Inside Elon Musk’s $1 Trillion Tesla Payday — And Why It’s a Governance Nightmare

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Speaker 4 Today's number?

Speaker 4 1 trillion.

Speaker 4 That's how many dollars worth of stock Elon Musk could receive in his new compensation package.

Speaker 4 That is more than the GDPs of Croatia, Greece, Portugal, and Finland combined, or as the board puts it, enough to show up to the office.

Speaker 4 Welcome to Profit G Markets. I'm Ed Elson.
It is November 11th. Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals.

Speaker 4 The major indices climbed as the Senate advanced a plan to end the shutdown. The S ⁇ P 500 and Nasdaq rallied the most since May.
Palantir jumped 9%, recovering from last week's sell-off.

Speaker 4 Meanwhile, Bitcoin rose alongside stocks and gold hit a two-week high.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 4 What else is happening? Paramount reported its first earnings since the Skydance merger, and it was a bit of a mixed bag.

Speaker 4 The company missed third quarter revenue expectations and announced plans to lay off 1,600 employees. That is in addition to the 1,000 job cuts that were announced last month.

Speaker 4 The company also posted a net loss of $257 million, but guidance for 2026 came in strong and projected cost savings from the Skydance deal jumped from $2 billion to $3 billion.

Speaker 4 The stock popped as much as 8% in after-hours trading.

Speaker 4 Okay, here to help us break down these earnings we are speaking with jason bazzine managing director of media and entertainment research at city group jason thanks for joining us happy to do it good to see you so paramount reported earnings their first since the skydance merger slight miss on revenue stock is up around seven eight percent let's just start with take us through the earnings what did we learn from these earnings well i would say i mean the most important thing is this is the first time the new management team has really communicated with the street.

Speaker 5 So I think what investors were really looking for beyond the numbers was just sort of, you know, what direction are they going to take this company?

Speaker 5 What's different from the way the old management team was managing it? And I think the message is pretty clear. They plan to invest a lot in their DTC business, direct to consumer,

Speaker 5 so much that the firm might burn free cash flow in the near term. But the idea is to get to a point where the DTC business does generate profits.
And so I sort of think of this as a race.

Speaker 5 They have to stand up a profitable direct-to-consumer business that runs faster than the decline in the old legacy pay TV linear business.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, I looked at the numbers and, you know, DTC growing up 17%, TV media down around 12%.

Speaker 4 I found myself finding the numbers kind of irrelevant because all I can think about is this new CEO and his plans for this company. I'm just wondering, is that, do you feel the same way?

Speaker 4 I mean, are we kind of, are the numbers less important than the vision for the company and what he said about the plans for the company?

Speaker 5 Yeah, I think the quarterly numbers, you know, I wouldn't characterize as particularly important. You know, the guidance for next year, I would say, is a bit more important.

Speaker 5 You know, the vision, I would say, is

Speaker 5 interesting, but I would not say that it's particularly novel. I mean, I think everybody on Wall Street understands you need to invest more in DTC.

Speaker 5 The question will be, how quickly does the Payt, the legacy business collapse? That's the threshold question.

Speaker 5 And what makes this a particularly perilous moment for any company trying to make this transition is in August of this year, Disney and Fox both launched sports-centric apps.

Speaker 5 And so the world that we're in now is totally different from the world that we lived in since cord cutting began in 2017.

Speaker 5 Meaning with the launch of those two apps for the first time, if you are a sports fan, you can get all the sports you want without a pay TV subscription.

Speaker 5 And so that's probably going to accelerate the rate of cord cutting. And so the fuse has been lit, but I think that the fuse is going to burn a little bit faster.

Speaker 5 with these adjustments that have been made by some of Paramount's competitors.

Speaker 4 One thing that at least my co-host Scott has been saying that he thinks will happen with Paramount is it'll just be an AI free-for-all.

Speaker 4 They'll just bring in as much AI as possible, try to lay a bunch of people off, cut costs

Speaker 4 more than anyone and faster than anyone. Is that the vibe that you get listening to David Ellison talk about the future of the company?

