Tesla, the investment

[Kamban]

Did Elon buy Twitter with her personal wealth or did Tesla buy Twitter.

If it is the former, why are people upset at Tesla for what he does with his private money. Should we also get upset at SpaceX and stop using it to send our astronauts to space. Or stop using the Boring company.

I think Musk is a egomaniac. But I also credit him for making EV a viable option. Otherwise the major car manufacturers would still have us driving ICE cars and sucking on gasoline.

I won't buy a Tesla now because it is overpriced. But if it is priced at reasonable levels once more, I will buy it. I buy the product, not the man.

[Kamban]

Twitter was a crappy social media with a bloated workforce and not profitable at all. I don't know what made Elon buy this junk, let alone overpay for it.

Having bought it he needed to trim and streamline the workforce. The way he went about doing it hurt a lot of people, both inside and outside the company. Now people are mad. But it is his money and if he wants it to go up in smoke, so be it.

I have not used Twitter though I had to create an account long time ago just to tweet to Amex and get a promotion for a dell printer..

[Turf Doc]

Twitter was a crappy social media with a bloated workforce and not profitable at all. I don't know what made Elon buy this junk, let alone overpay for it.

Having bought it he needed to trim and streamline the workforce. The way he went about doing it hurt a lot of people, both inside and outside the company. Now people are mad. But it is his money and if he wants it to go up in smoke, so be it.

I have not used Twitter though I had to create an account long time ago just to tweet to Amex and get a promotion for a dell printer..

My understanding is that he was running his mouth a bit too much and basically got himself in a position where he had to buy it or pay a ton in fines. Prob shouldve just paid the fines at this point

[StarTrekDoc]

Tweets are not commitment of offer. Just like a tweet is not an official government action. Sure he tweeted about it and backed himself into a corner to either eat crow or pony up the offer. He did the latter because he's an egomaniac.

Elon made a signed offer to buy Twitter, then started a public campaign to try to get out of his commitment - that's when it became a legal matter and the Twitter board held him to his commitments.

Twitter is his own company now; love it, hate it, whatever. It's his to burn to the ground if he wants.

As for Tesla the company -

Stock - sure 50% YTD; it's still crushing SP500, even APPL at 5years.

Techwise and manufacturing - still head and shoulders above the closest. VW closing the gap, but still significantly behind in volume. No one else close. GM - can't even get Bolt back on track. Ford - no volume. Lucid - niche. -- there's finally only 30-90 day wait time for its Model Y.

[Tim]

Twitter was a crappy social media with a bloated workforce and not profitable at all. I don't know what made Elon buy this junk, let alone overpay for it.

Having bought it he needed to trim and streamline the workforce. The way he went about doing it hurt a lot of people, both inside and outside the company. Now people are mad. But it is his money and if he wants it to go up in smoke, so be it.

I have not used Twitter though I had to create an account long time ago just to tweet to Amex and get a promotion for a dell printer..

I have been through reductions in headcount from over 25,000 to 25. There is no way to avoid hurting people. Out of a job. Very few were "targeted". Those from a business standpoint were no longer necessary and employees were given the option of taking a package or staying. What would you suggest he have done differently? The really hard part is for those staying deciding whether or not it is worth it. You don't know who is staying above or below and you don't know what the "new job responsibilities" are. Once the deadline has passed, the next phase is brutal. A cut list is passed around, some have openings and some have employees on the list. You got handed a department that had 30 employees, targeted for 15 and the manager and next level were cut. Now you have 5 staying and you need to either draft from the list, pitch for some cut or get ready to trim the work load or hire some folks. Oh, you can't tell someone on the list that they may not have a job.
And you don't know the people or even the job of the department really.

Breakup fee was $1B by either party. Forget the purchase price, it is walk away money.

