Top 100 Best Earnings Call Moments

Tesla, Q1 2018

Elon Musk cut off a Bernstein analyst mid-question, called the questions 'boring bonehead questions,' then handed the call to a YouTuber. Tesla stock dropped 5% after-hours. The most legendary earnings call moment of all time.

The YouTuber was Galileo Russell from HyperChange TV, a retail investor with a YouTube channel. He got more airtime than Goldman Sachs.

Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, recurring

Every year, Buffett sits on stage answering questions for six hours straight while visibly consuming Cherry Coke and See's Candies peanut brittle. It's technically a shareholder meeting, but it's the greatest earnings call energy of all time.

Buffett has said he gets about 25% of his daily calories from Coca-Cola products. He owns roughly $25 billion worth of KO stock.

Meta, Q3 2022

Mark Zuckerberg proudly announced that Meta's avatars would finally get legs — actual lower limbs — as if this were a moonshot achievement. The internet immediately roasted it. The stock was down 70% from its peak at the time.

It later came out that the legs demo shown at Meta Connect was actually pre-rendered animation, not real-time. The legs were fake legs.

Apple Events / Earnings Calls, 1998-2011

Not technically an earnings call, but Jobs' signature 'One more thing...' became the most iconic four words in corporate presentation history. Every CEO since has tried to replicate it. None have succeeded.

Jobs borrowed the phrase from Columbo actor Peter Falk. He used it to unveil the iPod nano, MacBook Air, FaceTime, and more.

Netflix, Q4 2015

Hastings casually predicted that broadcast TV would be dead within 20 years, comparing it to the horse-drawn carriage. Cable executives laughed. Netflix went from $100 to $700 a share over the next few years.

At the time, Netflix had 75 million subscribers. By 2024 it had over 280 million. The horse-drawn carriage analogy held up.

JPMorgan Chase, Q3 2023

When asked yet another question about Basel III capital requirements, Dimon launched into a passionate rant about how regulators were strangling the banking system. The man sounded like he was about to flip the conference table.

Dimon has been CEO of JPMorgan since 2005. He's outlasted three Fed chairs and roughly 4,000 regulatory proposals.

Amazon, 2001

During the dot-com bust, Amazon stock fell from $107 to $7. In interviews and calls, Bezos literally laughed about it, saying the stock price was not the company. He was right — Amazon eventually hit $3,500.

Bezos reportedly sent a one-word internal memo during the crash: 'Ouch.' Then he went right back to work on AWS.

Apple, Q1 2015

When analysts repeatedly tried to get Cook to confirm the Apple Car project, he gave the most beautifully evasive answer in earnings call history: 'I think it's going to be Christmas Eve for a while.' Wall Street had no idea what that meant. Neither did anyone else.

Apple ultimately canceled the car project in 2024 after spending over $10 billion on it. Cook's Christmas Eve never came.

Tesla, September 2018

Not an earnings call, but the stock moved more than most earnings. Musk took a puff of a joint on Rogan's show, the stock tanked 9% the next day, and Tesla's chief accounting officer resigned after one month on the job.

Musk said afterward he barely inhaled and doesn't really use marijuana. The Department of Defense launched a review of SpaceX's security clearances anyway.

Archetypal Earnings Call Moment

Every investor has heard it: the CEO finishes their prepared remarks after a terrible quarter, opens the line for questions, and there is dead silence. Five seconds. Ten seconds. The CFO clears their throat. Finally, one brave analyst unmutes.

The longest recorded silence on an earnings call Q&A was reportedly over 30 seconds. An eternity in conference call time.

Microsoft, Q2 2015

When Nadella took over Microsoft, he pivoted the entire narrative to cloud computing. Early calls were a masterclass in corporate message discipline — the word 'cloud' appeared so frequently it became a drinking game on FinTwit.

When Nadella became CEO in 2014, Microsoft's market cap was $300 billion. By 2024 it passed $3 trillion. Cloud was the right word to repeat.

Twitter, Q2 2019

Dorsey was CEO of both Twitter and Square simultaneously, and his Twitter earnings calls had a certain... energy. He would pause for uncomfortably long periods before answering, as if communing with a higher power about DAU metrics.

Dorsey was known for his silent meditation retreats in Myanmar. Apparently some of that energy leaked into the quarterly calls.