Speaker 4 Is this going to be an AI-powered media property or is it going to be something else?

Speaker 5 Well, they've certainly laid out ambitious cost-cutting targets and they raised them today to about 3 billion.

Speaker 5 But, you know, there are quite a few protections that Hollywood has put in place to protect actors and writers from a full onslaught of AI. And so I think this is a bit of a balancing act,

Speaker 5 meaning, you know,

Speaker 5 any executive can't alienate Hollywood by sort of fully embracing AI.

Speaker 5 So, you know, I think they're going to use AI, but it's probably in ways that are invisible to the consumer.

Speaker 5 These are going to be more things like automating contracts, you know, automating, you know, post-production stuff.

Speaker 5 But don't think of an AI-generated actress or actor or an AI-generated script sort of ruling the day here.

Speaker 4 The big question,

Speaker 4 or at least my big question, is what's going to happen with Warner Brothers Discovery.

Speaker 4 As many people know, Paramount has been trying to buy Warner Brothers Discovery. They made three bids, bids, all of which were turned down.

Speaker 4 Did we learn anything new in regards to this potential acquisition?

Speaker 5 We did not learn anything new.

Speaker 5 What I would say is that Warner Brothers has said they're going to come out with a decision in December. And so we probably won't know anything for another month or so.

Speaker 5 The way we've looked at this is it is a function of how

Speaker 5 strategic Warner Brothers is to a company.

Speaker 5 And through that lens, I think it's very important for a company like Paramount to get scale, probably more important for Paramount than anyone else.

Speaker 5 And so I'd still put them in the pole position, but we're going to have to wait another month before we see if they walk away with the asset.

Speaker 4 Yeah, last time we spoke about this, you said something that I thought was fascinating, which is this only really makes sense for Paramount.

Speaker 4 And at the time, I was kind of thinking, well, there are all these reports that maybe Netflix is interested, maybe Comcast is interested. We're seeing rumors about that now.

Speaker 4 But you made the point that it doesn't really make sense for any of them, which has led me to believe that this is all kind of David Zaslov trying to generate heat to create an auction and create some bidding.

Speaker 4 I just want to get your views on that thesis, that actually there's only really one buyer.

Speaker 4 in Paramount and that maybe this isn't much of an auction.

Speaker 5 Well, I would characterize it as nice to have for any of the other players because, you know, Comcast has its broadband business. You know,

Speaker 5 Netflix is doing just fine on its own.

Speaker 5 You know, I'm not sure. I can say this, Paramount's odds of succeeding in the direct-to-consumer business, I think, go up significantly if they can get the scale.

Speaker 5 I mean, that's what they talked about on today's call, about getting more scale, ramping up spending. That is the unlock to create value in the direct-to-consumer business.

Speaker 5 So I wouldn't put zero likelihood that someone else walks away with it. I would just say it is a strategic imperative for Paramount and Paramount alone.
Okay.

Speaker 4 If we're making bets, what would you bet happens to Warner Brothers Discovery, say, 12 months from now?

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, we've said it's a 60% likelihood that it gets sold to Paramount, a 15% likelihood that Comcast emerges as the winner, and maybe 5% that it's Netflix.

Speaker 5 And the reason we put those chunky odds is

Speaker 5 I just think I just always go back to to this very simple notion. If you look at the market cap of Paramount today, you know, it is a fraction of what Netflix's market cap is.

Speaker 5 And so if you're the Ellisons, you have to think, you know, how much value could I create if I could really take this on? And how are you going to succeed doing that?

Speaker 5 You're going to need more content scale. And the only asset that really offers that is Waterboarders.

Speaker 4 All right. Jason Bazinay, Managing Director of Media and Entertainment Research at Citigroup.
Jason, always good to hear your perspective. Thank you for your time.

Speaker 5 Absolutely. Thank you.

Speaker 4 After the break, a look at Elon's $1 trillion pay package. If you're enjoying the show, give Profit Markets a follow.

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Speaker 4 We're back with Frofty Markets. Tesla shareholders have approved the largest pay package in corporate history.

