Twitter shares, they’re just rising. That’s because Tesla CEO Elon Musk has now taken a passive stake in Twitter. I think he’s probably going to try to increase his stake.
I think employees on Twitter are increasingly panicking, Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share. Elon Musk responded to allegations of sexual misconduct on Twitter.
This is unprecedented. A single person spends more than $40 billion in assets to buy a company. It has been extraordinarily unusual for everyone involved. I mean, the journalists covering the situation, the people working on Twitter, the investors trying to plan Elon Musk.
Years from now, I mean, it could be a risky bet. Now betting against Musk is like betting against Tiger Woods. I mean, it’s not really something that worked for the freak. It’s anyone’s guess how and when Elon Musk wants to change Twitter.
So before Elon made its takeover bid, Twitter started with a new CEO named Parag Agarwal. He was the hand-picked successor of Jack Dorsey, who had served as CEO since 2015.
It was thought that Dorsey was really going to change around Twitter and of course, being CEO of other companies, especially with Square, I mean, there’s a distraction factor in there. And Twitter started taking some small steps in terms of engagement, with user growth increasing quarter over quarter.
Twitter makes most of its advertising revenue from big brands, blue chip advertisers. Whereas if you look at its competitors like Snapchat and Facebook, they earn most of their revenue from small and medium sized businesses. And so when you think about Twitter and innovation, they kept making products that cater to big brands as opposed to innovating on the advertising side for small, medium.
Size business. In a social media arms race, their biggest issues were engagement, monetization from an advertising perspective, and losing more and more shares from the likes of Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and others. In early April, Elon Musk revealed he had more than one.
9% stake in Twitter, which it had been snatching shares from earlier this year. And it was a huge surprise. Elon Musk and Twitter, at first he became the company’s largest shareholders, then plans to join the board suddenly turned upside down. Are there any major action plans in the works?
I think when Twitter offered Elon Musk a board seat, he saw it as a huge victory. What Elon was thinking at the time was that, from my vantage point, it was a temporary measure to be able to get a little more visibility into how the company works.
So when Twitter invited Elon to join the board, they put a limit on how many shares he owned. And so we think that could be the turning point for Elon, because his ultimate goal was to buy Twitter.
So he declined the offer of a board seat and went ahead and bought the company for $44 billion, which remains a head-scratcher for a company that I think is probably closer to $30 or $35 billion. But When you are the richest person in the world, you can do that.
That’s why Twitter investors, when they saw $44 billion, were drinking champagne or drinking their favorite wine. Now, the feeling inside Twitter is just sadness. Very bad morale. People are worried about their jobs. They distract from being able to do business as usual.
For those on the sales side, it’s really frustrating because advertisers don’t necessarily know what to do with their partnership with Twitter. If this transaction happens, Elon Musk is planning to take the company private. No more earnings calls, no more printing your financials for the public to see.
He’s basically going to be able to do whatever he wants with the company. Elon Musk looks like more than just the owner of Twitter. Sources reveal that our own billionaire David Faber is expected to serve as temporary CEO. Elon Musk’s Twitter deal has garnered more headlines.
At the Times conference, Musk said he would reverse the Twitter ban on former President Donald Trump. Elon Musk hasn’t made it a secret that he plans to roll back some content moderation policies on Twitter. So we know that’s coming.
I think the problem for Twitter is that in the past and sometimes today, it’s a cesspool. And the concern is that you start banning some people.
Of course, the bigger issue being Trump as he eventually returns to the stage. But you have to keep in mind that Twitter has been spending years trying to curate and moderate the speech on its platform in order to be more engaging.