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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

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 s…

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

Care to explain? When the debt is already being marked down, how does the equity have any positive value? (other than maybe extreme variance, but I still don't see how that gets anywhere near 20?)

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

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s really not though. This comparison is just a bad way to think about things. We have plenty of well established financial ratios that tell you something useful about an org. This is not one of them. Interest expense hits net income. Actual debt payments do not. The ratio is out of whack if you didn’t make a profit last year or had a tiny profit. What are we actually trying to identify here? Insolvency? Leverage?…

So how would someone who "knows what they are doing" evaluate the credit risk of Twitter given only the information available to those outside of Twitter? You keep telling us how not to do it, so what is the right way, and what does that way tell us?

I don’t know what is and isn’t available for Twitter. I don’t really care and my lack of a precise answer here doesn’t make the given answer more useful.

But generally you would look at things like the current ratio, the debt to equity ratio, the interest coverage ratio; and of course a look at what’s changing in the business landscape, what the debt will be used for, what competition is doing, etc.

You could also look at the credit ratings of companies which for Twitter looks like it was recently brought down to a B- and then removed due to missing information by S&P.

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

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as your 1 day late you are in default. Most organizations however give noticed and plenty of time before filing law suits thus my question. The "news" here seems to be lacking any context, and I assume bad intentions on the part of NY Times and Bloomberg so...

The article is too vague on details, and I don't see the actual court filing readily accessible (bad journalists! always give a link to court filings!). But given the timeline and the wording, it seems likely to me that Twitter has not paid its rent for November or December--in other words, it's not one, but two missed payments. If that is indeed the case, then I do not find it all surprising that a lawsuit would be…

I found it here[1] on the SF court website. It looks like they didn't pay December rent, due on the 1st. They gave them 5 days notice on the 16th and by the 29th they still hadn't paid.

[1] https://webapps.sftc.org/ci/CaseInfo.dll?SessionID=333998CD0...

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

#205

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.

My jaded opinion is that Musk may not really care about remote work, but it turns out return-to-office requirements are a useful way to get people to leave without having to fire or lay them off, and bypass stuff like the WARN act.

> “Day zero. Sharpen your blades boys," Calacanis texted Musk. "2 day a week Office requirement = 20% voluntary departures.”

https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-text-messages...

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

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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

I'm not a Californian and I don't particularly want to live in the Bay Area, but I don't understand this reasoning: it doesn't matter how many reasons there are to leave a particular state (of which there are always plenty) if the single biggest reason to stay remains in place. Specifically: the people who live in the SFBA live there because they want to live there, especially if they're still there after the last 3…

Yea companies have trouble luring talent from the city just a short hop into near suburbs, let alone across the country.

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

#207
post #39
post #3

Luckily they don't need an office with their great remote work policy. Oh... wait.

Their policies aren’t exactly written in stone. Yes, on November 11, it was ( https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-... ) “an email to employees from Musk on Wednesday night ordering workers to stop working from home and show up in the office Thursday morning” , but that was ages ago. Last week, we got ( https://nypost.com/2022/12/30/twitter-closing-seattle-office... ): “Twitter is closing down…

an email at night? does that even count as formal notice of new work schedule? WTF

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

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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

I'm not a Californian and I don't particularly want to live in the Bay Area, but I don't understand this reasoning: it doesn't matter how many reasons there are to leave a particular state (of which there are always plenty) if the single biggest reason to stay remains in place. Specifically: the people who live in the SFBA live there because they want to live there, especially if they're still there after the last 3…

Isn't that the assumption? Musk will just hire bootcamp grads and whoever sends him a funny meme, and that's it.

It seems there's a sufficiently sized core team left even after all the resignations and firings. He keeps those for a while. They vet and train the new guys and gals.

As long as the site is operational it'll be fine because of the network effects. (Mastodon is great but not really a threat. At least not yet. And maybe never.)

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

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landlords have very strong rights. They can get tenants evicted through legal means.

Yeah after a lengthy and expensive lawsuit.

You don't have to have an expensive or lengthy suit to evict a commercial tenant... you just can't do it unilaterally. You can go straight to the court and request an eviction, you do not need to sue Twitter to evict them.

How many "eviction lawsuits" have you been involved in?

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

#210
post #6

it should be easy to recapitalize Twitter using sales of Tesla stock, so I cant believe its an actual shortage of cash. Probably trying to game the litigation cycle and pay at the very last minute? But to what end, it seems like a doomed game to play, you either have money coming in or you dont.

>Probably trying to game the litigation cycle and pay at the very last minute?

What is statutory interest in SF?

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