Speaker 4 Elon Musk's $1 trillion compensation plan passed with more than 75% of the votes at last week's annual shareholder meeting.

Speaker 4 Still, the payout depends on Tesla achieving some pretty lofty goals over the next 10 years, including a market cap of $8.5 trillion

Speaker 4 and production milestones of 20 million cars, 1 million robo-taxis, and 1 million humanoid robots deployed.

Speaker 4 So far, Tesla has delivered about 8.5 million vehicles, an estimated 150 robo-taxis at most, and also zero robots. So here to help us break down what this pay package means for Tesla shareholders.

Speaker 4 We are speaking with my uncle, Charles Elson. Charles is the founding director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.

Speaker 4 And if you've listened to the show before, you know he is a leading expert in corporate governance. So, Charles, Uncle Charles, thank you very much for joining us again on Profit Month.

Speaker 5 It's been great being with a leading journalist like Ed Elson.

Speaker 4 Exactly. This is what we call the family reunion.

Speaker 5 There you go.

Speaker 5 It's in the teens.

Speaker 4 So we want to get your reactions to this new package. We'll just start very broad.
What's in it?

Speaker 4 What does Elon have to do to get that $1 trillion? And how did we arrive at $1 trillion as a number?

Speaker 5 That's what he wanted. And what the man wanted, the man got.

Speaker 5 You know, a trillion just sounds like a big number to a, you know, a big industrialist like Eli Musk, I guess, or tech guy.

Speaker 5 You know, it's going to be awarded if he hits certain targets over a

Speaker 5 several year period. It's all in stock.

Speaker 5 And it's a big number. I mean, a trillion dollars is more than the market capitalization of most U.S.
companies.

Speaker 5 So,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 5 it's the whole thing is very bizarre to me in that question is, is that really what's needed to incent an executive?

Speaker 5 You're giving him basically, you know, 10, 15 more percent of the company, which is huge.

Speaker 5 And is he really responsible for that kind of growth? And should you give him that much of the company for achieving it?

Speaker 5 It's a

Speaker 5 bizarre sum.

Speaker 5 I guess he says, I don't need the money. Well, if that's true, what are you asking for it?

Speaker 5 And, you know, it gives him complete control. Basically, there's there's no accountability there.

Speaker 5 This is a board that was criticized and called non-independent by the judge in Delaware. And I don't disagree with her.

Speaker 5 To give a package like that, to accede to a package like that, even if you went through certain hoops to get there, is still out of the bounds of reason. To me, it's almost irrational.

Speaker 5 Now, the shareholders disagreed. A lot of the institutional shareholders did not agree with it.

Speaker 5 But I think there's sort of a cult surrounding him amongst the shareholding base, and he can do no wrong. But, you know, there's an old fable about the king has no clothes.

Speaker 5 And at some point, you're going to say,

Speaker 5 is this really what it's about? I mean, think about it this way. He had a bad year.
He was company had a bad year. He was gone.

Speaker 5 He injected himself into the political situation that created a lot of bad will for the company itself, a lot of problems.

Speaker 5 And any other CEO, first of all, you would never let him take a year off or whatever to work for the government in this way.

Speaker 5 And you certainly wouldn't reward him for, I think, the problems that his absence caused the company.

Speaker 5 And giving him a trillion-dollar incentive is almost a reward for behavior that no other board would ever, in my view, countenance.

Speaker 5 The danger to it is that once you do that, others are going to copy this. They're going to say, well, if he's so smart, so am I.
I want a billion dollars.

Speaker 5 And it really skews the system.

Speaker 4 Just going back to how the shareholders voted. So it was pretty comfortably approved, 75% of the votes.
As you say, there was some big pension fund. I mean, Cowpers said no.

Speaker 4 The Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund, they said no.

Speaker 4 But overwhelmingly, the shareholders said yes. I just want to get your views on what do you make of how the shareholders voted on this package? What does that say about the company?

Speaker 4 How accurate is that 75% number in terms of how investors really feel about the company? What do you make of how they voted?

Speaker 5 Well, you know, that's about the same percentage that approved the last package, right? And the package before that. It's somewhere around there.

