Ron Baron on Elon Musk’s Trillion-Dollar Pay Plan 11/14/25

0:00Bring in show music please. Today on Squawk Pod. Legendary investor Ron Barron. He's still long on Tesla. I don't expect to sell in my lifetime Tesla or SpaceX, either one. He's already made about$8 billion on the stock. This Tesla bull is also supporting CEO Elon Musk's nearly$1 trillion pay package. I don't think anyone believes who works at Tesla that he's not going to make five or six or seven times in 10 years and four or five times again after that. Plus, breaking news from the country's biggest brick and mortar retailer, Walmart. CEO Doug McMillan is retiring after a decade plus run. What's the story behind the story?

0:47He's only 59. He's only 59. I am told that this was his choice, that he wants to step down at this point. And the latest news that has us squawking. Everybody wants to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, Steph Curry and Under Armour's Split, and reducing tariffs to help affordability. Affordability is the new buzzword. I'm CNBC producer Zach Valisi. It's Friday, November 14th, 2025. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand Becky by in 3, 2, 1, cue it please. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We are live from the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin.

1:32Yesterday's pullbacks for stocks, if you want to take a look at that, the Dow was down by 798 points, so not quite 800, but yes, 1.65 percent. The S &P was down by 1.7 percent and the Nasdaq was down by 2.3 percent. So again, you are starting to see a little bit of concern. Dow is only 1.65 % from the all-time high. The Nasdaq has had some losses over the last. It could definitely start like that. Anything, it always starts with something, but I don't know if there's any concern yet considering it's from an all-time high. Yes. But not a bad idea. But it is something. When you see an 800 - And it didn't happen in October.

2:07It catches you. Yeah, it didn't happen in October. Delayed reaction? Well, 800 is, we got to reset what 800 means because it's less than 2%. It's a much different scenario. If you're looking at the NASDAQ, for the week to date, it's off by 2.5%. From its all-time high, it's down by 3.7%. It is a lot of it is tech angst. And that's where you saw some of the really big moves, 7, 8 % in stocks like Palantir. This is more concerning, I think. Well, but I was going to say the angst is going to be what is NVIDIA's earnings. That's the whole story. That's the whole thing. And risk-off is manifest in crypto.

2:40Which is, I saw 96. In time, the U.S. announcing it's going to be removing tariffs on some foods and other imports from Argentina, Ecuador, Guatemala and El Salvador. Now, that framework agreement will give U.S. companies greater access to those markets. And official telling reporters the deals could be finalized in the next two weeks. Those moves expected to help lower prices for coffee, bananas. I love bananas and other foods. I mean, these are things that get at affordability and things that Americans buy every day. If you had talked to any of the big retailers, they've been pointing to bananas this whole time because it is a major purchase for any grocery store company that's out there.

3:21And you can't make them here. That's always been the point. Things like coffee and bananas, you can't home grow those things. And it shows up in the baskets of things that people eat and consume every day. Affordability is the new buzzword. Yesterday, one of our guests used, did you notice, said choiceful. Choiceful, yes, I did. You did notice that. I did. It's a new word, too. I hate that word. Affordability, I've already, you know, I do things. Who do you use choice? What do you do? I prepare for, we're going to have, you know, a couple of people on to talk about affordability. So how would I prepare for that?

3:57I'll tell you how I'd prepare. I would look at, because I don't trust AI at all, I would look at all three that I use and ask, Did real wages fall from the day Biden took office to the day he left? Did real wages? Real average weekly wages fall. Real average weekly wages. You know what the answer is? I assume you're going to say no. Why would I bring it up if I was going to say no? Why would I bring this up if I was going to say no? Continue. Tell us exactly the numbers then. No, I don't need to tell you the numbers, but they fell. It's a small amount, but people. Real wages. That takes a question.

4:36It takes inflation into account. So by the end of the term, it started rising towards the end. But the reason people feel like they're not ahead at this point is because we went through a four year period where every average weekly wages declined. And you can't change it. You know, I figured I'd get two out of three from AI because it's they're so it's so lame. But three out of three. And look, the issue with affordability, we're not looking at inflation that's anywhere near where it was in the Biden administration. but it hasn't come down below 3%. Well, it did, but now it's back to 3%. Now it's back above on an annualized basis, it's above 3%.

