Elon Musk Buying Twitter?
April 16, 2022

This Twitter flap is shaping up to be a nice one. The passing of Twitter into the private control of someone who's not part of the woke/censorship/cancel culture gang is a scary prospect for those who are.

Elon Musk has said he would not take SpaceX public in order to do things that are needed to be done which, in the short term, may not be healthy for the share price of a public company, but are essential to the long-term effectiveness and viability of the business. He likely has similar reasons for wanting to take Twitter private. For example, the return of certain banned indiividuals to Twitter would have an immediate impact on the value of the company in either direction.

Musk has said he's a free speech absolutist; remember, this is the guy he said 'no' when it was suggested that his Starlink internet service should block Russian news feeds. A true free speech advocate is not what entrenched powers of any stripe desire to be running an influential modern media outlet.

So "they" will try to block the sale. The Biden administration has already fired its warning shot; Charlie Gasparino has reported that the Justice Department has launched an investigation of regulatory issues involving Musk and Tesla. Given the timing, anyone over 10 years old should be able to see this for what it is.

Current shareholders like Saudi Prince Alwaleed have said Musk's offer of $54 a share insufficiently values Twitter's intrinsic worth. This is highly debatable. Just before the pandemic, in February 2020, the price was around $38 per share. During the sandbox period of the pandemic, when prices of growth stocks were driven to high levels due to the Federal Reserve's easy money policies, the price reached a high of over $77. Now that interest rates are rising and monetary policy is reverting to a form of normalcy (whatever that is), the price has fallen to just over $45. But these are all just numbers; another shareholder might say that the value of the company is being destroyed by the censorship and deplatforming policies of current management and, in order for the true value to be unlocked, sweeping changes need to be made. As always, there are 2 sides to every story.

One thing that isn't arguable is that Musk has made an offer roughly 20% higher than current price. The Board of Directors has a duty to the sharholders and, if they reject this offer, the individual members could be open to personal lawsuits over a decision that could cost shareholders that substantial rate-of-return.

Personally, I would rather Mr. Musk not get involved in this. Hell, he's running a number of companies already and doesn't need the headache; I'd rather see him trying to figure out how to make more cars or better rockets or get that Neuralink brain-computer interface perfected so I can change the channels on my TV with my mind. But hey, he made himself the richest person in the world presumably by following his interests, a second order effect of which is making people like me rich by investing in his work, so maybe I should happy he's doing his thing...