Twitter, Tesla and the mad genius of Elon Musk
There aren’t many businessmen like Elon Musk. After announcing his intention to pull out of his $44bn takeover of Twitter (US: TWTR) - a move which is set to cause considerable pain to the company’s shareholders - Musk took to the social media platform to poke fun at the situation. The tweet - which shows him laughing at the fact that Twitter’s lawyers are trying to force him to go through with the deal - has been liked 1m times.
It’s not the first time Musk has stretched the boundaries of the behaviour expected for a company chief executive. In 2018 he was forced to pay significant fines to the US securities and exchange commission (SEC) after he tweeted that he had secured the funding to take Tesla (US: TSLA) private at $420 per share - a major premium. The incident culminated in a court ruling that stated Musk “recklessly made the statements with knowledge as to their falsity." Less than two years later he wiped $14bn off Tesla’s (US: TSLA) value when he tweeted that the stock price was too high “imo”.
Tesla's share price has climbed steadily in the last few years
In fact, it’s a wonder that Twitter executives aren’t relieved at Musk’s change of tune regarding the acquisition. While there is no doubt he is a creative and inspired entrepreneur, his ability to sensibly manage and grow a mature company is somewhat questionable. Since appointing a chairman to oversee Musk’s decision making at Tesla (an appointment enforced by the SEC after the tweeting fiasco of 2018), the company has become profitable, while continuing to churn out impressive growth figures. Musk now seems to spend more of his time focusing on his satellite and space exploration company SpaceX.
So what were his intentions behind the proposed Twitter acquisition? Musk has long pressed Twitter on its adherence to free speech values, especially after the service blocked former president Donald Trump from the platform following the Capitol riots in early 2020. Preserving the Twitter of old where he and other highly influential people could spread their views unencumbered by regulation seems to have been a key factor driving his intention to remove it from the clutches of the current board. Trump meanwhile has ploughed ahead with a challenger app that is competing against Twitter - ‘Truth Social’ is has been among the top iOS downloads regularly.
He has also complained about the lack of opacity of its algorithm-driven news feed and the proportion of robotic accounts on the site. It is this latter point which seems to have been the unsticking of the takeover offer and could yet cause further discomfort for Twitter’s management and shareholders. While the company is aware of a high volume of fake accounts (‘bots’) on its site, it has been unwilling to disclose exactly how many of these there are. In the first quarter of 2022, the company announced that it had 229m monetisable daily active users and estimated that just 5% of the total active accounts were false, or spam accounts. But management does concede that estimating the total number of fake accounts is hard. Musk contends that it could be as high as 20%, suggesting a fifth of the total accounts on the platform are un-monetisable.
Twitter's daily active users have been rising, but how many are fake?
In the legal wrangling that is set to follow Musk’s withdrawal from the deal, the public and the regulators might gain more exposure into the bot proliferation at Twitter. And for them, the problem is not monetisation, but security. Fake accounts have the power to spread dangerous misinformation, inflict cyber warfare and skew elections. They are one of the main reasons regulators want to take closer control of the social media space. If bots are more pervasive than the regulators previously believed, they will have more license to disrupt the status quo at Twitter and its peers in the social media space.
So perhaps that was Musk’s intention all along? Acquisition was never a serious agenda, all Musk wanted was to rattle the cage and get the regulators to dig deeper into Twitter.
But Tesla shareholders won’t thank him for the distraction. Much of Musk’s money is tied up in his Tesla shares and having promised to foot $21bn of the Twitter bill with his personal wealth, there has been much speculation that he may have to sell some of his stake in Tesla. Tesla’s share price has fallen 34% since he made his bid for Twitter. True this has come alongside a major sell-off in US tech stocks - especially those focused on next generation software and products - but Tesla has materially underperformed the market, despite better than expected earnings released in May.
Twitter's share price has fared better than Tesla during the takeover saga
So while Twitter is looking increasingly downtrodden - operating margins are narrowing, net losses becoming more regular and growth opportunities drying up - Tesla remains an exciting company. Electric cars are the future of travel. The switch isn’t going to happen overnight, but eventually there will be more and more of these types of vehicles on the roads. Tesla has exposure to both the consumer-facing side of the market and the infrastructure which will allow the vision to become a reality. The company’s valuation will continue to be hard to stomach, but there is a lot to like about the outlook. Especially if Musk keeps himself occupied with other ventures and leaves the running of the business to his very capable team.
About Megan Boxall
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To me it seems that entering into a legally binding agreement to buy a 44 billion $ company would be a ridiculous thing to do, if he never really intended to buy it, and just wanted to get action taken to deal with the fake accounts. I think he now wants to renegotiate or cancel the deal due to general fall in value of expensive tech companies.
