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Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office

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Re: Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless Twitter has no assets of any marketable value (which obviously isn't the case, the company itself just sold for 44 billion dollars) the landlords will get paid, worst case by having Twitter issue additional stock in a debt for equity swap.

No one involved thought Twitter was worth anywhere close to $44 billion when it was sold.

At least one person did, or it would not have sold for that amount.

Re: Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office

#182
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of great engineers in TN who would gladly work at Twitter while getting that SFBA paycheck Actually Twitter moving to Nashville or Memphis could be the greatest thing to happen to these cities (Memphis more than TN)...if they make it

I agree that plenty of devs in TN would happily take an SFBA paycheck without moving. But why in the world would any company, much less Musk’s Twitter, offer such a massively out of band salary? The entire point of moving to states like TN is to pay less for developers, not the same amount.

>>The entire point of moving to states like TN is to pay less for developers,

that is a consideration, but I would not even put that in the top 10 reasons to move out of SF, or CA.

Hell he could have to pay devs MORE than in SF and it will still be a good business choice to get the hell away from there

Re: Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wouldn't happen in this case because there would still be residual value in the equity. Is Twitter worth $45bn? No. Is Twitter worth more than the $13bn in debt? Yes. In this case, they can file, rollover the debt into a new company with no financial loss and then recap the equity with Musk (who obviously has the money to do so) and other shareholders. Also, the banks who own the debt do not want to run Twitter.…

> Is Twitter worth more than the $13bn in debt? The banks who own the debt* do not believe so. [Edit: early article postulating 20% writedowns https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/musks-banks-book-twitter-... recent news with 50+% as a more appropriate writedown than 20% https://www.reuters.com/technology/fidelity-marks-down-value... * because they haven't been able to sell it to anyone]

And look at HY indexes. The marks that have been in the media are roughly where other HY bonds have moved. Banks have bids but they are seeking bids from hedge funds that trade in distressed debt, who are obviously going to bid with a markup (the same thing happened with British corporates a few months, because pension funds had to sell they had to take bids from hedge funds so the bonds went from 100 t0 90 for AAA securities because there was no bid, you had private equity funds trading at 70p in the £1 on money-good securities). The secured portion is down 10%...that looks about right based on HY indexes.

The 50% markdown that Fidelity is taking means that it is worth more than $20bn. Classic HN.

Re: Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if any commercial real estate company would rent Twitter anything at this point. It's pretty clear Musk intends to save money by f*cking others. Might as well go 100% remote.

They are desperate for any rent. Landlords for commercial property are getting killed. People are really losing their minds over this but this isn't a big deal.

It is funny to watch the deck chairs getting furiously rearranged.

They're really trying to push back-to-the-office to refill all those vacancies, but at the same time companies that are cost-conscious are going to be realizing that if they can cut their rents then they can maintain staff and operations ahead of their competitors.

Once the recession hits, every company is likely to bolt back to remote work and ditch their rents because it is all pure overhead for only the purpose of bosses being able to observe butts in seats.

Re: Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office

#185
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but that was ages ago I’m not sure if this is really well done sarcasm, but the original article is less than 2 months old.

With the speed at which Elon changes his mind, I think "ages ago" is accurate even if it was less than 2 months ago.

Its not unreasonable if it was 2 hours ago.

Re: Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office

#187
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the landlord Twitter is supposed to have been “in default” on their lease as of Dec 21. It’s like the second sentence of the Bloomberg article we’re commenting on, before the subscription fold.

I would be interested in knowing how many other tenants this landlord has chosen to file suit on when the tenant is 7 days over due (in default in 21st, filed the suit on the 29th)? Seem very aggressive. I wonder if politics has any bearing on their choice to file? Or the fact that Elon has publicly been considering closing the SanFran HQ?

> I wonder if politics has any bearing on their choice to file? Or the fact that Elon has publicly been considering closing the SanFran HQ?

I suspect a bigger the fact that Elon has repeatedly publicly indicated things like that Twitter has been barreling toward bankruptcy since around the time of his offer to buy, and that a filing may be imminent within the next year. (Now, those public statements have been largely to deflect public criticism of his management decisions and bully employees into accept poor working conditions, but creditors can hear and react to them, too.)

Re: Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office

#188
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless Twitter has no assets of any marketable value (which obviously isn't the case, the company itself just sold for 44 billion dollars) the landlords will get paid, worst case by having Twitter issue additional stock in a debt for equity swap.

Many have been estimating it at well under a $10 billion valuation. Elon Musk just became the first person to lose $200 Billion. I'd not be so quick to assume creditors are all getting paid here.

Deliberately under-capitalizing a privately-held corporation, as Elon appears to be doing, is one of the few exceptions to the corporate liability shield. (Rent costs were known at the time of acquisition, so not providing sufficient capital to pay those costs now that he owns the company can be used against him in bankruptcy court; the fact that Twitter now has ongoing loan payments of >$1 billion/annually does not help him because those liabilities were incurred as part of the acquisition).

Or in other words...creditors might be able to go after Elon personally for Twitter's debts. It's rare, but it does happen, and it happens more frequently when one party tries to game the system.

Re: Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office

#189

I once worked for a company during Dotcom that failed to pay rent for 7 months, was then forced into Chap 7 at 4:30 PM on a Thursday (we were given 30 mins to vacate the office). The building management then padlocked the doors leaving everything inside for the next 7 months while the they and the major creditor fought over rent and the contents. Turned out the building and the creditor were in fact parts of the same…

Maybe Musk has changed his mind about remote work:) Certainly don't need that office if you're employees work form home.

Re: Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office

#190
One thing is for sure, if Twitter ever is looking for new space they will have trouble finding a commercial landlord willing to lease to them. Perhaps a smaller space in the same area as a larger space they had but closed, this behavior makes it more difficult to do business int he future for them.
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