Revenue grew from $5.58 billion a year ago, i.e. by 161%, and beat the upper end of the forecast range by more than $1.5 billion. Diluted earnings per share came in at $0.35 versus expectations of $0.13-0.16. Operating income was $2.79 billion versus a loss of $273 million, adjusted EBITDA +306% to $8.81 billion. The company filed its shareholder letter with the SEC on October 20 as an exhibit to Form 8-K.
The main driver is the Super Intelligence AI division (renamed from Artificial Intelligence: cloud services, models and applications, including Grok). Its revenue grew by 830% to $7.56 billion, versus $813 million a year earlier, and it now accounts for 52% of the group's total revenue. Within the segment, solutions and infrastructure brought in $7.02 billion, and advertising $538 million.
Starlink remains the one paying the bills: the connectivity segment generated $5.25 billion in revenue, and operating income nearly doubled (+99%) to $2.37 billion. There are 13.6 million retail subscribers, plus 1.6 million in three months, average revenue per user of $69 per month (+5%), and coverage in 174 countries. The space segment brought in $1.77 billion (+6%), with 35 launches during the quarter.
The flip side: capital expenditures of $19.59 billion, of which $16.44 billion went to AI infrastructure. That is more than the entire quarterly revenue. The company did not provide formal guidance.
On an investor call, Elon Musk said that Tesla and SpaceX had set up independent committees to study a merger, and then spent several minutes lowering the odds of a deal. Separately, he pushed back his $1 trillion revenue target by two years. The stock entered the report after a sell-off (around $140 last week), closed at $147.96, and in after-hours trading first traded at $150.13 (+1.58%), then reached $157.97 (+6.89%).
Did you hold a position through the report?
The report comes out after the close, the candle flies through a half-empty order book, and you have to decide within minutes. Only in some places US stocks aren't on the list of instruments at all, in some places you can't hold a position through an earnings release, and in others the after-market is closed and you meet the gap with no way out. These lines matter more than the entry point. Earnings season is in full swing, and it's cheaper to check this before the challenge.