Speaker 5 Look, when you get a say on pay vote from your shareholders, it ought to be around 98%,

Speaker 5 anywhere in the very high 90s, because

Speaker 5 everyone should basically agree this person is worth it. 25% saying no is a pretty big number, and particularly given who they were.

Speaker 5 These are large institutions and they're pretty sophisticated in value of the company. My concern is by doing this, you basically strip any accountability he has.

Speaker 5 And at some point, it's going to cause problems for the company. Remember, a lot of the value of this stock is in the AI potential for the company.

Speaker 5 And a lot of people invested thinking, oh, this is going to be into AI.

Speaker 5 But what he did is he created a separate company that he said, unless you, you know, unless you pay me so much, I will go to the separate company, leave you, and I'll take all the

Speaker 5 AI profits for me. And he said, but if you approve this, I'll let you have in on this.
So

Speaker 5 A, the

Speaker 5 stock grant you're giving him dilutes the dickens out of everybody else.

Speaker 5 And more importantly,

Speaker 5 they're being diluted in their return on the AI because they're going to be investing. in another company that he's running.

Speaker 5 And how do you know the same thing won't happen there without accountability? That's the real danger of this thing. And others will copycat the thing.

Speaker 5 But remember, the shareholders voted for him because he said, if you don't, I'll leave. That's interesting, too.
Would he really have left with 10% of the company still holding it?

Speaker 5 Does that make any sense? That's not in his economic interest.

Speaker 4 You mentioned that he said before, I don't need the money, which is probably true. He's worth half a trillion dollars already.
What is this about then?

Speaker 4 Is this this purely about control and having more power at the company?

Speaker 4 Is this really about incentives? I mean,

Speaker 4 if he doesn't need the money,

Speaker 4 why do this? What is the point?

Speaker 5 Well, you know, he's a big personality and he obviously is very self-confident. And it seems as though he wants greater control.
He doesn't like to be questioned. He doesn't like to be critiqued.

Speaker 5 And that's what came out of this whole trial. He was critiqued by the judge and he attacked the judge,

Speaker 5 attacked the system in Delaware, and picked up and moved to Texas, where such suits basically aren't possible.

Speaker 5 Under the regime he's now in, he can do basically what he wishes without any sort of judicial challenge, certainly, as it's going to be impossible to bring a suit with the new rules on who can bring a suit in Texas.

Speaker 5 And, you know, he probably has a very favorable judiciary there. Obviously, you know, moved there for a particular reason.
And there goes accountability.

Speaker 5 And when someone is no longer accountable, that's where problems develop. The greatest collapses I've seen in history are when people stop thinking of themselves as accountable

Speaker 5 and begin thinking of themselves as flawless because there's no one to say no. And this board

Speaker 5 hasn't before, and I would seriously doubt ever will.

Speaker 4 We talked last time about the importance of the company moving out of Delaware or reincorporating into Texas. How will that play out

Speaker 4 in this compensation plan? Did that play a part in how this all played out?

Speaker 4 What does that mean for Elon and for Tesla?

Speaker 5 It means it's going to be impossible to bring a derivative suit

Speaker 5 against the compensation.

Speaker 5 As in Delaware, anyone could, small shareholder, large shareholder here, you have to have at least 3% of the company bring an action.

Speaker 5 And they're just practically nobody has those kinds of holdings, meaning

Speaker 5 it's not challengeable legally. That's the end of the story.
It means that, you know, look, whether he won this vote or lost this vote,

Speaker 5 I am confident that one way or another,

Speaker 5 the board would have found a way to make him happy.

Speaker 5 And that's really, frankly, not the greatest way, in my view, to run a large public company. Look, if it was his own company, if he owned it all, then he'd do whatever he wishes with it.

Speaker 5 But he took on public shareholders. And once you take on public investors, the states change.
It's a different story. You have to be accountable to them.
You ask for their money.

Speaker 5 You can't take their money and then say goodbye.

Speaker 5 See you in another century. That's accountability to your investors.

