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- 📊 Tesla’s Growth Has Collapsed
📊 Tesla’s Growth Has Collapsed
1) Meta Can’t Stop Spending 2) Microsoft’s Backlog Risk 3) Apple’s Blowout iPhone Sales and more!
Carbon Finance
February 01, 2026
Happy Sunday!
The moment we’ve all been waiting for has arrived.
On Friday, President Trump announced Kevin Warsh as his nominee to succeed Jerome Powell as Fed chair.
Markets reacted cautiously, as Warsh is often viewed as more hawkish, favoring higher interest rates and a smaller Fed balance sheet.
Others, however, describe him as more pragmatic and flexible than his earlier reputation suggests.
Pending Senate confirmation, Warsh is set to take office in May 2026.
The announcement comes as the Fed held rates steady in a 3.5% to 3.75% range this week following a series of cuts.
Key Data Bites From This Week:
BofA shared 10 small-cap stocks that appear poised to beat the market.
Nvidia, Microsoft, & Amazon in talks to invest up to $60B in OpenAI.
SoftBank in talks to invest an additional $30B in OpenAI.
U.S. Army signed a $5.6B software deal with Salesforce.
Total Gold demand jumped 45% YoY to new all-time high of $555B.
Zoom reportedly has an investment in Anthropic worth up to $4B.
Nvidia announced a $2B investment in CoreWeave.
UPS plans to cut an additional 30,000 operational jobs.
Trump has delivered on ~27% of tariff threats he’s made.
U.S. government will invest $1.6B in mining company USA Rare Earth.
Micron will invest $24B in Singapore over the next decade.
Amazon laid off 16,000 corporate employees.
U.S. dollar sunk to a four-year low.
Earnings & Guidance:
GM beat earnings and announced $6B buyback and 20% dividend hike.
Texas Instruments posted 10% sales growth on data centers and industrial recovery.
ASML reported record orders of €13.16B in Q4.
Starbucks saw U.S. transactions climb for first time in 2 years.
ServiceNow posted 19.5% sales growth with 98% renewal rate in Q4.
IBM announced its GenAI book of business surpassed $12.5B.
Mastercard beat expectations and will lay off 4% of global workforce.
Visa recorded 15% revenue growth and 17% EPS growth.
Deckers saw HOKA sales jump 18.5%.
In today’s newsletter:
📉 UnitedHealth Sees Red
💵 Meta Can’t Stop Spending
🪫 Tesla’s Growth Has Collapsed
🚨 Microsoft’s Backlog Risk
📱 Apple’s Blowout iPhone Sales
Let’s jump right in.
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UnitedHealth Group is forecasting red.
For the first time in more than 30 years, the company expects revenue to decline.
UnitedHealth now projects 2026 revenue to fall 2% as it deliberately shrinks parts of the business to restore profitability.
Management is reducing insurance membership, exiting overseas markets, and scaling back Optum Health’s U.S. footprint.
The insurance unit alone could lose up to 2.8M members across commercial, Medicare, and Medicaid plans.
Another major headwind is Medicare’s new V28 coding system, which is expected to reduce revenue by $6B in 2026.
And just one day before earnings, pressure intensified after the U.S. government proposed flat Medicare Advantage payment rates, well below the 5% increase analysts expected.
Despite weaker revenue, UnitedHealth Group still expects adjusted profit of $17.75 in 2026, ahead of estimates.
Meta is going all-in on AI.
The company expects 2026 capital expenditures to land between $115B and $135B, or $125B at the midpoint.
That figure is well above the $111B analysts were expecting and nearly double what Meta spent last year.
Management said the company remains compute-constrained as it pours capital into its core advertising business and Meta Superintelligence Labs to build next-generation AI models.
Despite the spending surge, the underlying business remains strong.
Revenue climbed 24%, family daily active people increased 7%, ad impressions rose 18%, and average price per ad increased 6%.
Meta delivered $8.88 in earnings per share on $59.9B in revenue, comfortably beating estimates for the fourth quarter.
Looking ahead, the company expects Q1 revenue of $55B, well above the $51B consensus forecast.
Tesla’s core business is running out of energy.
The company slightly beat Q4 estimates, but cracks continue to show up underneath the surface.
Automotive revenue growth has declined on a trailing twelve month basis for seven consecutive quarters.
Additionally, for the first time in company history, Tesla’s annual revenue fell.
Full year revenue declined to $94.8B in 2025, down from $97.7B in 2024.
Tesla also announced it will discontinue the Model S and Model X, two of its longest running vehicles.
Production lines for those models will be repurposed to manufacture Optimus humanoid robots.
Separately, Elon Musk is reportedly exploring a potential merger between SpaceX and either Tesla or xAI to form a larger AI focused entity.
Microsoft’s backlog is growing fast, but so is its dependence on one customer.
The company reported that commercial remaining performance obligations jumped 110% to $625B, a measure of revenue that will be recognized in future periods.
However, for the first time, Microsoft disclosed that 45% of that backlog is tied to OpenAI.
That means nearly half of the company’s revenue visibility depends on a single customer whose ability to meet long term financial commitments remains uncertain.
This was a concern similar to what has recently weighed on Oracle, and was part of the reason shares of Microsoft slipped over 7% on the week.
Despite the reaction, the underlying quarter was relatively solid.
Adjusted earnings reached $4.14 per share on $81.27B in revenue, both ahead of expectations.
Guidance for the upcoming quarter came in line with analyst estimates.
People can’t get enough of the iPhone.
Apple just delivered one of its strongest quarters in years as demand surged.
iPhone revenue jumped 23% to $85.3B, beating estimates by nearly $7B.
Total revenue climbed 16% YoY to $143.8B, far ahead of expectations.
Earnings per share came in at $2.84, well above the $2.67 estimate.
CEO Tim Cook called iPhone demand “staggering,” driven by the new iPhone 17 lineup.
Asia played a major role.
Sales across China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong jumped a whopping 38% to $25.5B, fueled by record upgrades and strong switcher growth.
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♠️ Burry’s Bet↗ – Michael Burry disclosed buying shares of GameStop.
💸 Consumer Power↗ – Consumption, not AI investments, was the most crucial driver of U.S. GDP growth last year.
🚕 Price Parity↗ – New data found that Uber rides in San Francisco were only marginally cheaper than Waymo rides.
Notable Companies Reporting Earnings Week of February 1, 2026:
Major Trades Published 1/26 - 1/30. Trades may be those of family members. [Source: Capitol Trades]
Buys
Nancy Pelosi (D)
Company: AllianceBernstein ($AB)
Amount Purchased: $1M - $5M
Company: Alphabet ($GOOGL)
Amount Purchased: $500K - $1M
Description: Exercised 50 call options purchased 1/14/25 (5,000 shares) at a strike price of $150 with an expiration date of 1/16/26.
Company: Amazon ($AMZN)
Amount Purchased: $500K - $1M
Description: Exercised 50 call options purchased 1/14/25 (5,000 shares) at a strike price of $150 with an expiration date of 1/16/26.
Sells
Nancy Pelosi (D)
Company: Apple ($AAPL)
Amount Sold: $5M - $25M
Company: Nvidia ($NVDA)
Amount Sold: $1M - $5M
Company: Amazon ($AMZN)
Amount Sold: $1M - $5M
Company: Disney ($DIS)
Amount Sold: $1M - $5M
Major Trades Published 1/26 - 1/30
Buys
USA Rare Earth ($USAR)
Insider: Michael Blitzer (Director)
# of Shares Purchased: 100,000
$ Amount: $2,143,860
SEC Forms: [1]
Sells
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