Yes. How can he possibly say that "exceptions are faster" without such timings? C++ style, unwind-the-stack-and-call-destructor exceptions must really have a high run-time cost when an exception occurs. Also, his instruction count misses the instructions that occur at run-time handling an exception. Even when an exception doesn't occur, it isn't obvious that some run-time code doesn't get excuted.
But you have to unwind the stack either way. With exceptions, the exception handling does it. With error checking, you do it every time you type "if (something() == -1) return -1;"