[nephron]

I don't care that Elon purchased twitter. I do care that tesla has paid him such an outrageous amount that he could afford to. I also would care that he is supposedly still running tesla while supposedly managing twitter and space-x as a side hustle. I say would because other then whatever I own in index funds, I don't own individual tesla stocks. I haven't been following it too carefully, but I don't see how he isn't going to drive twitter to the ground. Social media platforms are all about monetizing advertising by user engagement, I don't see how you can expect to survive if you drive away all of your advertisers and regular users by charging a select user base a small monthly subscription fee. I just listened to the freakonomics episode of google:

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-google-getting-worse/

It seems like an awful idea to try to monetize twitter by charging some users a fee. They are just going to turn their regular users off while continuing to drive advertisers away. Just because you created an over-priced electric vehicle company, doesn't mean that you have expertise to run a social media company, particularly if you are just trying to do so part time. Ridiculous executive compensation will continue to be a drag on the economy, I don't think that the economy is benefited from paying an executive enough to purchase a social media company as a hobby.

[Nysoz]

TSLA as a company may be doing better than ever, but as hype becomes reality, is it really that much more profitable/better off than the next largest handful of companies combined?

It all depends on teslas ability to grow production and deliveries while maintaining or improving margins.

Right now Tesla is making about the same or more profit than the traditional auto makers at a fraction of the volume.

If/once Tesla is able to meet the same volume they’ll likely have multiples of earnings of a traditional oem.

At 2030, in their goal scenario of 20m annual production, they’ll likely have more revenue and earnings than apple does currently from car manufacturing alone. Also their energy and autonomy divisions should be grown into something more concrete by then.

Definitely a lot of hopes, ifs, difficulties, competition in the way, but a path nonetheless.

Because of so many variables and uncertainties extremely hard to value. Especially with how volatile the share price is from the options market. In reality, true value is somewhere between where the bulls and bears think it’s supposed to be.

[Tim]

I don't care that Elon purchased twitter. I do care that tesla has paid him such an outrageous amount that he could afford to. I also would care that he is supposedly still running tesla while supposedly managing twitter and space-x as a side hustle. I say would because other then whatever I own in index funds, I don't own individual tesla stocks. I haven't been following it too carefully, but I don't see how he isn't going to drive twitter to the ground. Social media platforms are all about monetizing advertising by user engagement, I don't see how you can expect to survive if you drive away all of your advertisers and regular users by charging a select user base a small monthly subscription fee. I just listened to the freakonomics episode of google:

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-google-getting-worse/

It seems like an awful idea to try to monetize twitter by charging some users a fee. They are just going to turn their regular users off while continuing to drive advertisers away. Just because you created an over-priced electric vehicle company, doesn't mean that you have expertise to run a social media company, particularly if you are just trying to do so part time. Ridiculous executive compensation will continue to be a drag on the economy, I don't think that the economy is benefited from paying an executive enough to purchase a social media company as a hobby.

They did not pay him enough to purchase any company. What they did was agree to compensate him for increasing the value of their stock holdings.

https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/05/22/elon-musks-compensation/

No compensation, all incentive stock options. Dates all the way back to 2018 at the market price at the time.

https://www.benzinga.com/sec/insider-trades/tsla/elon-musk

Musk sold to come up with the cash to purchase the options expiring in 2022.
Musk sold some to come up with what he needed to satisfied lenders to finance the purchase of Tesla.

No one really screamed in 2018, the board and shareholders simply granted Elon additional shares to participate in some pretty lofty targets in 2018.

The economy benefited from where Tesla is now as compared to where it was. Not a thing has changed, except Elon pulled it off. Shareholders benefited just as much is not more than Elon. This is old news, Elon pulled this off on purely an incentive contract with difficult targets set long ago.

[StarTrekDoc]

Yep. Musk bet on himself and paid off handsomely in both Tesla and Space X. Can he pull it off in the social sphere with Twitter? Time will tell.

[xraygoggles]

Did Elon buy Twitter with her personal wealth or did Tesla buy Twitter.

