10 Elon Musk quotes from his Q3 earnings call

Elon Musk said Tesla’s value could exceed $4.4 trillion, and Twitter could be worth $400 billion.
The Tesla CEO said he’s a maker of things, not an investor like Warren Buffett, and teased a $10 billion stock buyback.
Musk warned he’s seeing deflation, and said the Fed has hiked interest rates too much.

Elon Musk has suggested Tesla’s market value could surge more than six-fold to over $4.4 trillion, pegged Twitter’s potential worth at $400 billion, and distanced himself from Warren Buffett.

The technology billionaire also rang the deflation alarm, teased up to $10 billion of stock buybacks next year, and argued the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates too much. He spoke during Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday.

Here are Musk’s 10 best quotes, lightly edited for length and clarity:

1. “I see a potential path for Tesla to be worth more than Apple and Saudi Aramco combined. I see a way for Tesla to be roughly twice the value of Saudi Aramco. This is the first time I’ve seen that potential.” (Apple and Saudi Aramco are valued at about $2.3 trillion and $2.1 trillion. Tesla right now is worth $700 billion.)

2. “I am excited about the Twitter situation. It’s an asset that has languished for a long time, but it has incredible potential. Although myself and the other investors are obviously overpaying for Twitter right now, the long-term potential for Twitter is an order of magnitude greater than its current value.” (The social-media company’s market capitalization is about $40 billion.)

3. “I’m not Warren Buffett. I’m not an investor. I’m an engineer and a manufacturing person and a technologist. So I actually work and design and develop products. We’re not going to have a portfolio of investments.” (Musk was discussing whether he might create an umbrella company that sits above his various business interests. He has long been critical of the Oracle of Omaha.)

4. “It’s likely that we’ll do some meaningful [stock] buyback. Even if next year is a very difficult year, we still have the ability to do a $5 billion to $10 billion buyback.”

5. “The car is going to be sick. It’s going to be a hall of famer, next level. Sorry it took longer than expected, but there were a few things that got in the way, like insane global supply chain shortages. Force majeure, if there ever was one.” (Musk was talking about Tesla’s upcoming Cybertruck and the production challenges it has faced.)

6. “Commodities are dropping a lot. But in electric vehicles, things like battery-grade lithium are still crazy expensive. We’ve got a mixture of things where prices are dropping and things where prices are increasing. But there’s more deflation than inflation.”

7. “We’re very pedal to the metal, come rain or shine. We are not reducing our production in any meaningful way, recession or not recession.”

8. “The Fed is raising interest rates more than they should, but I think they’ll eventually realize that and bring it back down again. The Fed is not listening because they’re looking at the rearview mirror instead of looking out the front windshield.”

9. “Engineers aren’t coming off some assembly line like cookies or something.” (Musk was pointing out that engineers range in quality, so their individual impact on the business varies.) … “One Nikola Tesla is frankly worth an infinite number of of dollars. You could have almost an infinite number of great engineers and they would not be able to do what one Nikola Tesla could do.”

10. “I think the public at large realizes that the world’s moving towards electric vehicles and that it’s foolish to actually buy a new gasoline car at this point because the residual value of that casting car is going to be very low.”