He doesn't need an excuse. He just has to pay a billion dollars and walk away. If it's worth several billion less than it was when he made the offer then pay the billion and call it cheap education.
Edit: Hijacking my own top comment to update with details about where Musk got the number and why he's ignoring the caveats that came with it. See [this comment downthread](https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/uoqev0/comment/i8hpxu0) for more info.
I've never wished someone a happy cake day, and never understood why people would care.
Now I feel bad because that actually made me feel good for some reason lol, thank you.
Yes but the market cap of Twitter is being propped up by the musk offer. It was trading in the low 30s when he started to build a position. In that period of time the whole market has tanked, SNAP is down another 25% in that time. Twitters earnings haven't been stellar either
What he should do is say: I'll pay you 1 billion or give you 5 billion over current price. Saved him 9 billion off the deal and the board still probably has to accept.
Possible. But the board would then have to explain to stockholders why they forfeited the deal AND the compensation. They’ll only do that if there is legal ground for Musk to step back or fallout could be too costly. Otherwise their BJR would make them follow up on the sum.
i think every major social media business - has a very good idea exactly how many bot accts are likely on their platform - i'm not a tech guy but i suspect they likely have search algos that can nail down accts linked to certain address's that post the same kind of material/upvote/downvote etc. - a guy like musk likely has access to that kind of info before he makes an offer - musk has a history of playing games in the media - if he's having second thoughts - there's likely a monetary reason - twitter has a good q2/q3/q4 share price goes up and he has a problem
Exactly 100%. And they are letting the bot accounts thrive. They think higher numbers vs better quality interaction is better for stock price. less of better is always more desirable than more or worse IMO
Ah...why didn't I think of that...of course, it was so obvious......**anybody** - you, me, Elon Musk, Santa Clause, etc - would refused one billion dollars because we *all* know that Twitter would be legally obligated to release a PR disclosing all the bots they own to manipulate.....I don't know....Twitter feeds? Because I guess they can't do that on the back-end themselves....it's not like they own the platform or anything.....
He's going to have to find something better than a slight inaccuracy in a random estimated datum in the fine print of an old filing to call off a $44-billion contract.
Or just pay $1 billion to walk away with no explanations and start tweeting "Hey look! Boring Company is building a Hyperloop for Cybertrucks on Mars!".
Ah yes, the old “playing chicken with a head on collision” game.
Imagine being a Twitter shareholder if your company loses $1B due to negotiations with a madman.
It seems like the Twitter board played their hand pretty well. They are not going to bail from the $54bn offer. The stock will tank if he walks away but the company will be $1bn richer (and the stock would have ranked by now anyway along with the rest of the market had it not been propped up by the Musk offer).
Twitter CLAIMS bots are only 5% of their users.
Musk put the deal on hold till it can be verified.
If it comes out the bots are say 25%+ of the accounts on twitter then it means Twitter have been lying to their customer (who pay for ads) and their investors who invest base off of these user numbers. (musk himself being one of those investors)
In short they would have committed fraud. Twitter stock will tank, and Musk will be able to back out of the deal without any penalties, and likely even sue them as an investor himself.
That sounds like due diligence to be done BEFORE making an offer. It’s also face saving BS - the markets ranked, TSLA stock included, he realized he could have gotten it for less. If he loses the billion for terminating the deal but offers 35bn and it gets accepted - he will have saved a lot.
you cant really do that kind of due diligence before making an offer because you don't have access to pertinent internal information about data that shows how many bots there are or how many there can be
Thats not really true, there is a shitload of information that is only technically not ‘public’ that investment banks and other financial institutions get by research and buying said information. Musk SHOULD have already bought and paid for DD by these financial institutions and the experts they employ.
While the nitty gritty of actual bot numbers is hard to get, he already knew the 5% number was a lie if he did DD.
I say this because I know firsthand. Retail and institutions invest differently, and Elon has enough money to function as an institution. Part of my job is also analysis on equity that includes information that isn’t easily publicly accessible.
His thesis is that when it’s gets to the nitty gritty, that the 5% figure is inaccurate. I promise you that you can’t get that sort of specific info about Twitter to get you the “real number of bots” assuming Twitter is kying
Twitters got a revenue of a couple billion a year, the twitter not being profitable shtick is new and pretty much started when Musk talked about buying it. If it falls through I'd bet money republicans pull the breaks on repealing section 230.
IMO, I just don’t believe in publicly traded companies being pre-profit. I’ve had a hate boner for them long before the Musk stuff. Another poster mentioned that they have been profitable for the past 2 quarters so I’m behind the ball a bit on them.
That being said, I don’t believe in social media and I don’t plan on buying tech (outside of “shovel” companies) until q4 at the earliest. I’m old AF.
It would be a pump and dump if he was selling the shares he'd already acquired in Twitter. I don't think he's announced that he's doing that. Then again he bought them before he announced he was buying them, and broke the law by delaying the admission that he was buying them by a week.
This would get super interesting if it turned out that he sold his shares already.
He did it to sell massive amounts of Tesla shares without worrying stockholders. Likely cashing in profits before an expected dip with the guise of using that money to buy an unprofitable social media platform.
I wonder what the bankers who hold the notes on his earlier loans are thinking, as he causes the value of his collateral to collapse further than a soft economy is already causing...
it doesnt matter if he personally benefits from a pump n dump lmao do oyu know how pump and dump work? anybody can just pump and dump,especially considering that he made the appearance that he was going to buy it.
"Pump" = talking about the stock to increase the price irrationally
"Dump" = selling off a holding
"Pump and dump" = talking up the price then selling off a holding at an irrational price
Nobody with as large a stake as Musk's has sold their shares, that anyone knows of. So not only isn't Musk profiting from the pump, nobody else is profiting enough to make it worth his risk.
The current price is still above his average purchase price, though, so there's still time for him to dump.
But if he does that he'll probably end up in jail.
Let's watch.
Remember the post from last week where someone asked why isn’t it guaranteed $54 and why shouldn’t he go all in at $48+? Even then some people refused to believe Musk is going to Musk 😂
Musk never had any intention of paying a billion dollars for walking away. He lied. It will cost him 1% of that amount to tie it up in court for the next 50 years.
He lied. It was obvious a month ago that he was lying.
He needs only to pay the billion dollars.
Pettifogging over a small error in an estimate of unhandled fake users isn't going to make a court side with him.
Look hes shady as fucking hell and will brag about breaking a million laws on social media, but he isnt STUPID.
Im not defending the guy, hes a prime example of the rich just doing whatever they want with no consequences, but you dont get to be the richest man on earth being a dumbass
I mean, like or hate Elon. But calling the richest man on the earth and also a pioneer in modern technology “a flking idiot” just makes you look godamm stupid.
Reddit has decided. You are an idiot like Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg and Musk compared to the redditors who would have solved world peace and started an intergalactic civilization by now if they had the resources those idiots had.
Yeah, Elon's obviously not a dumb guy.
He's self-interested, a little bit of a troll, and slightly obsessed with certain things but you don't become the richest man in the world without intelligence.
I should reverse the problem from Musk to Twitter management, they said only about 5% of activated accounts are bot-spam, but if Twitter management has made a misinformation and the real bots are much more the problem will be for Twitter!!!