Primerica, 1992

When a CEO tells you on an earnings call to buy the stock, you either think they're a genius or about to get an SEC letter. Tsai's moment became legendary because he said it with the casual confidence of a man ordering lunch.

The SEC generally frowns upon CEOs making explicit buy recommendations on earnings calls. Tsai did not care.

Virgin Galactic / Clover Health, 2020-2021

Chamath turned SPAC investor calls into TED talks about disruption, social justice, and the future of humanity. Whether you loved him or hated him, the man could turn a de-SPAC merger call into must-listen entertainment.

At one point, Chamath had so many SPACs that they were literally named IPOA, IPOB, IPOC, IPOD, IPOE, and IPOF. Alphabet soup.

ARK Invest Webcast, 2022

While ARKK was down 75% from its peak, Cathie Wood went on her monthly webcast with the conviction of someone who just discovered fire. 'We believe our strategies are on the right side of change.' The confidence was genuinely awe-inspiring.

ARK's flagship ETF went from $160 to $30 and Cathie kept buying. Say what you will, the woman has conviction.

Archetypal Earnings Call Moment

There's a special breed of CFO who can announce that the company won't be filing its annual report on time as if they're reporting the weather. 'Due to certain complexities...' Sir, your auditor just quit.

Facebook/Meta, October 2021

Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook to Meta during a live presentation while wearing a t-shirt and talking about virtual reality legs. The stock was at $330. Within a year it would hit $88. The metaverse pivot was bold, controversial, and utterly unforgettable.

The name change cost an estimated $10 million in rebranding alone. The stock lost about $600 billion in value over the next year. Expensive rebrand.

Disney, Q1 2023

Iger returned to Disney like a man coming home to find his house on fire. His first earnings call back was a clinic in diplomatic destruction — cutting 7,000 jobs, restructuring everything, and dismantling his successor's strategy, all while sounding like a kindly uncle.

Iger had retired, then un-retired, then retired again, then un-retired again. His LinkedIn should just say 'it's complicated.'

Every CEO who has ever been cornered, all years

The two most powerful words on any earnings call. A CEO says 'next question' and an analyst's entire quarter of research just evaporates into the ether. It's the corporate equivalent of 'I plead the fifth.'

Some CEOs are so practiced at this that they say it before the analyst even finishes. It's an art form.

Netflix, Q1 2023

When Netflix said they'd start charging for password sharing, analysts predicted subscriber losses. Instead, Netflix added 6 million subscribers in the next quarter. The analysts who panicked had clearly never met a parent who wouldn't share their password.

Netflix estimated over 100 million households were sharing passwords. Turns out making them pay actually worked.

Apple, various years

Apple earnings calls have a specific energy where analysts ask about competitors and Tim Cook responds as if he's never heard of them. 'We're focused on making great products.' Sir, they asked about Samsung. 'Great products.'

Enron, Q3 2001

In what would become the most infamous earnings call in corporate history, Enron CFO Andrew Fastow couldn't clearly explain the company's off-balance-sheet partnerships. Analyst Richard Grubman pressed him. Enron CEO Jeff Skilling called Grubman an expletive. Enron filed for bankruptcy two months later.

Skilling actually said 'Thank you very much, we appreciate that... a**hole' thinking his mic was muted. It was not muted.

Enron, April 2001

When short-seller Richard Grubman asked why Enron was the only financial institution that didn't release a balance sheet with earnings, Skilling muttered the insult thinking he was muted. The call audio leaked. Seven months later, Enron was bankrupt.

Grubman's question was completely legitimate. Skilling went to prison for 12 years. The a**hole was on the other end of the phone.

Microsoft, Q2 2023

After the ChatGPT launch, every Microsoft earnings call turned into an AI seminar. Nadella mentioned AI 50+ times in one call. Analysts who had been asking about Office 365 licensing for a decade suddenly had to learn what a large language model was.

Microsoft's investment in OpenAI was reportedly $13 billion. The stock gained over $1 trillion in market cap. Best ROI in tech history.

Archetypal Earnings Call Moment

Every company has one. The same analyst, every single quarter, asks the exact same question about margins or guidance or capital allocation. The CEO gives the exact same answer. It's like Groundhog Day but with a Bloomberg terminal.

Some analysts have asked the same question at the same company for over 20 consecutive quarters. At that point it's a relationship.