5:13And when you see things like higher prices at the grocery stores, concern about rent, and by the way, if the Fed doesn't cut rates, that means you're not necessarily going to get help for mortgage rates. Not that the Fed controls mortgage rates because it's looking at the short end, not the long end. The highest inflation that we saw in 40 years didn't reverse itself. It stayed there and went up another 3%. Right. So those are tough issues to swallow. Yes. Affordability played big in the elections that just played out, particularly here in New York City. People are choiceful in the words they use.

5:48Now to the latest on the potential sale of Warner Brothers Discovery. The Journal is reporting that the initial deadline for non-binding first-round bids is November 20th. And everybody's looking. Everybody's thinking about it. Everybody's kicking the tires. The report says Paramount, Comcast, and Netflix all preparing bids. At the same time, Warner Discovery is proceeding with plans to separate its assets into two companies. And we should note Comcast is in the—what? I heard nothing about this. Comcast is in the process of spinning off this network into Versant. Here we come. You guys could have mentioned that at some— Versant, here we come.

6:31Well, it's been, we've been planning this for a while. For a year. For a year. Do we know the drop dead date? I think it's sometime in January. I think it's likely to happen in January. Is that what you're asking? I think it's happening in January. I think there's an actual date. I have a hat. It's a cool hat. It's got a neat logo on. He is for victory or for versus? Both. Because it's going to be victorious, I think. Meantime, Under Armour and Steph Curry have mutually agreed to now end their 13-year partnership effective immediately. As part of that split, Curry will maintain sole ownership of what's called the Curry brand and is free now to find another retail partner.

7:10Under Armour will release its final Curry brand shoe in February. Now, in a statement, CEO Kevin Plank said the following. He said, this moment is about discipline and focus on the core UA brand. Of course, Under Armour brand during a critical stage of our turnaround. The split with Curry was announced alongside an expansion of the company's restructuring plan, which is now expected to cost $225 million. That's$95 million more than had been previously expected. And for whatever reason, that Steph Curry shoe under Under Armour never worked. I mean, never really worked here. You had one of the great shooters, one of the great players of all time.

7:45And unlike whatever Nike's been able to do, even what some of these other brands have been able to do, they were never able to do it. And he left. He didn't sign with Nike. He went to UA instead of going to Nike because they kind of insulted him when they walked in, got his name wrong when they were pitching him to do some of these things along the way. I think this is the 13th version of the shoot they're making under Radul. He's a great player. He's unbelievable, and he seems like a really nice guy. He's a great player, and he's a great golfer, but he's a great player, and he can do everything, but I think he could do most of his damage in bare feet.

8:23Because he shoots, you know, you don't need, you're not driving. and he does all that, but he could easily do it. Yeah, yeah. You don't have to move toward the basket. Yeah, just throwing it in from anywhere. You don't need, I mean, you do need to jump. It's a jump shot, so I understand. But he doesn't remind me of like Jordan or. Flying through the air. And just driving, you know, and just faking guys. He does all those things. He does, but I was just. But he doesn't have to. It wasn't a negative. I'm just saying what he can do from outside. We have to get close. From outside, yeah. Cheese will be next.

9:02Next on Squawk Pod, legendary investor Ron Baron breaks down his thoughts on the market, AI, and how he's still holding on to his Tesla stock after all these years and gains. Made about$8 billion in Tesla from$400 million when we started. And in SpaceX, we've made about$4 billion since we started that in 2017. So about$12 or$13 billion we've made so far. I think we're going to make five times that next 10 years.

9:35Welcome back. This is Squawk Pod. Up and Andrew, Q. On this Friday morning, you're watching Squawk Box right here on CNBC. I'm Andrew Ross-Sorkin along with Joe Kernan and Becky Quick. Let's get right to Ron Barron. He is the chairman and CEO of Barron Capital, which has$45 billion in assets under management. Ron is joining us ahead of the 32nd Annual Barron Investment Conference. And Ron, it is great to see you this morning. Great to see you too. So 32 years. We've been doing this for a long time. Not 32 years on Squawk Box talking to you on the morning of your annual investment, but a long time.