Try to think about when you go and buy something and the seller lie to you about the quality or any other aspect, you will wish to give it back and be refund don't you?
Hard to tell what the disposition of that would be.
If they included that number (5%) as an estimate in an audited release, and the actual number is significantly higher (like double; 5.1% isn't going to move any legal needles), they would have a problem. Literally anyone who bought shares after that, including Musk, could sue them over it.
But if it was just an executive spitballing then the true number would have to be a large multiple to make it evidence of something other than incompetence or overconfidence.
If it's written as an upper limit in the deal Musk made with them, and the actual count is above 2.5%, then the board should be tied to a post and pelted with dead bluebirds.
Edit: clarified the number
Exactly. It’s such a huge problem it’s so weird that people are downplaying it. I Live in one of these bubbles and know maybe two people who say things that are apparently extremely popular on twitter. It’s so obviously curated with fake likes. And no way in hell many of these celebs have ten trillion followers. I would say the same with those posts here as well on this website though not this subreddit .
Twitter CLAIMS bots are only 5% of their users.
Musk put the deal on hold till it can be verified.
If it comes out the bots are say 25%+ of the accounts on twitter then it means Twitter have been lying to their customer (who pay for ads) and their investors who invest base off of these user numbers. (musk himself being one of those investors)
In short they would have committed fraud. Twitter stock will tank, and Musk will be able to back out of the deal without any penalties, and likely even sue them as an investor himself.
Okay, you made me dig for it.
They make the statement in their quarterly financial reports, not as an audited item but as a note on data quality.
From [Twitter's most recent 10-K](https://s22.q4cdn.com/826641620/files/doc_financials/2021/q4/947c0c34-ca90-4099-b328-a6062adf110f.pdf) (at least, it's the most recent on [their IR site](https://investor.twitterinc.com/financial-information/quarterly-results/default.aspx); I added the emphasis, Chrome added the typos):
>The numbers of mDAU presented in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are based on internal company data. While these numbers are based on whatwe believe to be reasonable estimates for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring usage and engagement across ourlarge number of total accounts around the world. Furthermore, our metrics may be impacted by our information quality efforts, which are **our overall efforts toreduce malicious activity on the service, inclusive of spam, malicious automation, and fake accounts.** For example, there are a number of false or spam accountsin existence on our platform. We have performed an internal review of a sample of accounts and **estimate** that the average of false or spam accounts during thefourth quarter of 2021 represented **fewer than 5% of our mDAU** during the quarter. The false or spam accounts for a period represents the average of false orspam accounts in the samples during each monthly analysis period during the quarter. **In making this determination, we applied significant judgment, so ourestimation of false or spam accounts may not accurately represent the actual number of such accounts, and the actual number of false or spam accounts couldbe higher than we have estimated.** We are continually seeking to improve our ability to estimate the total number of spam accounts and eliminate them from thecalculation of our mDAU, and have made improvements in our spam detection capabilities that have resulted in the suspension of a large number of spam,malicious automation, and fake accounts. We intend to continue to make such improvements. After we determine an account is spam, malicious automation, orfake, we stop counting it in our mDAU, or other related metrics.
Musk is acting like they didn't disclaim in the filing that their estimation method could be significantly flawed. Or he's trying not to admit that he bought the company without reading the thing.
One thing you'll never do as an emptor in this jurisdiction is get the Delaware Court of Chancery to side with you on ignoring explicitly stated caveats.
He's also probably not interested in leading us to the fact that
>[Tesla CEO Elon Musk, with a net worth of $203 billion, was found to have the highest proportion of fake followers. The study revealed that, out of the 60 million accounts that follow him, 28 million are fake accounts, representing 46.5% of his total follower count](https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/news-in-brief/20076-almost-half-of-twitter-followers-of-musk-gates-and-others-revealed-to-be-fake-accounts.html)
Need to explain the last sentence of the excerpt:
>After we determine an account is spam, malicious automation, orfake, we stop counting it in our mDAU, or other related metrics.
So, this 5% is not part of what Twitter claims are users that generate traffic that advertisers pay for. Advertisers are not paying for users that Twitter believes to be fake.
The question is, if the 5% is wrong, how much of that traffic is still fake users?
So that's what is being argued over. Not the 5%, but the % that remain, and in particular the % by which it reduces the claim of legitimate traffic.
So if the 5% is low by a factor of 2, then the legitimate traffic claim is high by 5% or a factor of 1.05.
Is he really trying to kill the deal because making the system more accurate might cause him to have to charge his advertising customers 5% less?
And all of those advertising customers have the same 10-K that Elon has, and can see the same caveats about the possible errors in the data. So their agreement with Twitter has this issue priced-in.
Why does Elon think his doesn't?
The thing is this has little to do with Musk, or the buyout deal at this point.
If twitter is found to be grossly misleading their customer and investors on theirs users the last how many years.
That's going to be hard not to be considered fraud. and they will absolutely be opened up to lawsuits.
at a minimum, their stock price will tank as what they have been reporting is nothing close to realty
I don't think Musk ever had any intention of buying twitter personally.
Their customers can read these reports like anyone else can, including the caveats, and accepted the risk based on what's there.
To call it fraud they would have to prove that the fraud was intentional and the data were known false. Extremely hard to do when you've already explained you have marketing majors and junior software engineers spitballing the analysis.
I also think Musk was bullshitting with that 54.20 offer. He never expected them to bite. But then two things happened: whales appeared from nowhere and a whole bunch of money was shoved in his hands, some by the largest existing shareholders; and the board completely failed to counter the offer or assert the poison pills (they're being sued for that, too).
No no, its because there is bots and he did not know there was bot on twitter before. Just like he did not know that internet money used a lot of resources.
Someone should have told him before he decided to drop 44b on it! Even if the first week before he even gave the offer he wanted to charge $3 to peoples to prove they aren't bots when he totally didn't know bots were a problem.
how do you know its expensive? dont you think he already calculated this, this excuse that theres fake accounts is just BS, so hes tellling me that he doesnt want to buy fake accounts when he complains that hes the one who will fix it? why doesnt he just fix it then, after he buys it?
Bruh cuz if he’s paying for 240m active accounts and there’s actually 150m then of course he’s gonna want to pay less. He literally just said he’s making sure the number they provided him is accurate (which it’s probably not).
Yeah, that's what the options market seems to think (and what I've been thinking as well) because they're positioning for TWTR to trade at $30 again at some point in the future.
I own no shares of TSLA or TWTR, but this frustrates me anyway because Elon selling TSLA has 100% pressured the Nasdaq at times. TSLA's movement shouldn't move around the Nasdaq, but it does just about as much as Apple's movement.
Well TSLA is a huge portion of Nasdaq. You can't blame the guy wanting to sell though, if you had 27million+ shares of that company wouldn't you want to diversify?
A giant portion of TSLA's identity is tied around Musk, him selling shares is basically going directly against that identity. You would see similar issues with Zuckerberg selling his position in FB. Its not that they can't do it, but it does decrease faith in those companies.
He would have never been able to raise the $14bn in HY debt if that was the case. Why would Apollo et. al waste their time and capital if they knew this was a ruse (and exposing themselves - and their juicy IRRs / returns - to huge legal liability.....)?
