Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

[Cattledog]

As disinterested as I am in social media, if buying Twitter helps to keep Elon on an even keel, I'm all for it. His mental health and general well being are key to keeping Tesla performing well.

I think he's doing it to shut down Elizabeth Warren's account...

 

[Gigapress]

Elon needing to sell $43B of TSLA to fund his purchase of Twitter?

View attachment 793573

Couldn’t Elon just take out a margin loan or some other security-backed line of credit like he’s been doing to fund his lifestyle for years?

 

[Artful Dodger]

Never a dull moment but with that kind of money he could do something else to speed up the mission that would compliment Tesla.

Your assumptions... do they include the demonstrable fact that Big Carbon is funding climate change denial, and has worked HARD for FOUR (4) DECADES to convince the population that black-is-white?

Because that's what a bought Media has to offer to Society, and that's the world we need to extricate ourselves from before its too late.

A private Twitter which accepts no ad revenues fixes a big impediment to Tesla's future (and ultimate) success.

 

[Gigapress]

Yes, he’s offering over 50B while his team of programmers and him could manage to program a social media platform with free speech for under 100M. He should be reasoning with first principles like that moment he went to Russia to buy ICBMs and they quoted him over 30M for the rockets and he put on a napkin how much was the raw materials of this rockets and found out it was bellow 200k and decided to find SoaceX.

Metcalfe’s Law. Programming the software from scratch is easier than fighting network effects that the popular platforms already have established. Google already tried years ago as have many others. Elon has clout and notoriety which helps but probably not enough to get the kind of traction Twitter already has and he clearly believes this project is urgent.

 

[Discoducky]

For those not familiar with US corporate takeover procedure, this post by Elon is the classic “bear hug letter”, in electronic form. If the Twitter board rejects the offer, the most likely next move by Musk is a hostile tender offer directly to Twitter shareholders to buy their shares. Every move in a hostile tender offer, including duration of offer, is governed by specific regulations.

Elon likes to make his actions appear spontaneous in his Twitter posts, but something like this has been carefully orchestrated by lawyers and financial advisors for months, including his plans to pay for this.

Agreed and I don't think it will be more than a few days or less for the board to reject this offer. The direct to shareholder offer may have a 90 day timeline.

My question is what % does he need to take it private? Then one could better calculate how much he'll need to sell to fund this endeavor.

 

[Knightshade]

Couldn’t Elon just take out a margin loan or some other security-backed line of credit like he’s been doing to fund his lifestyle for years?

IIRC all Tesla board members are restricted from borrowing against more than like 25% of their shares... and he's already been doing that against some of them to fund his day to day living for years prior to his recent share sale.... borrowing another 40 billion likely puts at/near enough to the cap to be a problem if there's any significant share price dip.

That said his letter does mention "investors" so it's unknown how much cash he personally would be kicking in.

 

[mongo]

... and if Twitter's Board says 'No', then Elon buys the remaining 41% of shares he needs on the open market at firesale prices and becomes majority shareholder.

View attachment 793593

Good move. I like it.

Cheers!

Eventually...
Long time line due to:
No ability outside board to call special meeting
Slow turnover of board members: 3 staggered sets of 3 year terms
Only board can introduce items for voting.
200 million shares of preferred stock at board's control (Unsure if any already issued)

C. No Stockholder Action by Written Consent. Except as otherwise expressly provided by the terms of any series of Preferred Stock or other class of stock permitting the holders of such series to act by written consent, no action shall be taken by the stockholders of the Corporation except at an annual or special meeting of the stockholders called in accordance with the Bylaws, and no action shall be taken by the stockholders by written consent.


D. Special Meetings. Special meetings of the stockholders may be called only by the (i) Board of Directors pursuant to a resolution adopted by a majority of the Board; (ii) the chairman of the Board of Directors; (iii) the chief executive officer of the Corporation; or (iv) the president of the Corporation (in the absence of a chief executive officer).

 

[H Mak]

"If you don't like volatility..etc etc". Well I love volatility simply because it presents so many opportunities, provided of course you have spare cash. I have taken advantage of it over many years to build up my position in Tesla. Looks like another opportunity is presenting itself right now.

Having said that, for a bit of fun I sold 20 @ $1001 this morning when the news broke. Selling $TSLA is not something I ever do and I don't recommend it, but I just fancied a bit of trading fun and its a tiny proportion of my holding. Let's see how that goes

 

[Singuy]

Can't wait for the stock split. Elon is allergic to Tesla being a 4 figure stock. He needs to bring it down to 3 figures either via split or just straight up tanking it.

 

[jbcarioca]

As disinterested as I am in social media, if buying Twitter helps to keep Elon on an even keel, I'm all for it. His mental health and general well being are key to keeping Tesla performing well.

I'm disinterested because I doubt that this will damage or improve anything that affects me, but I am not uninterested. This is fascinating, to me.
Just as social media in general, including this site, I'm very interested in the subject, specifically social media effects on public opinion, propaganda and displacement of public opinion influencers from other media to social media.
My disinterest is only to the extent that i neither own or intend to own any of these that are public.
The single most interesting part of social media in general is that the influences are usually deeply oriented to confirmation bias by the various optimization en=giens that tend to feed participants exactly what they dwell in in online activity.

If Elon can influence Twitter and others, to reduce confirmation bias I am an advocate.
OTOH, much of the success of Tesla comes from using those same tools with finesse to help encourage prospect and owner positive attitudes. The enormous success of the Tesla approach is that it is not advertising at all. For those who have studied Marketing, Tesla is John Wanamaker's dream. Tesla does it so well that nearly all of us don't even know it's happening. We are probably the most knowledgable group that exists and we still have many of us who call for advertising.