10:08Amazing. And we're going to jump into the investment. But I want to ask you, because there are a lot of people who look at a couple of days of declines in the markets. You're not one of them. But there are a lot of people who will look at that and say, uh-oh, is there a bubble here? And I know that is not one of your core investment things. In fact, you look at the opposite. You never look at bubbles or headlines or any of the rest. But what do you do at a time like this when there are so many people asking about questions about valuations and the potential for bubbles? Not very much. But when you're talking about the 45, can I just go back for a moment?

10:40When you spoke about$45 billion of AUM, I'm impressed with that since we started with$100 million. And then secondly, but even more impressive, is we've made our clients since 1992, we started with$100 million,$52 billion in profits. So we managed$45 billion, we made$52 billion in profits. And I started off in debt, and now I'm not in debt anymore. So what do we do? Not very much, just looking, trying to understand where there's opportunities and there are opportunities to try to take advantage of them. And over the past, it's really interesting. Last month, the whole market has been really focused on technology and AI.

11:22And if it wasn't technology or AI, stocks haven't done very well. In fact, if you take the top stocks out of the market, they represent 38 % of the market and there's an 11 % return. When you take that out, those big stocks out, the return for everything else is negative. And the month of November, October, we were down in our smaller and mid-sized companies a third, something like that. And if you look at the returns, the funds that we have in investing technology and fast-growing businesses, they've done very well this year. The stocks, the companies that, the funds that invest in companies that are smaller and mid-sized, they've done poorly.

12:08They've, you know, relatively flat years. It's pretty amazing. That's what's happened. But I was thinking of you earlier this week when the Dow crossed 48 ,000 for the first time, because you are somebody who has basically said, never bought a bond. You're not going to make money if your money's either in a bank sitting there trying to earn investment or in a bond that it won't keep pace with inflation. So you have always said that the market is the place to be. And when you think of big numbers, you've always said, yeah, that's going to happen. Those big increases will come with stocks. So I think about the stock market and the economy basically doubling every 10 or 12 years.

12:44And that's what's happened for my entire lifetime. Everything doubles every 10 or 12 years. So what has to happen is the value of your money falls 4 or 5 % a year. That's inflation. Falls 4 or 5 % a year, and the economic growth has been about 2 % a year. So it's about 7 % a year growth, and that means everything doubles in 10 years. The value of your money falls in half every 15 years. So you've got to make twice what you're making today in 15 years to stay even. And so stock market, you know, so Bitcoin's been amazing, obviously. And gold, I have a few gold coins that I've been buying. Mostly I bought in 2006 because I was outside of New York at that time when 9-11 happened.

13:32And so I tell my wife, I want to buy some gold coins in case something really bad happens. we can escape. We can buy a car. We can buy a boat. I want to buy it." And so she ignores me. And then I go to Stax on 57th Street. I start buying these coins. And then one day in the summer of 2006, 2007, it was$400 an ounce, she sees me walking in. She says, what is that? I said, gold coins. She said, it doesn't look like gold. Let me see it. And so I show it to her. And she says, what are you doing with this? It's heavy. What are you doing with this? I said, this will get us out of New York if there's a nuclear attack or something.

14:09And she says, are you crazy? She says, and what are you going to do that for? Are you going to buy water and someone's going to give you change? So she says, don't you dare bring another one into my house. So it's$400 an ounce. Now it's$4 ,100. Wow. Try to get out of the country. I say, look, here's my ETF, my gold ETFs. Yeah, it might be better to have actual gold coins. Well, one of my friend's daughters had a very high position in government, and she still does now. And this is what she calls the GTFOH money. I think I can do the calculations on what that stands for. Right. She's our police commissioner.

14:53Out of here. Get out of here, basically, is what it means. Ron, let's talk a little bit about Tesla, because you have been an investor with Barron Funds since 2014. So more than a decade that you've been standing by Elon Musk, it's been a very good bet for your firm. You've made how many billion dollars on Elon Musk since then? Made about$8 billion in Tesla from$400 million when we started. And in SpaceX, we've made about$4 billion since we started that in 2017. So about$12 or$13 billion we've made so far. I think we're going to make five times that next 10 years. You came out strongly in favor of his new pay package that could pay him a billion dollars over time if they meet certain metrics.