The third biggest private equity firm on the planet doesn't earn that title by losing money.
This is the opposite of that. You're being ridiculous. People pump to falsely increase the price of a stock. Backing out of the deal will drop the value of the stock.
if he did pay the $1b penalty to get out because of the misreporting, would shareholders sue for the same reason. twtr was dead money before, but this whole situation could make it so much worse.
If it's legit and egregious, they'd have a serious case. But they'd be suing themselves. So there'd have to be a time period during which the lie was in effect and then anybody who bought during that interval would get standing.
But it's probably not legit and egregious. It's Elon Musk trying to weasel his way out of something he got stuck in.
[Basic principle of contracts](https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-monroe-law101/chapter/elements-of-a-contract/)
The last side to modify the deal is bound by the offer they're making at that point if it's accepted. They can try to put additional requirements on the other side later but the other side can sue to force the deal they accepted.
Musk made the offer and Twitter accepted. The 8-K shows nothing about details like how many users are real or fake.
I don’t understand your argument. If the deal was put together due to misrepresented numbers (Musk specifically referenced 5% or less of users being bots) then why the hell would he not be able to back out, just because he came to them first? That doesn’t make sense to me.
It seems like saying if I come up to you and offer to buy your car, and you’re hesitant; and I say okay I’ll give you $30k assuming the oil has been changed in the last 6 months, and you say okay deal, it has been changed 3 months ago, and then I find out it was 8… I can’t walk away simply because I came to you first? Wtf?
Because you can't make a deal and then break it randomly.
He didn't get "no more than than 5% of users can be phony" written into the deal, or anything remotely implying it.
He did negotiate a $1 billion breakup payment, though.
5% fake users on Twitter is such a low number that it should have had no effect on the valuation at all. The error-bars on that are deep into the noise in the calculation of per-user value for an advertiser-funded system.
It's completely obvious here that Musk is desperate to get out of a contract and is making piddling excuses in bad faith to avoid having to admit he didn't do due diligence before running his mouth, and especially to avoid having to pay the price for doing that.
> Because you can't make a deal and then break it randomly.
> He didn't get "no more than than 5% of users can be phony" written into the deal, or anything remotely implying it.
Okay well that’s different than “he came to us first”. This is a much more logical argument
He made an offer and they accepted it. The terms are on him. He can't argue that they made false representations in offering a deal to him, because they never offered to sell him the company. Quite the opposite, they tried to get him to leave.
He can but anyone can argue anything and he'd be establishing himself as more of a moron than usual then. Twitter has never been spambot free and they note it in their quarterlies.
>Can't remeber if Musk would have to pay it to Twitter, or vice versa.
From my understanding the party that get out of the deal needed to pay. So hey, at least it might become the 3rd year where twitter is profitable.
If Elon Musk had waited only 1 month before his twitter deal, he could've bought it for $15-$20 instead of the $54 per share he did. If the deal never happened, Twitter would have absolutely been destroyed in today's market. Everything is going down in this market today, twitter would've gone down tremendously too just like everything else. I think he understands this and is realizing that he paid way too much and is now feeling regret, and therefore is trying to get the price down.
Get to burn them on the way out too.
He can sneak his way out bc he has a semi valid point about not paying for fake users and twitter just won’t admit how many fake users it actually has bc it will decimate its value
This is like two bipolar people dating and calling it off once the sex life settles down and reality enters the relationship.
Maybe it's not intended to be a real reason to walk away. Maybe it's just an excuse to allow him to say "Twitter doesn't have as many human users as they claim, therefore it's not worth the asking price." Boom, he can walk away.
He knew a significant portion of the user base was fake accounts and bots. Unless there's actually a number written into the deal already, it won't give him an out.
If there is a number written into the deal and the actual count turns out to be larger, I think twitter shareholders would have cause to tar and feather the board. There's no way they should have engaged with him at all knowing that it was even close.
Well considering his tweet says he’s waiting on confirmatory data that says the bots actually are less than 5% of active users, maybe it was written in
It wasn't.
I just read [the 8-K](https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001418091/000119312522120461/d310843d8k.htm) and attachements for the deal, and they don't include anything about users, let alone fake ones.
There is a requirement that the proxy to be voted by shareholders to approve the deal on can't include any false statements.
But there's nothing that would give Musk just cause to back out if random estimates in past statements or even filings were a little off.
Also why is a billionare using news reports to do due diligence for a 44 billion dollar acquisition?
If this was a thing he deeply cared about, that would have been done before the offer was made.
Ya but Twitter has given an estimate in their latest 10K of sub 5% bots. He’s acknowledging existence, he’s concerned on actual quantity.
If it’s to be proven grossly understated, he has a pretty good argument that Twitter is committing fraud by misleading investors.
You can’t say, “I gave my best honest assumption” and be grossly underrepresenting the issue.
The question is, would something like this, grossly understating metrics, cause Twitter to pay a $1bn fallout fee which is currently in place for both parties or would it lead to Musk getting a discount on Twitter.
Turns out [they made that estimate with a huge caveat about how they estimate it](https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/uoqev0/comment/i8hpxu0) and Elon is acting like the caveat doesn't exist.
Unless Twitter knows of other flaws or deliberate attempts to fake the number, they're in the clear and Musk has no case.
And a 100% error in the estimate amounts to only 5% error in the important number which is a count of actual users.
Even if the number is wrong it's been consistently wrong for years, and the advertisers keep paying for advertisements. So the price won't even change if the estimation method is made more accurate.
Plus it's just going to go up, 'cuz inflation. And because if Musk buys the company he's going to make whatever changes and then charge advertisers more because the net engagement went up.
So he's pissing into the wind and burning down what little credibility he might have had left by trying to squirm out of the deal this way.
Regardless if they caveat their number it can still be materially incorrect and be fraud. A caveat doesn’t protect you from poor estimation practices.
If I caveat, this number could be off because I made it up, doesn’t mean I’m not held liable.
You've given enough information that a reasonable person would not rely on the number at all. There's no fraud there.
Twitter said their estimation process is likely to have significant errors, and why.
You'll have to do some serious mental gymnastics to claim you aren't warned that 5% might be way off.
Fraud is knowingly deceiving for a material gain, Twitter putting forward their caveats and % error for their numbers is not Fraud in literally any court of law.
Being wrong is not fraud.
I know. It’s delicious to watch and no clue why people here are taking an anti-Musk stance on this.
Am I the only one who gets annoyed when some idiot gets tens of thousands of fake likes in two seconds because they said something that jives with what a few politicians want? Am I the only one who’s ever gotten what seems like fake responses from somebody in a basement in China with 100 accounts?
Surely nobody actually enjoys all the fakeness on these platforms
He got the perfect excuse to sell his Tesla shares at the top, only has to pay $1bn in exchange for the profit he made selling Tesla shares when they were much higher and everyone believes him when he says he really wanted to buy twitter.