Speaker 5 And you can't function as though you're a private company in this setting, which is if it's a private company, it's your money that's at risk, no one else's. Now you've got other people's money.

Speaker 5 And that's the real problem. That was the whole problem with the AI thing, because he owed a duty to the company itself,

Speaker 5 that he was working for the company. He was to be loyal to the company.
But threatening to set up a competing venture in AI,

Speaker 5 that just is something in an ordinary company, there would be significant objections to, certainly by the board.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 he probably, in a normal situation, wouldn't be there. The question is, is anybody that good? And even if they were, do you give in to every one of their demands?

Speaker 5 Because anytime you give in to a demand, the next one is going to be larger. And that's what we've seen here.
The one before was 300 million, you know, 300 million. Now you got a trillion.

Speaker 5 It's almost, it's, it's.

Speaker 4 And we're all complaining about that.

Speaker 5 It's laughable in some respects because you wonder, are we in tulip bulb territory again? You know, where the tulip bulb was worth a four, it was just a tulip bulb. Yes.

Speaker 5 It's a car company.

Speaker 4 Before you go here, as a corporate governance expert, as someone who has studied, you know, thousands of compensation packages, you've written about this before when when we look back in history and when when the the textbook on corporate governance is written in call it 2070 and professors are talking about what happened how will this go down in history what will people say from a corporate governance perspective about this package and about elon and tesla at large i have a feeling in the end people are going to regret this uh i don't know how the company company will perform, but, you know, I think in the end, people say this was wrong.

Speaker 5 You shouldn't give someone that much control over a company or that much of a stake in a company simply for certain returns.

Speaker 5 What was the incentive of giving him that package then when he already had so much of it?

Speaker 5 There's no incentive here. It's a demand and it smells like a gift to a lot of folks, I think.
And that's the problem. And you can't give resources away like that, I think.
Not fair to the others.

Speaker 4 Charles Elson, founding director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. Charles, always great to speak with you.
Thank you.

Speaker 5 As well, nephew Ed.

Speaker 5 Nephew Ed. I love it.

Speaker 4 My new epithet. Thanks, Charles.

Speaker 4 So, a big headline and a big number, $1 trillion.

Speaker 4 Now, will Elon Musk actually get a trillion dollars?

Speaker 4 Probably not. To get it, he would need to ship a million robot taxes.
He'd need to sell 10 million self-driving subscriptions.

Speaker 4 He'd need to reach a market cap of $8.5 trillion all in the next 10 years. Anything is possible, but this is honestly not likely at all.

Speaker 4 And by the way, the board certainly knows that, which is why they are down to offer him such a ridiculous number. They know how ridiculous the premise is.

Speaker 4 In other words, this package is more of a headline than it is an actual contract. It's designed to get coverage.
It's designed to to get clicks.

Speaker 4 It's supposed to be talked about on TV, in newspapers, and yes, on podcasts like this one, because the point of it is to communicate to the world. This is how important Elon Musk is.

Speaker 4 You think $400 billion is a big deal? How about a trillion dollars?

Speaker 5 How about that number?

Speaker 4 And mission accomplished, because here we are. talking about it.
I am talking about it. And Elon appears to be the world's first trillion dollar CEO.
And that's important.

Speaker 4 But I would also note that there are consequences to these kinds of headlines. And it goes back to the conversation we've had many times in the past.

Speaker 4 And that is, we are currently living in an era of unprecedented inequality, where tech CEOs like Bezos are deconstructing bridges to ship their yachts off to America.

Speaker 4 Meanwhile, one in eight Americans are on food stamps and one in 10 Americans are living below the poverty line. That is the reality for many Americans right now.

Speaker 4 And so even if this package isn't going to happen, to even suggest paying someone a trillion dollars, not only is that completely out of touch, it is also insulting. It's insulting to employees.

Speaker 4 It's insulting to many shareholders. But most importantly, it's insulting to the millions of Americans who are working their tails off to just get by right now.
I mean,

Speaker 4 think about what a trillion dollars could buy you. You could pay every American a check for $3,000.

Speaker 4 You could pay the full tuition for 8 million college students. You could pay off all the medical debt in America and do that four times over.