15:38It was not a surprise to me because you've talked to us on the show for a long time about how you feel about him and how he is the key man and how none of these companies would be anywhere near where they are without him. Your conviction, why you believe in that, and then your concentration in his stocks at this point. And I was shocked. In your personal portfolio, I think 65 % of your personal investments are tied to Elon Musk through either SpaceX or Tesla or XAI. Personally, it's about 40 % in Tesla and about 25 % in SpaceX and the balance 35 % in our mutual funds. And in SpaceX, I think we're going to make 10 times over the next 10 years.

16:27Tesla, I think we're going to make five times. And my mutual funds, I think we're going to make three times. And so it's obviously riskier if you put a large percentage of your money in one entity. For our mutual funds, it's about 22 % invested in SpaceX and Tesla, 11 % apiece. And then XAI, that's an investment that's smaller right now. But we've only invested, I guess,$350 million in XAI. It's now worth$700 million. That was two or three years ago. And the next pricing is going to be probably double where it is now. means a billion and a half that's going to be in our top 10 in the next timely price.

17:12I was thinking back to several years ago when you actually sold some Tesla. You did it at the time only because the stock had increased so much in value to the point where it made you a little uncomfortable with how big of a position it was in the funds. It wasn't a commentary on you losing faith in Elon Musk or in the stock. But at the time, you said, look, I can't as a fund manager have that big of a position in it. What has changed? Because I think you have a much bigger position today. Well, I didn't feel uncomfortable, but my clients felt uncomfortable. And I was being criticized for having such a large investment in one company.

17:51And we had bought stock at$10 or$15 dollars a share, 12, and it was trading at 220. And we sold for our clients about 25 % of their investment. I wanted to make sure that they knew that the reason they held the stock was because I thought it was still interesting as opposed to that I had died. And so I didn't want them to think I died, and that's the only reason they still owned it. So we sold a quarter of the stock, and then the stock hadn't done anything for three or four years. and then when President Trump was elected the stock in the first part of this year went up dramatically went up to 400 and we sold 5 % more so we sold 30 % for clients I did not sell personally a single share and what I committed to the board of our mutual funds is that I was the last purchaser I haven't really invested in stocks in 1992 in public companies and I told the board if you let me invest in this when I tried to get everyone else to invest nobody else wanted to at Barron Capital.

18:54So I said, if you let me invest a certain amount of money, then what I will do is I will promise that I won't sell any of my stock. And I told you I wouldn't invest, but let me break my promise and let me invest and then I will be the last person out of the stock. So I will not sell a single share of my company, of my shares, until my clients have sold a 100 % of their shares. And I don't expect to sell in my lifetime Tesla or SpaceX, either one. Wow. That is a huge commitment and a huge amount of faith that you have in Elon Musk and his companies. Companies are really unusual. When you think about what he's doing, you talk about the pay package.

19:38And this is not like Rockefeller or like Carnegie or like Mellon or like Morgan or Ford, the great industrialists who built this nation. This guy is like Da Vinci and an artist. And he knows, he remembers everything. It's incredible. And the opportunities that he's trying to take advantage of for his clients and for himself. So we say, so why is he doing this? Why, when you're worth that much money, why do you do this? You know, think about that. Why is he doing this? Why is he working these crazy hours? Why is he risking his health? And to me, you know, what is, what's the difference between$400 billion net worth and a trillion dollars?

20:28What's the difference? It's not saving up for a beach house. And so the way I think about it is that he wants to think about how people will remember him someday, what he's created, how he's helped humanity survive. So you think he's playing for legacy? Yes, definitely. What else could you do? And then he thinks that the business right now, he doesn't really get paid unless the company goes up in value from here six times. Do you think it will? Yes. You do? I think in this... Even Robin Denholm wasn't so sure. When you're the head of a public company, other than Elon Musk, you have to be guarded about what you say about your business prospects.

21:15And you can say one thing in public, and I don't think anyone believes who works at Tesla that he's not going to make five or six or seven times in 10 years, and four or five times again after that. I think that, you know, I'm thinking about$2 ,500 of where his stock's going to be, Tesla's stock's going to be in 10 years. And I think it's going to be four times that. Is that a function of automobiles? Is that a function of robots? What is that, in your mind, what is the driver of that? Have you watched his annual meeting? I have. Did you see what he was talking about for Optimus? Well, Optimus is, I think, for him, the next sort of leg of this whole story.