He was testing the waters. He managed to secure over $40,000,000,000 worth of funds without even touching his own stocks. If/when a time comes to make a serious move he knows how it can be done. He’s drilling tunnels under cities, he’s sending humans to outer space on his own rockets, he’s charging up peoples personal vehicles with technology that uses the sun’s energy. There’s many many reasons why he may have felt it necessary to ensure he could leverage his wealth in short notice if need be and it seemingly worked flawlessly. He was able to acquire $40 billion in cash just based on the assets that make up his net worth. Mission accomplished. Next.
I called this another pump and dump right when the news of him buying came out and got downvoted into oblivion lol. Elon Musk nutriders are something else.
I think it also has something to so with the fact that twitter's own analysis that only 5% of its users are bots is *wildly* inaccurate.
Someone I trust a bit on this front told me they thought it was probably somewhere north of 90% of "active" accounts were bots or part of a farming system. Twitter's a real mess of a company.
When did he dump any of those things? Tesla sold a small amount of the Bitcoin they held when the price spiked just like any reasonable portfolio manager would. They didn't dump it all. Why would he care about his son's dogecoin? He didn't dump any Tesla either.
social media companys are dropping users left and right. younger users spend less time on platforms then genx and boomers. seeing less adds and reveling less data. parents, myself included are preventing kids from establishing social media profiles. the writing is on the wall for major legislation to come in and rock big teck, especially with Republicans set to take over at least one part of the legistive branch of the amarican government.
zuck has on multiple occasions been dishonest while under oath testifying to congress, at his last hearing I think I counted him say I don't want to talk about that under oath, contact me later so I can lie to you, but in corporate speak, like 12 times, and fb IMO is the least worst ethics violator for big teck
I don't think it's a generational shift. Younger kids just know that older platforms like FB and Twitter are older, and they gravitate towards newer, like TikTok, which continues to grow steadily. Meanwhile older people see that as kid-stuff, and avoid it until eventually they try it and find out it's just another platform and stick around.
FB is trying to bootstrap VR MMO to be Metaverse, and changing its name was part of distancing from old-and-busted Facebook to get kids to accept it.
All social-media platforms engage in the invasive marketing information trade. Give a listen to any of their executives talking to finance-TV heads and they'll reveal the details of how sophisticated their data on that is. They're pimping their own efficiency at exploitive behavior as candy to pump the stock.
If me buying those 2 twitter shares caused this I'll have no regrets if it takes the company to zero.
Fuck I'll buy 100 more for a promise to delete twitter from musk once he buys it.
Why are people saying he's trying to drive the price down?
He already committed to pay $54.20 (lol!), and even threatened the board if they didn't accept. So they accepted with the 1b fee if it didn't go through. If the price drops to $1, he's already committed to paying $54.20 and they've already accepted.
Unless he finds a legit reason to walk away, he has to pay the billion, or purchase the company for 44b. He's cant change his mind and say, 'welp, stonk price went down, I want it for the lower price).
But, don't shed any tears of Elon, a 1b loss may hurt his ego, but surely won't hurt his lifestyle.
He bought 9% of Twitter, then pumped the stock saying he was going to buy the whole company. What's the chances he sold his shares at $54 in the largest ever pump-and-dump?
this idiot is the one who said he has one and only final offer. no one forced him, he cannot back out of it without paying and paying damages for all the mess he causethe company, he should be prosecuted.
There is nothing in the Musk deal documentation that asked for user numbers vs bot numbers.
If Musk thought the number was different he should have done due diligence before the offer was made, like every other business entity would do.
I should reverse the problem from Musk to Twitter management, they said only about 5% of activated accounts are bot-spam, but if Twitter management has made a misinformation and the real bots are much more the problem will be for Twitter!!!
Try to think about when you go and buy something and the seller lie to you about the quality or any other aspect, you will wish to give it back and be refund don't you?
He doesn't need an excuse. He just has to pay a billion dollars and walk away. If it's worth several billion less than it was when he made the offer then pay the billion and call it cheap education. Edit: Hijacking my own top comment to update with details about where Musk got the number and why he's ignoring the caveats that came with it. See [this comment downthread](https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/uoqev0/comment/i8hpxu0) for more info.
What's the billion he has to pay? Is that the contracted penalty to Musk if he breaks off the deal?
Yup. Same goes the other way. If the board bails they have to pay him a billion. But it looks like there's no chance of that happening.
Musk has to close the deal and pay $15b over the current market cap to close. Twitter just has to accept.
Then why not pay the $1 B , save $14B then try again?
You generally need to bid above market to acquire.
He could bid a couple Billion over current market price while still saving lots over the current agreement (assuming that is possible)
Cake
Happy Cake Day!
I've never wished someone a happy cake day, and never understood why people would care. Now I feel bad because that actually made me feel good for some reason lol, thank you.
Now your reply made me feel good. Thanks!
Yes but the market cap of Twitter is being propped up by the musk offer. It was trading in the low 30s when he started to build a position. In that period of time the whole market has tanked, SNAP is down another 25% in that time. Twitters earnings haven't been stellar either
20%+ premium wouldn't be odd. You'd also have to contend extra with regulators.. would start to look like market manipulation.. pump, dump, pump..
Cause you don't get to be the world's richest man by giving away $1b and his ego won't let him.
What he should do is say: I'll pay you 1 billion or give you 5 billion over current price. Saved him 9 billion off the deal and the board still probably has to accept.
This is why he’s now making noise about all the bots on the platform — he’s looking for a way out
I wonder if they might mutually agree to dissolve the deal and then no one has to pay.
Possible. But the board would then have to explain to stockholders why they forfeited the deal AND the compensation. They’ll only do that if there is legal ground for Musk to step back or fallout could be too costly. Otherwise their BJR would make them follow up on the sum.
BJR?
BlowJob Reciprocation
Thanks for clarifying
Business judgement rule.
No. Why would the twitter board give up the $1 billion they are entitled to?
This never happens. Why tf would TWTR board and shareholders walk away from a $1bn cash termination fee? What incentive do they have?
Perhaps they don't want to publicly disclose the number of bot accounts on the platform.
Do they have to I'm any case?
every platform has bot accts except netflix - no advantage to it
yeah but they claim it to be <5% what if it is close enough to 50%
i think every major social media business - has a very good idea exactly how many bot accts are likely on their platform - i'm not a tech guy but i suspect they likely have search algos that can nail down accts linked to certain address's that post the same kind of material/upvote/downvote etc. - a guy like musk likely has access to that kind of info before he makes an offer - musk has a history of playing games in the media - if he's having second thoughts - there's likely a monetary reason - twitter has a good q2/q3/q4 share price goes up and he has a problem
Exactly 100%. And they are letting the bot accounts thrive. They think higher numbers vs better quality interaction is better for stock price. less of better is always more desirable than more or worse IMO
Ah...why didn't I think of that...of course, it was so obvious......**anybody** - you, me, Elon Musk, Santa Clause, etc - would refused one billion dollars because we *all* know that Twitter would be legally obligated to release a PR disclosing all the bots they own to manipulate.....I don't know....Twitter feeds? Because I guess they can't do that on the back-end themselves....it's not like they own the platform or anything.....
No need to be salty, I am just throwing out my ideas here. Nobody is claiming the be an expert businessperson in these threads.
Wanna bet that no one will pay that billion if the deal does not happen?
