular that are going to say why exactly would we want to give up the control or they don't exactly have control but they have some voting power in Tesla and and trade that for SpaceX shares where there would be assumably almost no voting power

and that's there is a significant difference right in terms of Elon's control over SpaceX versus Tesla.

Yeah. I mean Elon runs SpaceX as if it were a private company wholly owned by him. There are outside investors now. It's a public company, but he controls the board. He controls the votes. Uh it is it is not an there's, you know, it's not an independent company in in the in the sense of a typical public company. Tesla, on the other hand, Musk has a ton of power and we've seen him over the years impose his will on Tesla shareholders, get them to create, you know, offer this unprecedented trillion dollar pay package.

But there has been at least some check on his power in the sense that you know there are shareholders. There is a nominally at least independent board of directors that has to agree to this stuff. The the board of Tesla has generally rubber stamped everything that Elon Musk does because of a dynamic with shareholders where shareholders very much want to go along with with with Elon. Uh so many questions here. Not just what it would be called, but how this is actually in going to make

like you know when people do when when executives announce mergers they always say um 2 plus 2 equals 5, right? Like we're stronger together than we would be apart. But does would combining with SpaceX actually allow Tesla to execute better on its plans? Would it allow SpaceX to execute better on its plans?

Well, I think you you heard a little bit of the rationale. I mean, Tesla is trying to develop driverless cars. I think it's been a bumpy road uh to say the least over the last decade and trying to do that has happened taken much longer than they had hoped. But driverless cars rely on continuous connectivity. Um Starlink uh SpaceX's satellite division offers continuous connectivity. So, uh, you know, both of these companies, Tesla is doing lots of work with training and data sets.

SpaceX is operating these massive data centers which are, you know, currently in places like Mississippi, but one day maybe in outer space. So, you could you can kind of start to see potential synergies there. And then I think the the most important one is just that you have this very awkward situation where the two companies are competing for the CEO's time. And and maybe it would be better. I think I think there's a a a reasonable case to be made that it would be better for both if you had some kind of centralized approach to Elon Musk's schedule instead of SpaceX executives wondering why is he spending so much time with Tesla today and vice versa.

One thing I'm wondering and I was just going

entire family living under one roof [laughter] maybe

all those kids all those kids. So I'm looking at revenues and SpaceX for the 2026 I believe uh for the year it's like 47 almost 48 billion in revenue and then for 2027 we're talking like 160 billion. There's some pretty incredible growth. Um if I look at Tesla that was SpaceX we're looking at about 107 billion in revenue for this year. The pay package there are metrics for him to get it. Yeah.

How does a combined entity either change that, impact that?

I mean, this is going to be something that the two special committees will have to work out. Uh, looking at the pay package, there are tanches that are based on a number of metrics including uh market cap as well as things like how many cars are they making, how many robots are they making. Um, they are a very long way from most of those metrics. So, in certain ways it's a mood point. However, in the in the case of a change of control, the the sort of operational metrics go out the window and it's entirely about market cap.

So, I I believe the first trunch, if my memory is correct, is at $2 trillion. So, SpaceX Tesla is some distance away from that now, but it's it's plausible that the the acquisition could be above that. Um, when you when you look at the Tesla pay package, what it says is that they want to align Musk's incentives with the shareholders. So you don't want to create a situation where Musk has, you know, an incentive to sell the company, you know, out from under the shareholders.

You know, I think that you're going to have shareholders complain about this, but I do think, you know, it it's it's not like he's going to get his full trillion if uh if they merge. I I will say there's another factor here in the merger that I should have mentioned at the top, which is politics, which is the fact that we are hurdling

Yeah. towards a midterm election where Musk is a very active player where if things don't go Musk's way and if you look at the polls and the betting markets they may not there is going to be greater scrutiny on this guy's empire in all sorts of ways and and it's not like that's going to lead to an antitrust issue but but I don't know sometimes these combinations take a long time and and there is going to there is a window right now if you are Tesla and SpaceX or really any company tha