Great article - enjoy this commentary on the Stateside behemoths.
Musk is a fascinating character and he will be a notable historical figure by the time he's done... perhaps his most significant achievements are still to come, particularly if Space X keep pushing the boundaries of space travel as they have been.
Everyone says that Musk is a genius therefore his eccentric behaviour seems to be tolerated. I don't think that he was trying to get the regulators to probe into Twitter, more likely it seems to me that he failed to do his due diligence before agreeing to buy Twitter and is now suffering buyers remorse.
I find him a rather unconvincing character and his habit of referring to regulatory bodies such as the SEC as kangaroo courts when they rule against him, suggests to me a rather undisciplined individual who probably has more in common with Trump than he realises.
He's a genius in the sense that he needed cover to sell billions of dollars of Tesla shares without causing a rout in the share price. He's a carnival barker, no more no less.
Anyone able to perform with advanced physics and mathematics represents a small percentage of the population. They are the disciplines to unlock the future.
In Musk's case he has a clever social side too which is unusual. You may be for or against it but you cannot change it.
Moral judgements say more about the person making them than their target.
Whatever your opinion, he has been able to achieve more with his brain than we have.
"there is a lot to like about the outlook" - Megan I suggest you may want to dig a little deeper into Tesla before believing this, instead of following others e.g. Wall Street Journal worshiping at the alter of Musk.
If you scratch below the surface of the company, you'll find what the company - basically Musk - want you to believe about Tesla is very different to reality.
For example:
1. Tesla's competition is increasing sales at a far greater rate (and sales measured as customers taking delivery). They were caught napping for sure but over time are catching and will surpass Tesla. Tesla's model range is old by comparison and in most tests now lags behind competitors.
2. Tesla has sold (and continues to do so) what could charitably be described as non-functioning fully automated driving software. Don't forget they have probably booked at least $10bn revenue for a feature that does not seem to work, or is it even likely to given the current hardware and software deployed on their vehicles? Plenty of evidence on this. Possibility for class action lawsuits awaits?
3. Tesla does not have proprietary battery technology. They buy them in.
4. A previous USP - their charging network - is a) likely to be opened up to other brands in time, and b) matched or surpassed by others. Look how much competitors are investing in this.
5. The quality of their product is questionable. Look at reliability surveys. Look at vehicle incidents.
6. History tells us first movers rarely end up dominating the market.
7. I don't want to stray into subjectivity, but Musk himself has broken the law, repeatedly. If he continues to do so, how long could he keep away from eventual prison time? As for his reasons for trying to buy twitter, could it be as simple as he doesn't like people having the ability to criticize him? And far be it for me to judge anyone I don't know, but I can make my own investing decisions, and I would not want to invest in someone with his moral character.
“Keep pushing the boundaries of space travel”
By doing stuff that’s been achieved since the 1960s. Tell me, which space travel boundary have they pushed?
A reusable rocket which is able to perform vertical take-off and landing, automated and synchronised... Is quite an achievement I'd say, especially if you recognise that cost is one of the fundamental limiting factors for the progress of space exploration.
I think I'm correct in saying that such technology was not available in the 60's.
It was predictable you'd say this - just pure Musk PR. Booster rockets that remain within earth's orbit. Ok, we can get to space cheaper, but then the boosters on STS were an improvement on those of the 1960s (indeed the STS concept was a completely reusable vehicle - even the boosters were reused). Space travel has been getting cheaper since Sputnik, Not exactly a great example of "pushing the boundaries" - just improving something that has gone before. Let me know when SpaceX has achieved something unique that actually pushes a boundary of space travel.
They’ve driven down the cost of space travel significantly which is why NASA have used them. Their ambitions are to go further, faster than the pre-existing space programs, and they have EXECUTED launches and landings that others perhaps conceived, but didn’t achieve.
To pretend they are not pushing the boundaries and accelerating the progress of space travel is to be deliberately obtuse.
I have no interest in arguing this point with you. You have your opinion, I have mine.
All the best.
700 miles in a day. For when you absolutely have to do London to Carlisle and back in a day.
Just fly, it's easier and cheaper.
But we're all wondering what on earth your thoughts on the journeys you need to make has to do with Twitter, Tesla, SpaceX or Elon Musk.
another glimpse into the character of this charlatan: he’s now accused of having an affair with the wife of Google co-founder, who incidentally lent him half a million dollars when Tesla nearly went bust.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/0...
Normally this stuff is not the business of the public, but when the company is the person, it does have some bearing…
Half a billion, not half a million.
This reported event took place around one month after one of his employees gave birth to twins by him whilst his official girlfriend (the musician Grimes) was pregnant by him.
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Elon Musk is a genius as is O'Leary at Ryannair.Whatever their flaws i prefer them to woke careerist CEO's