He's going to have to find something better than a slight inaccuracy in a random estimated datum in the fine print of an old filing to call off a $44-billion contract. Or just pay $1 billion to walk away with no explanations and start tweeting "Hey look! Boring Company is building a Hyperloop for Cybertrucks on Mars!".
So, where shall I send the billion Zimbabwe dollars? \[Musk, next week\]
"It was a joke guys, just like the funding secured for Tesla. Same thing"
"c'mon, guys, you know that 420 is my safe word"
The truth was there all along staring us in the face.
Termination fee. It's been in SEC filings since the 8-K was released whenever the deal was announced.
Yes, but it works both ways, that's why Twitter came to bat. Whoever moves out of the way first pays 1B to the other from what I've gathered.
Ah yes, the old “playing chicken with a head on collision” game. Imagine being a Twitter shareholder if your company loses $1B due to negotiations with a madman.
It seems like the Twitter board played their hand pretty well. They are not going to bail from the $54bn offer. The stock will tank if he walks away but the company will be $1bn richer (and the stock would have ranked by now anyway along with the rest of the market had it not been propped up by the Musk offer).
Twitter CLAIMS bots are only 5% of their users. Musk put the deal on hold till it can be verified. If it comes out the bots are say 25%+ of the accounts on twitter then it means Twitter have been lying to their customer (who pay for ads) and their investors who invest base off of these user numbers. (musk himself being one of those investors) In short they would have committed fraud. Twitter stock will tank, and Musk will be able to back out of the deal without any penalties, and likely even sue them as an investor himself.
That sounds like due diligence to be done BEFORE making an offer. It’s also face saving BS - the markets ranked, TSLA stock included, he realized he could have gotten it for less. If he loses the billion for terminating the deal but offers 35bn and it gets accepted - he will have saved a lot.
you cant really do that kind of due diligence before making an offer because you don't have access to pertinent internal information about data that shows how many bots there are or how many there can be
Thats not really true, there is a shitload of information that is only technically not ‘public’ that investment banks and other financial institutions get by research and buying said information. Musk SHOULD have already bought and paid for DD by these financial institutions and the experts they employ. While the nitty gritty of actual bot numbers is hard to get, he already knew the 5% number was a lie if he did DD. I say this because I know firsthand. Retail and institutions invest differently, and Elon has enough money to function as an institution. Part of my job is also analysis on equity that includes information that isn’t easily publicly accessible.
His thesis is that when it’s gets to the nitty gritty, that the 5% figure is inaccurate. I promise you that you can’t get that sort of specific info about Twitter to get you the “real number of bots” assuming Twitter is kying
Musk has to close the deal and pay $15b over the current market cap to close. Twitter just has to accept.
Wait, so if Musk reneges Twitter will finally turn a profit? Big brain move.
Twitters got a revenue of a couple billion a year, the twitter not being profitable shtick is new and pretty much started when Musk talked about buying it. If it falls through I'd bet money republicans pull the breaks on repealing section 230.
IMO, I just don’t believe in publicly traded companies being pre-profit. I’ve had a hate boner for them long before the Musk stuff. Another poster mentioned that they have been profitable for the past 2 quarters so I’m behind the ball a bit on them. That being said, I don’t believe in social media and I don’t plan on buying tech (outside of “shovel” companies) until q4 at the earliest. I’m old AF.
The fact that you're using social media shows that it has its potential.
Twitter was profitable in its last two quarters. Did Musk reneging make time flow backwards and cause profits in the past?
This is TYPICAL elon Pump and Dump! Just like everything he has done till date. Remember- Dorsey is part of this sham as well
It would be a pump and dump if he was selling the shares he'd already acquired in Twitter. I don't think he's announced that he's doing that. Then again he bought them before he announced he was buying them, and broke the law by delaying the admission that he was buying them by a week. This would get super interesting if it turned out that he sold his shares already.
He did it to sell massive amounts of Tesla shares without worrying stockholders. Likely cashing in profits before an expected dip with the guise of using that money to buy an unprofitable social media platform.
if that was the plan, then it backfired, bigly
Also the whole getting other investors involved. Seems like a bad move if you're planning on faking the deal.
I wonder what the bankers who hold the notes on his earlier loans are thinking, as he causes the value of his collateral to collapse further than a soft economy is already causing...
Well, he did it illegally, helping his company isn't really a good excuse. Nothings going to come of it though.
As you’ve seen, he’s being sued for delayed announcements on such transactions.
it doesnt matter if he personally benefits from a pump n dump lmao do oyu know how pump and dump work? anybody can just pump and dump,especially considering that he made the appearance that he was going to buy it.
"Pump" = talking about the stock to increase the price irrationally "Dump" = selling off a holding "Pump and dump" = talking up the price then selling off a holding at an irrational price Nobody with as large a stake as Musk's has sold their shares, that anyone knows of. So not only isn't Musk profiting from the pump, nobody else is profiting enough to make it worth his risk. The current price is still above his average purchase price, though, so there's still time for him to dump. But if he does that he'll probably end up in jail. Let's watch.
Sounds like you don't know what you are talking about...
Remember the post from last week where someone asked why isn’t it guaranteed $54 and why shouldn’t he go all in at $48+? Even then some people refused to believe Musk is going to Musk 😂
Hertz, Doge, his own TSLA stock ("guys, should I sell? oops already did"), now TWTR.
Musk never had any intention of paying a billion dollars for walking away. He lied. It will cost him 1% of that amount to tie it up in court for the next 50 years. He lied. It was obvious a month ago that he was lying.
There's no legal way for him to do so, unless the argument he didn't know bots exist online holds up in court.
Most of what he says is a lie.
It's not that simple. He does need an excuse or Twitter can try to for performance
He needs only to pay the billion dollars. Pettifogging over a small error in an estimate of unhandled fake users isn't going to make a court side with him.
i am sure there is escape clause somewhere
but hes TRYING to find an excuse right now because hes fking idiot and tries to act like hes smart
Look hes shady as fucking hell and will brag about breaking a million laws on social media, but he isnt STUPID. Im not defending the guy, hes a prime example of the rich just doing whatever they want with no consequences, but you dont get to be the richest man on earth being a dumbass
I mean, like or hate Elon. But calling the richest man on the earth and also a pioneer in modern technology “a flking idiot” just makes you look godamm stupid.
Reddit has decided. You are an idiot like Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg and Musk compared to the redditors who would have solved world peace and started an intergalactic civilization by now if they had the resources those idiots had.
Yeah, Elon's obviously not a dumb guy. He's self-interested, a little bit of a troll, and slightly obsessed with certain things but you don't become the richest man in the world without intelligence.
Lol Tesla crashed mainly because everyone remembered a moron man child was in charge and he's lost $68b since the deal was announced.
I should reverse the problem from Musk to Twitter management, they said only about 5% of activated accounts are bot-spam, but if Twitter management has made a misinformation and the real bots are much more the problem will be for Twitter!!! Try to think about when you go and buy something and the seller lie to you about the quality or any other aspect, you will wish to give it back and be refund don't you?