21:57He thinks it's the biggest thing ever. And so next year, it's going to be a million of those units. And he thinks 10 million after that, building a production line right now for a million. It's going to be 10 million. It's going to be 100 million. He thinks it's a billion a year that he's going to be able to make in these robots. Think about that. A billion a year,$20 ,000 robots that are going to be labor-saving, make everyone's life. this is a sustainable abundance that he talks about. Sustainable energy is what he had before. Now it's sustainable abundance. He thinks everyone's going to have much better lives, much more prosperous lives.

22:34And then maybe there'll be a beach in Mars somewhere. I don't know. You said the reason you sold before was not that you had lost confidence, but you were getting criticized by your investors. And media. And media. But has that criticism gone away now? I haven't heard very much of it lately because there are these seven stocks that are 38 % of the market now. So I haven't really heard a lot of criticism. Every now and then, people express concern. But I don't think that's really been a big issue now. It was then because it happened pretty quickly. The stock went up and down, up and down, up and down, and then it went phew.

23:19And right now you're in the same kind of stage for Tesla with this FSD driving, where the car is driving. Have you been in one of those cars? Yeah, I've been in the cars, yeah. The drive by itself? Yeah. They have it on automatic driving. Have you tried it yet, Joe? No, I'm going to. Not my car, but I've been in the car, sure. Yeah. I'm going to buy one. I am. For the family. I am. You're going to love it. You've been telling me for years, too, about how it can park itself, pick you up at the front of the house. Well, it's really interesting. One of my friends came over and we went in New York, I guess, a couple of weeks ago.

23:57And he put in that he wanted to get to a restaurant, punched it in, cars going through traffic, stops at lights, stops at pedestrians. and the next iteration is going to be within the next, I guess, few months. And it's going to be ten times as good as this one. And the multiples he talks about... When is that? Well, anyone who buys a car now is going to have that. The technology is in there. He's suggesting that he's going to get to a point where you're going to be allowed to text and drive. He's going to say you can text and drive at the same time. And go to sleep in your car. Well, the question is, but the other question, but this is a huge one, is he has those ambitions.

24:39Do regulators have the same ambitions that he does? Well, if things are safer than they are as presently with people driving on their own, yes, regulators want to save lives. There's a lot of people that die in crisis. I get that. I'm just saying, do you think that, so there's two issues. There's going to be the federal government, which actually I think probably will look mostly fondly upon this, and then there are going to be state governments and city governments that are going to be a lot more complicated. I think when everyone realizes how much safer it is to drive, and all you do is get in your car and tell you where you want to go, and it's safe, it's all about safety, then people, regulators will approve of it.

25:24I don't think that's going to be a problem. Ron, let's talk about a few of the other stocks. And by the way, do you want to mention any of the people who are coming to the conference today? Any of the speakers? The people who are coming, well, our theme of our conference today is changing lives. And it's double meaning. And changing lives means that the people who have invested with us, our goal is to change their lives. We're giving them more financial security than they've had before. And the idea behind it is that most people don't know that much about stocks. and they sort of are forced to invest.

26:01And most people who do what I do, they have a different objective than mine. And their objective is to make as much money as they can, as fast as they can, and stop doing it, and they can go sit in a beach somewhere. That's their objective. My objective has been to change people's lives for our clients and also for the people who work at Barron Capital by giving this financial security. So everyone who works at Barron Capital, if you're a receptionist or if you're an assistant trader or if you're an analyst, of course, but you're going to become wealthy from the way we've set things up. So everyone there has an interest in SpaceX, for example.

26:45They all have an interest in SpaceX, which I think is really cool. The companies who come in today are companies like Shopify, which is the backbone for businesses that instead of having to invest in infrastructure themselves, they rent Shopify's. So that's a good one. Gartner is technology. This is so cool. So this is sort of an example of the things that happen in the markets that Gartner, we've been investing in for, I don't know, 10, 15 years, made a lot of money. This year, they reported earnings that were disappointing to people. Stock fell in half. And because people view them as someone who's going to be hurt by AI as opposed to use AI to help them.