Tesla Inc. reported some remarkable first-quarter results. It beat earnings forecasts handily. Gross margins in the auto and energy businesses were surprisingly robust given weak sales. Ditto for positive, rather than the expected negative, free cash flow.

For me, though, Tesla's outlook took the crown. I encourage you to read it (slide 10 of this deck). How often do you see guidance from an S&P 500 company that contains not a single number? The fact that the various wordy statements are grouped under headings like "volume" and "cash" -- readily quantifiable things -- elevates it to a kind of art.

The outlook also captures Tesla 2026 to a tee, poised between a stagnant core business and promised new ones, and balancing on a rarified valuation. Exact numbers are not helpful here, which may help explain why Tesla chose to eventually provide one on the Wednesday evening call instead. It was a particularly unhelpful number -- except perhaps as a signpost for where Musk's broader corporate empire is headed.

Equally unhelpful, once you dig into them, were those results. Higher-than-expected auto gross margins reflected higher average pricing from a last hurrah of sales of now discontinued Models S and X, as well as one-off warranty and tariff-related benefits. Blowout gross margins in the energy business, incongruous with the big drop in sales, also benefited from tariff effects.

In any case, Tesla still reported a dismal 4.2% operating margin, which would have been sub-4% without foreign exchange gains. Without those, worth 6 cents a share pre-tax, Tesla's earnings beat would have been markedly narrower. Overall, Tesla's profits remain weak and, given the outsize role of income from selling zero-emission credits and interest, low quality.

The most important surprise, however, concerns the positive free cash flow of $1.4 billion. Tesla's excess vehicle production spawned a $2.4 billion inventory build-up. However, a $1.9 billion favorable swing in accounts payable and receivable offset most of that. Plus, stock-based compensation almost doubled, year over year, to more than $1 billion.

What really made the difference, however, was Tesla's capital expenditure, or rather lack of it. Tesla surprised investors on its prior earnings call with expectations of a much bigger capex budget for 2026, about $20 billion, implying roughly $5 billion per quarter on average. Tesla spent half that in the first quarter, with the difference more than explaining the positive free cash flow.

This is surprising given Tesla's ambitions to build vast quantities of Cybercabs, solar panels, Optimus robots and chips. It is also surprising given that Tesla raised its capex budget on Wednesday's earnings call, to over $25 billion. This number was a strong candidate for the outlook slide but didn't make it in there. As it was, Tesla was forecast to burn $5.5 billion this year, the most for any year ever. That would roughly double under the new capex budget. Seems relevant enough for a bullet point.

The same goes for some other things. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk's comment that Tesla's robotaxi business won't contribute meaningful revenue this year rather undercuts repeated pledges of roll outs across the US. Given how critical this is to Tesla's narrative -- and 200-plus earnings multiple -- it seems worth more than a mutter.

Indeed, Tesla has woeful disclosure for this supposedly world-changing business in general. We are almost a year on from the limited launch of Tesla's robotaxis in Austin and the company has just, coincidentally timed just ahead of earnings, announced roll outs to Dallas and Houston. How many cars are operating exactly? How many have safety drivers? Average utilization? Economics? Your guess is as good as anyone's.

The absence, or vagueness, of metrics for Tesla's new businesses, and the weak financial results from the existing ones, should condemn such a high-flying stock but likely won't, of course. Spiraling spending ought to, however, and not just because of the cash burn.

Musk spoke of Tesla as being like one of the "major tech companies." It certainly matches their love of vision but, as I wrote here, Tesla is very different from the other so-called Magnificent 7 in key respects, one of which is its relatively tiny positive free cash flow.

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Taking on artificial intelligence, robots, robotaxis and chips pushes that sharply negative. Yet one of the more interesting comments Musk made on the call concerned Tesla splitting the workload, and expense, of building his promised 'terafab' for chip production. He spoke of Tesla investing $3 billion in a "research" fab while his rocket company Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, would handle the initial phase of the scaled-up terafab itself. Musk was characteristically vague and careful to say that any such sharing between related parties would have to be approved by Tesla's famously stringent board.

In there, however, one senses a portent of what might happen if Musk pulls off the mooted, and gigantic, initial public offering for SpaceX this year. The melding of narratives around Musk's biggest companies, including Tesla's own investment in xAI before SpaceX took it over, seems to be gathering pace. With SpaceX targeting a valuation well north of Tesla's own, and reportedly considering a dual-stock structure, a subsequent all-stock merger of the two could offer a ready route to recapitalizing Musk's broad empire and addressing his concerns about lacking a blocking stake at Tesla. Pure speculation on my part, of course, not an outlook. Look out, though.

Tesla's Spending Blasts Off. Maybe SpaceX Can Help