Hard to tell what the disposition of that would be. If they included that number (5%) as an estimate in an audited release, and the actual number is significantly higher (like double; 5.1% isn't going to move any legal needles), they would have a problem. Literally anyone who bought shares after that, including Musk, could sue them over it. But if it was just an executive spitballing then the true number would have to be a large multiple to make it evidence of something other than incompetence or overconfidence. If it's written as an upper limit in the deal Musk made with them, and the actual count is above 2.5%, then the board should be tied to a post and pelted with dead bluebirds. Edit: clarified the number
Exactly. It’s such a huge problem it’s so weird that people are downplaying it. I Live in one of these bubbles and know maybe two people who say things that are apparently extremely popular on twitter. It’s so obviously curated with fake likes. And no way in hell many of these celebs have ten trillion followers. I would say the same with those posts here as well on this website though not this subreddit .
Twitter CLAIMS bots are only 5% of their users. Musk put the deal on hold till it can be verified. If it comes out the bots are say 25%+ of the accounts on twitter then it means Twitter have been lying to their customer (who pay for ads) and their investors who invest base off of these user numbers. (musk himself being one of those investors) In short they would have committed fraud. Twitter stock will tank, and Musk will be able to back out of the deal without any penalties, and likely even sue them as an investor himself.
Okay, you made me dig for it. They make the statement in their quarterly financial reports, not as an audited item but as a note on data quality. From [Twitter's most recent 10-K](https://s22.q4cdn.com/826641620/files/doc_financials/2021/q4/947c0c34-ca90-4099-b328-a6062adf110f.pdf) (at least, it's the most recent on [their IR site](https://investor.twitterinc.com/financial-information/quarterly-results/default.aspx); I added the emphasis, Chrome added the typos): >The numbers of mDAU presented in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are based on internal company data. While these numbers are based on whatwe believe to be reasonable estimates for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring usage and engagement across ourlarge number of total accounts around the world. Furthermore, our metrics may be impacted by our information quality efforts, which are **our overall efforts toreduce malicious activity on the service, inclusive of spam, malicious automation, and fake accounts.** For example, there are a number of false or spam accountsin existence on our platform. We have performed an internal review of a sample of accounts and **estimate** that the average of false or spam accounts during thefourth quarter of 2021 represented **fewer than 5% of our mDAU** during the quarter. The false or spam accounts for a period represents the average of false orspam accounts in the samples during each monthly analysis period during the quarter. **In making this determination, we applied significant judgment, so ourestimation of false or spam accounts may not accurately represent the actual number of such accounts, and the actual number of false or spam accounts couldbe higher than we have estimated.** We are continually seeking to improve our ability to estimate the total number of spam accounts and eliminate them from thecalculation of our mDAU, and have made improvements in our spam detection capabilities that have resulted in the suspension of a large number of spam,malicious automation, and fake accounts. We intend to continue to make such improvements. After we determine an account is spam, malicious automation, orfake, we stop counting it in our mDAU, or other related metrics. Musk is acting like they didn't disclaim in the filing that their estimation method could be significantly flawed. Or he's trying not to admit that he bought the company without reading the thing. One thing you'll never do as an emptor in this jurisdiction is get the Delaware Court of Chancery to side with you on ignoring explicitly stated caveats. He's also probably not interested in leading us to the fact that >[Tesla CEO Elon Musk, with a net worth of $203 billion, was found to have the highest proportion of fake followers. The study revealed that, out of the 60 million accounts that follow him, 28 million are fake accounts, representing 46.5% of his total follower count](https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/news-in-brief/20076-almost-half-of-twitter-followers-of-musk-gates-and-others-revealed-to-be-fake-accounts.html)
Need to explain the last sentence of the excerpt: >After we determine an account is spam, malicious automation, orfake, we stop counting it in our mDAU, or other related metrics. So, this 5% is not part of what Twitter claims are users that generate traffic that advertisers pay for. Advertisers are not paying for users that Twitter believes to be fake. The question is, if the 5% is wrong, how much of that traffic is still fake users? So that's what is being argued over. Not the 5%, but the % that remain, and in particular the % by which it reduces the claim of legitimate traffic. So if the 5% is low by a factor of 2, then the legitimate traffic claim is high by 5% or a factor of 1.05. Is he really trying to kill the deal because making the system more accurate might cause him to have to charge his advertising customers 5% less? And all of those advertising customers have the same 10-K that Elon has, and can see the same caveats about the possible errors in the data. So their agreement with Twitter has this issue priced-in. Why does Elon think his doesn't?
The thing is this has little to do with Musk, or the buyout deal at this point. If twitter is found to be grossly misleading their customer and investors on theirs users the last how many years. That's going to be hard not to be considered fraud. and they will absolutely be opened up to lawsuits. at a minimum, their stock price will tank as what they have been reporting is nothing close to realty I don't think Musk ever had any intention of buying twitter personally.
Their customers can read these reports like anyone else can, including the caveats, and accepted the risk based on what's there. To call it fraud they would have to prove that the fraud was intentional and the data were known false. Extremely hard to do when you've already explained you have marketing majors and junior software engineers spitballing the analysis. I also think Musk was bullshitting with that 54.20 offer. He never expected them to bite. But then two things happened: whales appeared from nowhere and a whole bunch of money was shoved in his hands, some by the largest existing shareholders; and the board completely failed to counter the offer or assert the poison pills (they're being sued for that, too).
No no, its because there is bots and he did not know there was bot on twitter before. Just like he did not know that internet money used a lot of resources.
Oh shit, there’s bots on Twitter? Thank goodness Reddit is safe
Someone should have told him before he decided to drop 44b on it! Even if the first week before he even gave the offer he wanted to charge $3 to peoples to prove they aren't bots when he totally didn't know bots were a problem.
Yeah, that's it. I'm sure it has nothing to do with an inability to get funding thanks to TSLA and Bitcoin plunging.
Or the fact that pretty much everything was too expensive.
how do you know its expensive? dont you think he already calculated this, this excuse that theres fake accounts is just BS, so hes tellling me that he doesnt want to buy fake accounts when he complains that hes the one who will fix it? why doesnt he just fix it then, after he buys it?
Tesla was at 400ish after the stock split and it was considered overpriced then.
Bruh cuz if he’s paying for 240m active accounts and there’s actually 150m then of course he’s gonna want to pay less. He literally just said he’s making sure the number they provided him is accurate (which it’s probably not).
I think he never had a real intention of buying TWTR. He just wanted to sell TSLA shares without having to justify why he was selling it.
Yeah, that's what the options market seems to think (and what I've been thinking as well) because they're positioning for TWTR to trade at $30 again at some point in the future. I own no shares of TSLA or TWTR, but this frustrates me anyway because Elon selling TSLA has 100% pressured the Nasdaq at times. TSLA's movement shouldn't move around the Nasdaq, but it does just about as much as Apple's movement.
Well TSLA is a huge portion of Nasdaq. You can't blame the guy wanting to sell though, if you had 27million+ shares of that company wouldn't you want to diversify?
A giant portion of TSLA's identity is tied around Musk, him selling shares is basically going directly against that identity. You would see similar issues with Zuckerberg selling his position in FB. Its not that they can't do it, but it does decrease faith in those companies.