This Twitter offer actually is far more than the digression it seems to be, although almost nobody seems to understand it. Twitter is the single most valuable information and promotion channel that exists for Tesla. The Twitter rules, the arcane ones, inhibit some of the most effective methods of promotion. Limits on characters are just one, but the rubric 'free speech' includes the ubiquitous use of confirmation bias in user display.

This, in short, is another very well-placed move towards vertical integration. The very best thing about that approach is that almost nobody will think it's much other than vanity, and reading this post will convinced skeptics that I am being ridiculous. The second best ting is that however this comes out Tesla and Elon Musk end out winning. For sure the process will be messy and look quite insane.

Insane: e.g. reusable rockets, automate the Yellow Pages, provide banking without a bank, build an electric car that really works, build a car with only three pieces for the 'undercarriage'. The list goes on with endless really bad ideas./s

 

[mongo]

I'm disinterested because I doubt that this will damage or improve anything that affects me, but I am not uninterested. This is fascinating, to me.
Just as social media in general, including this site, I'm very interested in the subject, specifically social media effects on public opinion, propaganda and displacement of public opinion influencers from other media to social media.
My disinterest is only to the extent that i neither own or intend to own any of these that are public.
The single most interesting part of social media in general is that the influences are usually deeply oriented to confirmation bias by the various optimization en=giens that tend to feed participants exactly what they dwell in in online activity.

If Elon can influence Twitter and others, to reduce confirmation bias I am an advocate.
OTOH, much of the success of Tesla comes from using those same tools with finesse to help encourage prospect and owner positive attitudes. The enormous success of the Tesla approach is that it is not advertising at all. For those who have studied Marketing, Tesla is John Wanamaker's dream. Tesla does it so well that nearly all of us don't even know it's happening. We are probably the most knowledgable group that exists and we still have many of us who call for advertising.

This Twitter offer actually is far more than the digression it seems to be, although almost nobody seems to understand it. Twitter is the single most valuable information and promotion channel that exists for Tesla. The Twitter rules, the arcane ones, inhibit some of the most effective methods of promotion. Limits on characters are just one, but the rubric 'free speech' includes the ubiquitous use of confirmation bias in user display.

This, in short, is another very well-placed move towards vertical integration. The very best thing about that approach is that almost nobody will think it's much other than vanity, and reading this post will convinced skeptics that I am being ridiculous. The second best ting is that however this comes out Tesla and Elon Musk end out winning. For sure the process will be messy and look quite insane.

Insane: e.g. reusable rockets, automate the Yellow Pages, provide banking without a bank, build an electric car that really works, build a car with only three pieces for the 'undercarriage'. The list goes on with endless really bad ideas.

May also be a move to protect against misguided AI (see recent Andrej Tweets regarding Tiktok). Taming the social media algorithms that feed confirmation bias. (See also David Brin's book Earth for potential approach (and a good read))

 

[OrthoSurg]

The value is in the existing community. Not the code.

I understand that however I am sure one of the most popular CEO in recent history who guilts the Tesla community can build up a community faster on a new platform than Twitter did over the years. Might not be the first choice I understand but it is a reasonable option.

 

[Sofie]

Okay so I just read through all these Twitter posts and I have absolutely NO idea whether to feel this is “good” for TSLA or “bad” for TSLA, and that not really knowing how to view this is irritating me more than anything right now.

 

[ZeApelido]

Couldn’t Elon just take out a margin loan or some other security-backed line of credit like he’s been doing to fund his lifestyle for years?

I just let Elon know.

 

[Knightshade]

I understand that however I am sure one of the most popular CEO in recent history who guilts the Tesla community can build up a community faster on a new platform than Twitter did over the years. Might not be the first choice I understand but it is a reasonable option.

How'd that work out for another famous person who had a lot of twitter followers and has tried to do his own social media platform?

Elon might be infinity smarter, but that doesn't fix the inertia of people on platforms.

 

[ggies07]

Elon pissing me off. This is just an unnecessary distraction.

He took my "Elon needs to STFU on Twitter" to 11.

 

[ZsoZso]

So if this Twitter thing goes through, does that mean that Tesla finally has an official PR department again?

Not exactly, it means Elon has an official PR platform for his own private fun, which sometimes helps TSLA sometimes hurts it...

 

[CLK350]

Also following up on the post made in the Options thread, what prevents Tesla from also buying TWTR shares?

This would be in sync with Tesla's mission, since clearly Twitter is a news source and one of the few if not best vs the existing anti Tesla FUD.

This is certainly a "unique" situation - if we know anything it is that Elon doesn't back down from a fight. The ongoing fight vs the shorts and FUD, addressed mostly best by not adding to the flames, and now the open fight vs the SEC- I think this is very high stakes poker. Elon style

Considering the Russia/ Ukraine devs this is very timely.

I would say even medium term this is bullish for TSLA/ TWTR. I don't think this is going to be a distraction on Elon's time, he's put in place the right management structure already for some time now: witness how well Tesla Giga Texas /Berlin have gone. He's only using his time for critical choke points. And certainly, especially considering Tesla's mission, this is highly consistent.

Also shows how lame we (certainly I) are in terms of figuring out Elon's actions - in retrospect it makes perfect sense. But we AFAIK never anticipated this.

Edit: inserted relevant info from the options thread - seems like this TWTR event does belong to the main thread.

 

[dhanson865]

What Model Y SR 2170?
Afaik Y SR is only sold in China, and that is with an LFP battery pack.

The model Y SR 2170 was sold in the US and is shown on this chart as the blue line. It was removed pretty quick but it was sold.

 

[betstarship]

The opportunities to have TSLA and SpaceX employees to work on TWTR products/services would be pretty amazing!