If it is the former, why are people upset at Tesla for what he does with his private money. Should we also get upset at SpaceX and stop using it to send our astronauts to space. Or stop using the Boring company.

I think ppl (mainly TSLA shareholders) were upset bc he has been using his TSLA equity as a piggy bank to pay for Twitter. That, along with normal PE compression and deflation of epic bubble has led to TSLA -55% YTD.

Also, Twitter is a distraction from his other more important companies. There's prolly some permanent brand damage from his antics on Twitter, along with his troglodytic takes.

[StarTrekDoc]

Why would TSLA shareholder care if he sold his shares for twitter or anything else? He sold a bunch to cover taxes on those options too earlier in the year.

I do agree that while dealing with Twitter and space x; his attention clearly not on Tesla for the past month. The tweets don't help either and spillover morale contaminant certainly would play a role in R+R at his other companies -- tiger doesn't change his stripes, right?

[Panscan]

Why would TSLA shareholder care if he sold his shares for twitter or anything else? He sold a bunch to cover taxes on those options too earlier in the year.

I do agree that while dealing with Twitter and space x; his attention clearly not on Tesla for the past month. The tweets don't help either and spillover morale contaminant certainly would play a role in R+R at his other companies -- tiger doesn't change his stripes, right?

Bc Tesla the company’s number one product is their share price.

[Otolith]

Cancel culture and triggered people

[Tim]

Why would TSLA shareholder care if he sold his shares for twitter or anything else? He sold a bunch to cover taxes on those options too earlier in the year.

I do agree that while dealing with Twitter and space x; his attention clearly not on Tesla for the past month. The tweets don't help either and spillover morale contaminant certainly would play a role in R+R at his other companies -- tiger doesn't change his stripes, right?

Twitter (I hope you will agree) created a unique tool on the internet.
*Brief lightning fast global reach messaging that had impact.
*Many companies, news organizations and people actually used it to highlight issues, problems and steer people to solutions.
*I view it as a “first mile” link or a “last mile” link pathway using the internet.
*The problem for Twitter was how to monetize this. Access was free but each message also had an extremely short shelf life.
*I think the challenge is not Elon or the technology or staffing or Elon (intentional repeat) but how to monetize the the utility. Someone has to pay, first mile, last mile, companies, news organizations, advertisers? I expect huge resistance from anyone that has to pay. Free is cool for everyone, any payment will be painted as an excruciating injustice. How can Elon do this, some law has to have been broken. Certainly some Congressmen will have laws introduced prohibiting $8 for their account!
This will come down to price elasticity.
Email is free right? Wrong, someone pays.
There is value in Twitter, just don’t know how much and who will pay.

We have seen this before. Online music Facebook, email, movies etc. Got to focus on monetizing and cutting costs. Not the agendas. It’s just business.

I actually give kudos to Elon regarding SpaceX and Tesla. Management teams and delegations are working. Elon sleeping on the factory floor was absolutely ridiculous. Set the plan and hold people accountable. No need for more meetings.
Barriers in their way, call the big boss. Knock them down and move on. Elon has matured as an executive. Still a master in marketing, that and innovation are his stripes. Tesla and SpaceX are probably better off without Elon meddling in the day to day. Get his tail off of the factory floor. He would hold up production and get in the way. He is letting people do their jobs.

Can Elon fix Twitter ? Yes. But he is searching for the right people, ideas that can figure it out. This is not a one person project. He needs people that standup and say, “No f’ing way by 12/31. Do this, not that. I need 30 people and $20m.” Elon in 30 minutes can poke all he wants. Yes. Next problem, let me know. Got to stay off of the factory floor, he holds up production.
If he makes the right strategic decisions and finds the right people he can monetize Twitter. By no means does that translate to the value he paid. But it could be more. I see him flipping this public, maybe 10 years.

Morale in Tesla and SpaceX is probably better.
The right people call, “30 people and $20m. See ya next month.” The room cheers. Done.

[Panscan]

So much demand they have to reduce prices. Lol