Elon Musk said over the weekend that Twitter's advertising revenue has fallen by 50% since he bought the company, and that it's not cash flow positive.
Just this once,. I actually believe in his abilities. He can bring that 47% down to 0%. I just know he can. Come on, Elon. We're all counting on you now.
"That's according to a Monday report from The Wall Street Journal. Given Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion late last year, the markdown would put the company's current valuation at about $23 billion, based on Ark's estimate."
$23b is what it was actually valued before Musk crazily overpaid for it and took over.
Now, that estimate comes from an investor that financed part of that purchase (so they're already suspect for paying double the odds back then) that still thinks there's a great future ahead for Twitter under Musk - so it's wildly optimistic.
The real value you could find someone paying for it would be more likely in the mid single digits.
It's worth about $6b, this is not a good time for a social media company built around ad revenue that's hemorrhaging customers and also happens to be saddled to the brim with short-term debt.
Let’s also remember that in all of Twitter’s years of operation they only had a couple quarters where they actually turned a profit. Even after Trump made it ‘the place to see whatever the President was talking about’, they still struggled to make money.
Elon thinks he can fix that, but the real fools are the investors who believed him.
Is there ever a good time for that type of company? Hemorrhaging customers and being saddled to the brim with debt seem like pretty big problems at any time
She does not have superhuman stock picking and macroeconomic environment decoding abilities. She got massively lucky with China until Xi decided that large successful Chinese enterprises were a danger to his Party and COVID+inflation stressed all other companies
I had some of her ETFs. Yes, had. They did okay when the topic they cover was getting media attention or breakthroughs or whatever but granted I was only paying attention to them during the late 2020 bull market when most everything did at least okay.
Specifically, my shares of her gene therapy ETF did well. My shares of her robotics and technology one did meh. I can’t honestly remember how my share or fraction of her fintech one did lol
Religiously, I have severe problems with prosperity gospel bullshit that Cathie Wood (and similar investors) follow. These people are literally praying to God for more money, and trying to convince the religious folk out there that this is normal. (Ignoring the fact that Jesus literally warned us against this practice)
And not like how poor people pray to God to have enough money to keep their house or other necessities. She's literally praying for the excessive amounts of wealth that only exists in top-level venture capitalism firms.
I'm somewhat religious myself, and I know there's a lot of atheists out there. But I feel the need to point out the prosperity gospel bullshit whenever she comes up, because I think this is a dangerous religious movement that needs to be kept in check.
So religiously at least, I think Cathie Wood is a scam. What she invests into is momentum-following / following of hype for the most part (kind of standard in the great scheme of crazed venture capitalist firms these days). Its really the religious slant she represents that bothers me more so than others.
The real question in my mind, is will the investment markets punish Musk as a result of such an epic demonstration of business incompetence. For whatever reason they haven’t done that so far.
Musk is the CEO of a publicly traded company (Tesla) and the CEO of a company that just recently sold shares on the secondary market (SpaceX). The valuation of these companies is wrapped up in market sentiment about Elon Musk.
Musk didn't pay $44bn. He paid $26bn, then $5bn was from other investors and the remaining $13bn was a loan Twitter took out to buy itself on Musk's behalf.
Yay, leveraged buyouts! They totally aren't used to avoid tax and kill businesses!
Musk didn't buy twitter as a purely financial return investment. He wants to control the narrative, be a media mogul and get election favours. He brought it to be a cult leader and spread his ideology