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Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

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Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#451

Post by martyvis »

avs733 wrote: post #422
legalcorrection wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Mockery" i.e. not censor people who say things you don't like.

It’s a completely ridiculous narrative to think that musk is interested in anyones free speech but his own. We should all be more aware of when the narratives billionaires pitch about themselves become perceived to be objective reality.

If Elon was really only concerned by his own free speech he could easily using the small change in his pocket to create elonmusksays.com, have 10 people run it, and his daily quips and insights would be there for all to see and presumably quoted anywhere and everywhere.

Elon always has bigger plans and ability to execute on them then people seem to acknowledge.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#452

Post by guyzero »

fullshark wrote: post #435
guyzero wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't like it" != financial distress. From Twitter's 2021 10K: "FY 2021 Highlights Total revenue was $5.08 billion, an increase of 37%, compared to 2020." 2021 net losses were $221M, which is a big improvement on $1.135B in 2020. Honestly seems like things are really shaping up @ Twitter.

I’m actually a bit amazed they aren’t profitable yet. Hasn’t their user base been stagnant/shrinking for years? What are they investing in?

They were profitable in like 2017-2019. Their financials are public, it's easy to see at a macro level where the money is going.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#453

Post by slibhb »

wwweston wrote: post #413
scythe wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Icahn was claiming that Netflix was undervalued. To be fair, he was also angling for an acquisition. But a bid like that usually has a half-life; the market trends to a good price — and indeed, Netflix doubled in value by mid-2013. Elon is arguing that Twitter is mismanaged. He already probably pushed them on the edit button, even though they claimed he didn't. If he's right — and Goldman Sachs seems to agree — he co…

> Elon is arguing that Twitter is mismanaged. Anyone who thinks this is manifestly true should read this take from an ex-CEO of Reddit: https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514938507407421440 tl;dr: managing human interaction in any environment with limited accountability is a lot harder than it looks Also, there's the question of by what metrics one would argue it's mismanaged. Revenue and engagement trends? Profitabi…

I read it and am thoroughly unimpressed.

> It is because at Certain Times, given Certain Circumstances, humans will Behave Badly when confronted with Certain Ideas, and if you are The Main Platform Where That Idea is Being Discussed, you cannot do NOTHING, because otherwise humans will continue behaving badly.

To paraphrase: "Ideas are dangerous, people cannot be trusted to argue on the internet because it leads to violence, therefore people have to be censored, even if the things they're saying are true".

First, the idea that lab-leak theory was related to violence against East Asians is highly, highly dubious. Second, again and again, I see people arguing that we have to dispense with our ideals because they are Too Dangerous. At some point you have to realize that these people are just cowards.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#454

Post by vimy »

> Elon Musk is speaking to investors who could partner with him on a bid for Twitter, sources close to the matter told The Post. A new plan that includes partners could be announced within days, those sources said. … But that pill may not stop other entities or people from acquiring their own shares of up to 15% of the company. Those owners could partner with Musk to force a sale, make changes in the executive ranks or push for other overhauls of the company.

https://nypost.com/2022/04/15/elon-musk-considers-bringing-i...

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#455

Post by stubish »

hedora wrote: post #161
nickysielicki wrote: post #29

I don’t understand how any board can implement a “poison pill”, not just Twitter but Netflix and others, and not be found working against the interest of shareholders. Can anyone help me understand? You’re categorically changing the profile of the stock. This has a chilling effect on large investors, including but not limited just to Musk, right? Vanguard, for example, has just had its range of further investment lim…

Wait, if some ETF accidentally exceeds 15%, then what? First of all, that'll screw over a bunch of small investors, right? Second, could Elon swoop in at that point? Edit: Also, if Elon is reading this, I'll happily buy 14.9% of twitter, and vote as part of your block. Just pay me enough to cover the sale and taxes, plus 1%.

I imagine if an ETF accidentally exceeded 15% then the board would go talk to the fund managers and maybe get them to sign some documents. This isn't a computer program that will automatically trigger armageddon. It is just some new rules that mean if you turn up at a board meeting saying 'haha, I just bought your company and you are all fired', the board gets to say 'nope, we just issued a bazillion shares and gave them to all the existing holders except you, and you now own just 14.9%, sorry not sorry for your loss'.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#456

Post by philistine »

nradov wrote: post #112
philistine wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon's offer is at the same time an hostile offer, and conditional on obtaining financing from banks. This is never heard of in the history of hostile acquisitions, and is a BIG risk for the board to entertain any attempt by anyone to buy Twitter before they know what their loan percentages are.

What exactly would be the risk for the board?

What if Tesla stock tanks (it could happen) forcing Elon to sell stock to repay his debt incurred to buy Twitter. He could decide to dump Twitter instead in a fire sale, massively undercutting its value and hurting it in the way Yahoo and AOL were hurt by the constant swaps.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#458

Post by Aeolun »

wwweston wrote: post #413
scythe wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Icahn was claiming that Netflix was undervalued. To be fair, he was also angling for an acquisition. But a bid like that usually has a half-life; the market trends to a good price — and indeed, Netflix doubled in value by mid-2013. Elon is arguing that Twitter is mismanaged. He already probably pushed them on the edit button, even though they claimed he didn't. If he's right — and Goldman Sachs seems to agree — he co…

> Elon is arguing that Twitter is mismanaged. Anyone who thinks this is manifestly true should read this take from an ex-CEO of Reddit: https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514938507407421440 tl;dr: managing human interaction in any environment with limited accountability is a lot harder than it looks Also, there's the question of by what metrics one would argue it's mismanaged. Revenue and engagement trends? Profitabi…

As insightful as this thread is, Elons reply is gold:

> My most immediate takeaway from this novella of a thread is that Twitter is way overdue for long form tweets!

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#459

Post by tayo42 »

systemvoltage wrote: post #373
woodruffw wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I was a member of Twitter's board, Musk's history of erratic public behavior, SEC settlement, and openly hostile attitude towards the company's employees would be more than sufficient to justify my belief that his controlling ownership would not be in the interest of the current average shareholder. That opinion would also be consistent with how "fiduciary duty" is interpreted by US regulators: companies are not r…

One can equally argue that opens sourcing Twitter algorithm and building trust would bring incalculable number of new users, have a profound impact on their ad business and not to mention, cut down their competitor's moat. People will flock to Twitter like bees. Ad revenue + subscription would skyrocket. So, it can go either way and can be argued either way.

> opens sourcing Twitter algorithm

People need to stop saying this. It's nonsense. Or maybe keep saying it so we know your clueless about how anything works that your commenting on

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#460

Post by atsmyles »

anonymouse008 wrote: post #36
WalterBright wrote: post #17

Every company I know of that did a poison pill to prevent a takeover wound up tanking within a year or two and the shareholders wound up with sand. As a Twitter shareholder myself, the board is making a big mistake. As a legal matter, I don't understand how a board could sell shares to other shareholders at a lower price than to the entity wanting to buy shares to gain control.

Read some Matt Levine, he's way more articulate and makes finance quite fun. But if I were to take a stab at it: The market has been so weird recently that stock splits - which according to previous theoretical belief do not create shareholder value - have in fact increased the share price for extended periods. So issuing stock for whatever reason (high price, poison pill) could be seen as shareholder maximizing. One…

Stock splitting isn't dilution. It is the equivalent of breaking a $10 bill into 2 $5 dollar bills. Dilution is just printing more $10 bills aka inflation.
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