this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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An estimated $4 to $20 billion in value, what is he thinking?

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[–] [email protected] 73 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I don’t think twitter has $30B in valuation left. Musk bought it for $44B (which was beyond its value at the time, but okay). Since his takeover, it’s lost between 50-60% of its value. That was as of several months ago, so I have to imagine it’s even less now.

With the loss of brand equity, they might be sliding towards the single digit billions very quickly.

He’s just setting money on fire at this point.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I have read here on Lemmy someone claim this is all political and just 4D chess to own the libs.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

What I don't understand is how he can still be in charge, at all? Do shareholders not have any legal mechanism to get him removed?

[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 year ago (2 children)

He is the only share owner. He bought the whole company.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

Oh shit, I thought he just bought a majority stake in it. Sucks that he's able to disrupt so many employees' lives in the process of his tantrums & acid trip ideas.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The second largest investors in Elon's Twitter are the Saudis. They might not take kindly to such antics.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Saudi Arabians have hated Twitter for over a decade now thanks to the role it played in the Arab Spring movement. I wouldn't be surprised if they helped Elon buy it just to kill it.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Yes, that does make a lot of sense. A few billion to take down Twitter is a great investment for them.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

He’s the largest shareholder and it’s a private company, which is why we depend on companies holding his debt for guesstimates about the valuation. There’s no market forces that are punishing him for bad decisions, other than him not being able to service his/twitter’s debt based on twitter’s dwindling income.

Jack Dorsey and his Saudi partners agreed to hold onto their shares (ie, not force Musk to buy them) and together they held about $3.5B out of the $44B valuation when it went private. Dorsey just started offering some super gentle criticism while saying it’s a very hard job.

I don’t know if they’re under NDAs, or if they’re afraid of crashing their investments further by criticizing him in public, or if they just don’t care because what’s a few billion between friends. Maybe they’re sending him angry texts.

I’m just hoping that someone comes out with a tell-all that ends up being a movie called The Anti-Social Network.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Musk bought it, he's the sole shareholder now. It's not a public company anymore.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Prior to Musk, IIRC, the valuation was around $11B.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

TWTR had about 765M shares outstanding. I didn’t follow them throughout the entire run up to the Muskening, but it looked like they were averaging somewhere in the neighborhood of $35/share, meaning their valuation would be about $25-30B. I’m deliberately ignoring the fact that they went into the 60s and 70s for an extended period in 2021 because I’m not sure what was driving that apart from cheap money and higher online activity during covid.

I still think he overpaid by a factor of about 1.5.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So you’re saying it’s worth at least 20 billion? Still seems too high to me.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

It’s probably between $15-20B right now.

I think it comes with a salvage title though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

He bought Twitter back when cash was cheap. That alone could be a couple billion in valuation at least.