Speaker 4 And you could also make sure that no one on earth goes hungry for the next 25 years. Instead, we're paying it to Elon Musk.

Speaker 4 Again, he probably won't actually get the money, but that's not really the point here. The point here is that a group of well-to-do business leaders got together and they suggested it.

Speaker 4 And they somehow convinced themselves that it is acceptable or in some way normal to suggest paying the richest man in the world a trillion dollars.

Speaker 4 Many people wonder why Americans are losing faith in America.

Speaker 4 Many people wonder why 70% of millennials say say they would vote for a socialist, how more than half of Gen Z hold a negative view of capitalism. How could this be?

Speaker 4 The answer is clearly right in front of us.

Speaker 4 Yesterday, Warren Buffett sent his final letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway. As you probably already know, Buffett is retiring at the end of this year.

Speaker 4 He served as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway for 60 years. He will stay on on as chairman, but he will not be involved in the day-to-day running of the company.
That will be left to the new CEO, Greg Abel.

Speaker 4 Now, this isn't really market-moving news, a shareholder letter, but if you're interested in the markets, it is kind of a big deal.

Speaker 4 Because Warren Buffett is a legend in the industry, the Oracle of Omaha, and he has defined himself not just through his incredible returns, but also through his message, his story, his philosophy, and more specifically, these shareholder letters.

Speaker 4 And this one was the final one.

Speaker 4 So we thought we would just take this moment to quickly review what he said.

Speaker 4 So first, he went through his life and he thanked everyone who helped him along the way. He thanked Charlie Munger, his family, his third grade teacher.

Speaker 4 He also thanked America and he even thanked what he calls Lady Luck. And this is something I really like about Warren Buffett.

Speaker 4 He doesn't pretend that it was his extraordinary talent that got him to where he is. He actually recognizes the huge role that luck played in his story and that it had to play in his story.

Speaker 4 He said, quote, in the letter, I was born in 1930, healthy, reasonably intelligent, white, male, and in America. Wow, thank you, Lady Luck.
And I think that is an important point.

Speaker 4 He then discussed the plan for what comes next at Berkshire Hathaway. He said he's going to step up his philanthropy.
He's going to give away $149 billion worth of his stock.

Speaker 4 He also discussed how Greg Abel will run the company, how he is, in his view, the right person to run the company, all kind of standard succession stuff.

Speaker 4 But then he ended with his final pieces of advice. And I'm just going to read them to you as he wrote them.
And that is how we will end this episode.

Speaker 4 Hopefully there is something valuable in there for you to take away. Okay, so here it is.
Warren Buffett's life advice in his final shareholder letter for Berkshire Hathaway. Number one,

Speaker 4 don't beat yourself up over past mistakes. Learn at least a little from them and move on.
It is never too late to improve. Number two, remember Alfred Nobel.

Speaker 4 who read his own obituary that was mistakenly printed when his brother died and a newspaper got mixed up. He was horrified at what he read and realized that he should change his behavior.

Speaker 4 Don't count on a newsroom mix-up. Decide what you would like your obituary to say and live the life to deserve it.

Speaker 4 Number three, greatness does not come about through accumulating great amounts of money, great amounts of publicity, or great power in government.

Speaker 4 When you help someone in any of thousands of ways, you help the world. Kindness is costless, but also priceless.

Speaker 4 Whether you are religious or not, it's hard to beat the golden rule as a guide to behavior. And finally, number four, choose your heroes very carefully and then emulate them.

Speaker 4 You will never be perfect, but you can always be better.

Speaker 4 Okay, that's it for today. This episode was produced by Claire Miller, edited by Joel Patterson, and engineered by Benjamin Spencer.
Our associate producer is Alison Weiss.

Speaker 4 Our research team is Dan Shallan, Isabella Kinsel, Kristen O'Donoghue, and Mia Silverio. And our technical director is Drew Burrows.
Thank you for listening to Property Markets from Profit Media.

Speaker 4 If you liked what you heard, give us a follow. I'm Ed Elson.
I will see you tomorrow.

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