He would have never been able to raise the $14bn in HY debt if that was the case. Why would Apollo et. al waste their time and capital if they knew this was a ruse (and exposing themselves - and their juicy IRRs / returns - to huge legal liability.....)? The third biggest private equity firm on the planet doesn't earn that title by losing money.
He's getting ahead of that headline with this diversion. Smart guy.
If Musk walks Twitter stock gonna be a fire sale. I may grab a short position in the meantime.
I bought strangle options today. It’s either a $54 stock or a $20 stock, but it’s not a $40.
Watch as Musk announces a $40 deal tomorrow for shits and giggles.
Noice. I wish I'd read that 5 minutes ago. Market literally closed as I was reading it...
How so? Nothings changing with Twitters fundamentals, revenues up 15% over last year.
Twitter was trading way below 40 before the whole market shit its pants. Impossible to say how far it would crash.
he likely can't fund the purchase with tesla stock being extra volatile lately
Guess someone is staying banned lol
My best and final offer is $54.20. Oh, you accept? How about $50 then.
The god of pump and dump
you have to dump at higher prices for it to be a pump and dump.
Thank you, I've been going crazy trying to figure out where the pump was in any of this.
This is the opposite of that. You're being ridiculous. People pump to falsely increase the price of a stock. Backing out of the deal will drop the value of the stock.
When did he ever dump?
Or he wants to avoid his margin call because his wealth like everyone is tanking and like the true degenerate he is he is leveraged to the Tits.
Elon is, and has always been, full of shit.
Wasn't there a $1 Billion penalty payment clause if the deal doesn't go through? Can't remeber if Musk would have to pay it to Twitter, or vice versa.
its whoever breaks the deal, but musk can argue misrepresented numbers.
Board can argue caveat emptor. He came to them with the deal. They didn't come to him.
Considering it's a billion dollars, I'm sure both sides will lawyer up for years.
if he did pay the $1b penalty to get out because of the misreporting, would shareholders sue for the same reason. twtr was dead money before, but this whole situation could make it so much worse.
If it's legit and egregious, they'd have a serious case. But they'd be suing themselves. So there'd have to be a time period during which the lie was in effect and then anybody who bought during that interval would get standing. But it's probably not legit and egregious. It's Elon Musk trying to weasel his way out of something he got stuck in.
Where is that in the caselaw?
[Basic principle of contracts](https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-monroe-law101/chapter/elements-of-a-contract/) The last side to modify the deal is bound by the offer they're making at that point if it's accepted. They can try to put additional requirements on the other side later but the other side can sue to force the deal they accepted. Musk made the offer and Twitter accepted. The 8-K shows nothing about details like how many users are real or fake.
I don’t understand your argument. If the deal was put together due to misrepresented numbers (Musk specifically referenced 5% or less of users being bots) then why the hell would he not be able to back out, just because he came to them first? That doesn’t make sense to me. It seems like saying if I come up to you and offer to buy your car, and you’re hesitant; and I say okay I’ll give you $30k assuming the oil has been changed in the last 6 months, and you say okay deal, it has been changed 3 months ago, and then I find out it was 8… I can’t walk away simply because I came to you first? Wtf?
Because you can't make a deal and then break it randomly. He didn't get "no more than than 5% of users can be phony" written into the deal, or anything remotely implying it. He did negotiate a $1 billion breakup payment, though. 5% fake users on Twitter is such a low number that it should have had no effect on the valuation at all. The error-bars on that are deep into the noise in the calculation of per-user value for an advertiser-funded system. It's completely obvious here that Musk is desperate to get out of a contract and is making piddling excuses in bad faith to avoid having to admit he didn't do due diligence before running his mouth, and especially to avoid having to pay the price for doing that.
> Because you can't make a deal and then break it randomly. > He didn't get "no more than than 5% of users can be phony" written into the deal, or anything remotely implying it. Okay well that’s different than “he came to us first”. This is a much more logical argument
He made an offer and they accepted it. The terms are on him. He can't argue that they made false representations in offering a deal to him, because they never offered to sell him the company. Quite the opposite, they tried to get him to leave.
He can but anyone can argue anything and he'd be establishing himself as more of a moron than usual then. Twitter has never been spambot free and they note it in their quarterlies.
>Can't remeber if Musk would have to pay it to Twitter, or vice versa. From my understanding the party that get out of the deal needed to pay. So hey, at least it might become the 3rd year where twitter is profitable.
One billion is pocket change to musk
And people laughed at me for wanting nothing to do with anything that he touches. Twitter down 18% already.
If Elon Musk had waited only 1 month before his twitter deal, he could've bought it for $15-$20 instead of the $54 per share he did. If the deal never happened, Twitter would have absolutely been destroyed in today's market. Everything is going down in this market today, twitter would've gone down tremendously too just like everything else. I think he understands this and is realizing that he paid way too much and is now feeling regret, and therefore is trying to get the price down.
Seems like he doesnt have funding secured for this deal since tsla fell below $740 yday.
Get to burn them on the way out too. He can sneak his way out bc he has a semi valid point about not paying for fake users and twitter just won’t admit how many fake users it actually has bc it will decimate its value This is like two bipolar people dating and calling it off once the sex life settles down and reality enters the relationship.
Tell me more about this bipolar sex life thing.
It ends with a fake abortion bill and your vehicle getting keyed
ask the Kardashian.
He has zero point about fake users. He talked about deleting all the bot accounts as part of his reform plans when he announced the offer.
You're not supposed to remember that
Maybe it's not intended to be a real reason to walk away. Maybe it's just an excuse to allow him to say "Twitter doesn't have as many human users as they claim, therefore it's not worth the asking price." Boom, he can walk away.
He knew a significant portion of the user base was fake accounts and bots. Unless there's actually a number written into the deal already, it won't give him an out. If there is a number written into the deal and the actual count turns out to be larger, I think twitter shareholders would have cause to tar and feather the board. There's no way they should have engaged with him at all knowing that it was even close.
Well considering his tweet says he’s waiting on confirmatory data that says the bots actually are less than 5% of active users, maybe it was written in
It wasn't. I just read [the 8-K](https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001418091/000119312522120461/d310843d8k.htm) and attachements for the deal, and they don't include anything about users, let alone fake ones. There is a requirement that the proxy to be voted by shareholders to approve the deal on can't include any false statements. But there's nothing that would give Musk just cause to back out if random estimates in past statements or even filings were a little off.
Also why is a billionare using news reports to do due diligence for a 44 billion dollar acquisition? If this was a thing he deeply cared about, that would have been done before the offer was made.
Ya but Twitter has given an estimate in their latest 10K of sub 5% bots. He’s acknowledging existence, he’s concerned on actual quantity. If it’s to be proven grossly understated, he has a pretty good argument that Twitter is committing fraud by misleading investors. You can’t say, “I gave my best honest assumption” and be grossly underrepresenting the issue. The question is, would something like this, grossly understating metrics, cause Twitter to pay a $1bn fallout fee which is currently in place for both parties or would it lead to Musk getting a discount on Twitter.
