Tesla investors are about to vote on a massive trillion-dollar pay package for their CEO, Elon Musk. The vote will be messy, but mostly noise. Instead of boardroom drama, investors should continue to focus on earnings and robo-taxis.

Over the weekend, Institutional Shareholder Services, a firm that advises investors how to vote their shares, recommended against approving the 2025 pay award that Tesla's board has proposed for its iconoclastic CEO.

The recommendation shouldn't surprise anyone. ISS recommended against approving Elon Musk's 2018 pay package -- twice. That pay package awarded Musk roughly 300 million incentive-laden stock options. The 2025 award would grant some 425 million incentive-laden options.

Incentives include delivering 20 million EVs cumulatively, achieving 10 million active subscriptions for Tesla's highest level driver assistance technology called Full Self-Driving, and delivering one million Optimus humanoid robots, among other things. Essentially, the options vest if Tesla achieves an $8.5 trillion market value. That would put Tesla stock at, very roughly, $2,700 a share and make the 2025 performance award worth approximately $1 trillion.

Pay packages like the 2018 and 2025 awards are unprecedented, one big reason proxy advisor firms tend to recommend voting them down. Musk's pay is an outlier in size and construction.

The recommendation won't likely stop investors from voting yes. They voted yes twice to Musk's 2018 pay award. (There was a second vote after a Delaware judge nullified the award, citing inadequate shareholder disclosures.) Investors also voted yes to a 2012 award, giving Musk 80 million stock options.

Tesla shareholders have chosen this type of compensation structure many times in the past. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives and Future Fund Active ETF co-founder Gary Black believe there is no chance Tesla shareholders will vote down Elon's pay package.

Ives rates Tesla shares a Buy and has a $600 price target for the stock. Black doesn't hold Tesla stock now, selling around $360 a share, citing valuation. Tesla stock trades for about 180 times estimated next year's earnings, up from about 70 times a year ago.

Tesla responded to ISS in a lengthy post on X, saying in part, "ISS once again completely misses fundamental points of investing and governance," and adding that Musk doesn't earn anything unless the share price rises materially.

Votes will be tallied at Tesla's annual shareholder meeting on Nov. 6. Before that, Tesla will report third-quarter earnings on Oct. 22. That is the more important event for investors to track.

Wall Street expects earnings of 55 cents a share, down from 72 cents reported in the third quarter of 2024.

Tesla sold 497,099 cars in the quarter, a quarterly record, and up 7% from a year ago. That could help fuel an earnings "beat," but investors will want to hear about the outlook for EV sales in the fourth quarter, with the federal $7,500 EV purchase tax credit removed at the end of September. Tesla launched lower-priced versions of the Model 3 and Y to help soften any impact of the lost credit.

Beyond car sales, investors will want to hear more about the expansion of Tesla's robo-taxi business, which it launched in Austin, Texas, in June. Tesla uses AI computing to train its cars to drive. AI opportunities are the biggest reason that, coming into Monday trading, Tesla stock was up 99% over the past 12 months.