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Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

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Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#391

Post by padjo »

gsibble wrote: post #243
hunterb123 wrote: post #153

ITT: - Elon is stupid, haha he will lose money. - Elon is evil, he's trying to pull a fast one on this corporation! - Elon waived his rights, he shouldn't have agreed to their fake numbers! - Twitter is allowed to claim whatever % of spam bots they want for the deal. - Twitter's censorship is actually a good thing, here's why...

Well put. Also: - I'd hate it if Elon bought Twitter Same person: - What? This is bullshit! Elon should be forced to buy Twitter!

I am that person and I’m very disappointed in myself for it.

But the idea of someone buying twitter against their will just cracks me up.

Also really punctures the visionary genius narrative.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#393

Post by svnt »

Sporktacular wrote: post #361
pryce wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone's stock is as incredibly overinflated as Tesla has been for so long, choosing the most effective way to liquidate stock without triggering a run becomes a social engineering problem with the incentive of a multi-billion dollar payoff. Honestly I think other people trying to read this situation in some way that ignores a multi billion dollar incentive just sitting there is utterly naive.

Minus 1 billion for a termination fee. Why would he have agreed to that if it was his plan all along?

If he was able to exit his Twitter stock position after the jump in price he created it would wash out the $1B.

If he exited TSLA to the tune of the remaining $10B or $15B, staving off a 50% decline in that value then he came out way ahead.

It seems very likely to me he will find a way out of the $1B fee and end up settling for some fraction.

Of course if he just borrowed against his TSLA to facilitate this deal, as I have read he did, then his profit on the move depends on the terms of the loan.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#395

Post by avalys »

runarberg wrote: post #302
avalys wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deal includes a "specific performance" clause, which allows Twitter to force Musk to carry out the deal. He can't simply pay $1 billion and walk away, he's in for a very messy legal fight. This pretext about bots is incredibly weak and he's in no way guaranteed to win. If this really were part of some grand master plan, I think he would have left himself an easier out.

Never underestimate the incompetence of the average human. Doubly so if they are rich and powerful. In fact if a master plan has several fatal flaws on closer inspection, then that’s just evidence that the perpetrator just didn’t think it all through before executing. If you watch an amateur chess game you’ll find that most players actually have some master plan, but don’t have the skills to see the flaws, or even if…

I don't see how you can simultaneously believe that this is some 4D chess move from Musk to allow him to cleverly liquidate his Tesla holdings without tanking the stock - and also believe he is too incompetent to make sure he could actually back out of the Twitter deal which he never intended to complete in the first place.

The fact that his supposed plan here has some flaws is not _further_ evidence that it was planned from the beginning, that's absurd.

It seems much more likely that buying Twitter was just an impulsive decision for him that he is now regretting and looking for a way out of.

I agree with you that many supposed conspiracies require too much competence in order to pull off, and can usually be dismissed as impossible to achieve in practice. But it doesn't follow that, as a consequence, any action that would be incompetent as part of a conspiracy should be considered evidence that a conspiracy exists.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#396

Post by notahacker »

dathinab wrote: post #167
adrr wrote: post #43

Twitter is going to be the downfall of Elon. I don’t understand is fascination with it. It’s a big distraction and he alienates a certain percentage of his customers for Tesla.

Because a non small part of his success is based on portraying himself as a form of real world tony stark, mainly over twitter. Without that he wouldn't have gotten nearly anywhere close to where he ended up. Because for a lot of his ventures he used that image to collect way more money then the company would normally had gotten and the used the additional money to try to beat the completion enough so that the invest…

I can believe he used some of that logic to justify the decision to bid for it...

But in reality his ventures collect way more money than companies of those types normally get because he hit home runs in the early internet era, then started tackling some incredibly ambitious hardware engineering problems and built companies that actually started to solve them, complete with an exciting thesis about them being all being linked to Mars colonies. That's where the "Tony Stark" reputation comes from and why people bothered following him on Twitter in the first place.

Sure, some retail investors follow him on Twitter and end up buying his stocks (or some random crypto thing he has no financial connection with but thinks is funny...) because they think he's great, but if the difference actually owning the platform makes to his ability to raise capital isn't absolute zero, it's closer to zero than $44B. And not necessarily positive, because owning Twitter doesn't make batteries cheaper or ease the technical and regulatory challenges of self driving or LEO mesh networks, but it would take up a lot of his time and resources.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#397

Post by VectorLock »

bredren wrote: post #328
VectorLock wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But it's unclear to me what he initially thought he was getting out of this. The best hypothesis I've heard is that he was trying to secure the raw materials that Tesla's stock price is made out of.

This is perhaps meant to be tongue in cheek but Twitter is not just influential to Musk's concerns. Twitter is influential to the concerns of Musk's competitors and potential regulators who might stand in his way. Regardless of its deflated value, (all assets were way puffed up) Twitter is still extremely valuable. Arguably, it is still positioned to be worth more than Facebook.

"ha ha only serious."

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#398

Post by nemo44x »

manquer wrote: post #320
nemo44x wrote: post #207

Why would he spend $44B on a company worth $28B today? I’d make a new offer of $35B. They’d probably accept.

They can’t accept anything like that , twitter board would get sued by their shareholders for any price renegotiation. Shareholders would sue them as most legal theory says twitter would win in court and enforce the deal, so there is no reason for the board to renegotiate instead of going to court, the board has fiduciary responsibilities.

Why not? Elon would be snarky to not buy and only lose $1B vs $10B. Clearly after investigation the company isn’t worth that and the public markets will vet forget. The stock likely tanks to They should be happy to get $35.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#399

Post by nemo44x »

compiler-guy wrote: post #304
nemo44x wrote: post #207

Why would he spend $44B on a company worth $28B today? I’d make a new offer of $35B. They’d probably accept.

Because he signed a contract to that effect, without any contingencies if the stock went down. He doesn’t really have a choice except to go through an extended legal process that likely will end up going against him.

I’d rather lose $1B than $15B. Stock will rank to < $10/share over next year now.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#400

Post by Animats »

beeboop wrote: post #386
Animats wrote: post #255

Tesla needs to focus. Two major assembly plants are down for line rework because the line runs too slowly. The battery factories are behind schedule. Solar roof installations are way under goal, despite high energy prices. "Self driving" is a flop. And whatever happened to the Cybertruck? Tesla is a car company. They need to focus on making cars. They're past the startup stage. To grow into that bloated market cap, t…

Can you provide the detailed schedule for battery factories? Can you provide the communications that show the lines are running too slowly? Can you provide the development roadmap for self driving to demonstrate it's ceasing to have progress? Can you provide evidence that the equipment in Giga Factory in Austin that's installed and ready to build the cyber trunk isn't going to be used for that?

Yes, but there is a service charge for doing homework.
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