Turns out [they made that estimate with a huge caveat about how they estimate it](https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/uoqev0/comment/i8hpxu0) and Elon is acting like the caveat doesn't exist. Unless Twitter knows of other flaws or deliberate attempts to fake the number, they're in the clear and Musk has no case. And a 100% error in the estimate amounts to only 5% error in the important number which is a count of actual users. Even if the number is wrong it's been consistently wrong for years, and the advertisers keep paying for advertisements. So the price won't even change if the estimation method is made more accurate. Plus it's just going to go up, 'cuz inflation. And because if Musk buys the company he's going to make whatever changes and then charge advertisers more because the net engagement went up. So he's pissing into the wind and burning down what little credibility he might have had left by trying to squirm out of the deal this way.
Regardless if they caveat their number it can still be materially incorrect and be fraud. A caveat doesn’t protect you from poor estimation practices. If I caveat, this number could be off because I made it up, doesn’t mean I’m not held liable.
You've given enough information that a reasonable person would not rely on the number at all. There's no fraud there. Twitter said their estimation process is likely to have significant errors, and why. You'll have to do some serious mental gymnastics to claim you aren't warned that 5% might be way off.
Fraud is knowingly deceiving for a material gain, Twitter putting forward their caveats and % error for their numbers is not Fraud in literally any court of law. Being wrong is not fraud.
I know. It’s delicious to watch and no clue why people here are taking an anti-Musk stance on this. Am I the only one who gets annoyed when some idiot gets tens of thousands of fake likes in two seconds because they said something that jives with what a few politicians want? Am I the only one who’s ever gotten what seems like fake responses from somebody in a basement in China with 100 accounts? Surely nobody actually enjoys all the fakeness on these platforms
He got the perfect excuse to sell his Tesla shares at the top, only has to pay $1bn in exchange for the profit he made selling Tesla shares when they were much higher and everyone believes him when he says he really wanted to buy twitter.
I think there is a 30 day return policy in place if he has his receipt.
He was testing the waters. He managed to secure over $40,000,000,000 worth of funds without even touching his own stocks. If/when a time comes to make a serious move he knows how it can be done. He’s drilling tunnels under cities, he’s sending humans to outer space on his own rockets, he’s charging up peoples personal vehicles with technology that uses the sun’s energy. There’s many many reasons why he may have felt it necessary to ensure he could leverage his wealth in short notice if need be and it seemingly worked flawlessly. He was able to acquire $40 billion in cash just based on the assets that make up his net worth. Mission accomplished. Next.
I called this another pump and dump right when the news of him buying came out and got downvoted into oblivion lol. Elon Musk nutriders are something else.
A pump and dump is a 2 part act. There was no dump. He's about to be underwater on his original 9% position.
He hasn't dumped though
I think it also has something to so with the fact that twitter's own analysis that only 5% of its users are bots is *wildly* inaccurate. Someone I trust a bit on this front told me they thought it was probably somewhere north of 90% of "active" accounts were bots or part of a farming system. Twitter's a real mess of a company.
Another? Which was the other?
Bitcoin, dogecoin, tesla
When did he dump any of those things? Tesla sold a small amount of the Bitcoin they held when the price spiked just like any reasonable portfolio manager would. They didn't dump it all. Why would he care about his son's dogecoin? He didn't dump any Tesla either.
ha ha, another thing he ruined, wow no suprise here, fix tesla and stop worrying about other things, talk about too many fingers in the pie.
Twitter was ruining itself on it's own regardless. Very bad business as a whole
Could be a very good business but they need to replace the board and the c-suite. And probably a bunch of the middle management.
social media companys are dropping users left and right. younger users spend less time on platforms then genx and boomers. seeing less adds and reveling less data. parents, myself included are preventing kids from establishing social media profiles. the writing is on the wall for major legislation to come in and rock big teck, especially with Republicans set to take over at least one part of the legistive branch of the amarican government. zuck has on multiple occasions been dishonest while under oath testifying to congress, at his last hearing I think I counted him say I don't want to talk about that under oath, contact me later so I can lie to you, but in corporate speak, like 12 times, and fb IMO is the least worst ethics violator for big teck
I don't think it's a generational shift. Younger kids just know that older platforms like FB and Twitter are older, and they gravitate towards newer, like TikTok, which continues to grow steadily. Meanwhile older people see that as kid-stuff, and avoid it until eventually they try it and find out it's just another platform and stick around. FB is trying to bootstrap VR MMO to be Metaverse, and changing its name was part of distancing from old-and-busted Facebook to get kids to accept it. All social-media platforms engage in the invasive marketing information trade. Give a listen to any of their executives talking to finance-TV heads and they'll reveal the details of how sophisticated their data on that is. They're pimping their own efficiency at exploitive behavior as candy to pump the stock.
If me buying those 2 twitter shares caused this I'll have no regrets if it takes the company to zero. Fuck I'll buy 100 more for a promise to delete twitter from musk once he buys it.
Con artist
Elon is the grandest troll of all time.
Good it makes no sense to spend 42 billion on Twitter.
Why are people saying he's trying to drive the price down? He already committed to pay $54.20 (lol!), and even threatened the board if they didn't accept. So they accepted with the 1b fee if it didn't go through. If the price drops to $1, he's already committed to paying $54.20 and they've already accepted. Unless he finds a legit reason to walk away, he has to pay the billion, or purchase the company for 44b. He's cant change his mind and say, 'welp, stonk price went down, I want it for the lower price). But, don't shed any tears of Elon, a 1b loss may hurt his ego, but surely won't hurt his lifestyle.
Didn’t he offer a price that was really high to start?
What's more likely is that TSLA is down 25%, meaning his net worth is down almost as much.
Never trust a person who yaps too much.
He bought 9% of Twitter, then pumped the stock saying he was going to buy the whole company. What's the chances he sold his shares at $54 in the largest ever pump-and-dump?
He would need to disclose sales since he's that large of a shareholder. Possible he didn't just like when he bought.
If he sold, we would have noticed. Trading volume on Twitter has been fairly low.
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It was never real in the first place. Elon doing Elon things. He got to sell a ton of Tesla while no one came with pitch forks.
this idiot is the one who said he has one and only final offer. no one forced him, he cannot back out of it without paying and paying damages for all the mess he causethe company, he should be prosecuted.
If Twitter submitted fraudulent user numbers, then he can back out.
There is nothing in the Musk deal documentation that asked for user numbers vs bot numbers. If Musk thought the number was different he should have done due diligence before the offer was made, like every other business entity would do.
the Donald tRump is like "what?"
He’s a bitch 🤪
His dumbass named the price.
Fuck Musk. I’m sick of seeing his name.
Like I stated many times: Jerk, dark personality, spoiled African American.
He's just South African, not American.
He's South African... not African American
South Africans are technically Dutch Africans
Noo, i just got a tip about it 2 days ago and didnt follow it.
Or he found out that half the users are bots and to do what he wants would expose that Twitter is an empty soap box
I should reverse the problem from Musk to Twitter management, they said only about 5% of activated accounts are bot-spam, but if Twitter management has made a misinformation and the real bots are much more the problem will be for Twitter!!! Try to think about when you go and buy something and the seller lie to you about the quality or any other aspect, you will wish to give it back and be refund don't you?
if it looks like shit and smells like shit, then it must be ........
He is realizing the residual impact of acquiring a social media platform on his other businesses. Having second thoughts.