In a January email to staff, Musk pointed to the company’s growing influence and power, but said the finances remain problematic.
“Our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we’re barely breaking even,” he said in the email, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Geee I wonder what could have caused this?
This certainly hasn't helped.
Holy shit, this is going to be hilarious. Imagine the fuckbrains who’d buy this shit.
Shell companies for a Russian front.
That's libelous. There will also be shell companies for Saudi Arabia and China.
Just like the trump shoes, and probably most of his grifts
Banks will be lucky to sell for as much as 10 cents on the dollar, especially as all loans might be unsecured.
Banks should package in a shitcoin, that would pay itself out, since those investors are used to losses now 😜
They're talking getting 5 or 10 cents for every dollar of debt. Which roughly means the buyers need a 5 to 10 percent chance of getting their money back for the deal to make sense (interest rates complicate the EV calculation, and it's not clear what those are).
This is the banks writing it all off and getting whatever they can out of a bad deal. The buyers will probably make money on the deal, even if Xhitter goes into liquidation.
But what could there be to liquidate? Server racks? They don't even own the offices, it's all rented.
Liquidators go through everything. Five toilet rolls in what was an 8-pack? Liquidate it.
IIRC, bankruptcy puts creditors in order, with employees getting whatever pay they're owed first in line, then debtors, and whatever might be left goes to investors. When you paid 5 or 10 cents on the dollar, you don't have to get much back for the deal to be profitable.
I think you’re missing the point. There are no physical assets. There is users and engagement. That can be used to push a narrative or to sell advertising. As users leave, neither works and there is nothing to sell.
There are physical assets, though. Hopefully enough to pay employees, and possibly enough for this deal to be profitable. It's a risk, but not a crazy one.
Yes, there are, but minimal physical assets. That's the point. They likely aren't even enough to pay employees.
Right. There aren't assets there to take and sell. Offices are rented. Equipment depreciates really fast as technology moves on. IP rights are not worth that much since there are many alternatives and some technologies they developed are unique to their own tech stack, and the trademarks are radioactive garbage.
This could potentially be another title for this:
Wall Street Banks Now Looking for Right-Wing Plebs to Hold the Bag🧑💼🗣️ 🤗...💰💸😱😢🙃
Taking a 10% haircutcut?
They must really really want that shit dumped the fuck off their books.
It's now "toxic debt". They need to find some reeeeeaaallly dumb fuckers to buy it up. Probably gonna offer it to Trump supporters.
UAE will buy it
Or Saudis?
Someone who wants to curry favor will sweep it up
Wasn't X not paying it bills? (Rent, employees, utilities)
Of course, how else is it supposed to make money?
Any econ majors able to give me their best tldr of what this means or will result in if anything? I can't wrap my head around how money and debt works sry
I'm not an econ major but I'm going to give you my theory anyway.
We've been circling the drain on a major global recession for two years. We've been avoiding it through sheer denial.
Nobody ever mentions it, but tech stocks were the first to take a beating in 2008. The reason is that they're actually kinda worthless and just a place where billionaires gamble the way trust fund kids do with cryptocurrency. There's just not really that much collateral in digital property. Unlike land, it's value can just disappear overnight if people decide it's uncool.
When asset managers are about to be called on their bets and have to find money somewhere, the first thing they'll do is sell tech shares to bail out other investments. Houses will always have some value even if you end up having to manage it yourself, whereas any social network risks going the way of MySpace.
Twitter being in trouble isn't just a sign that twitter is in trouble, but that investors need that money for something safer, and if they're looking for something safer that may mean sheer denial isn't working anymore.
Exactly. What the banks are doing are selling "loans". Musk has to pay those loans back quote/unquote someday. If the loan is good, you hold on to it as a bank because the interest makes you money. If the loan is bad, you sell it so that you can get some of your money back and make the collection of the loan someone else's problem.
Banks will do this for a number of reasons:
Now for everyone else, what the parent to this comment is indicating is the second option in that list. Having to create some cold hard cash suddenly. Usually, there's a cyclical nature to needing greenbacks by the fistful, but like everything that's not always true. Something can "happen" and you have a sudden need to have cash in hand pronto. Good way to get that cash is to start selling low hanging fruit if you have it.
Something like the Twitter loan is a good pitch for low hanging fruit. Musk is terrible at paying the loan back, Twitter is likely to default one day, but Musk suddenly has direct access to some pretty corrupt as fuck ways to actually pay that loan back. From what I've read in the article, the sell price is something like 90 to 95 cents on the dollar. So not a huge discount, this ain't a fire sale.
But banks might want to offload Musk from their sheets just in case that money is something someone might later investigate. Like that 95 cents on the dollar price is "We think Musk is good for it, but we likely don't actually want his money." So you can make that federal investigation in 2033 someone else's problem, by selling the loan today. The big bank makes about 95% of the original amount back and when Musk goes to pay his loan in Russian Blood Rubles, it'll be to a bank that get investigated that isn't <<insert some large bank that would "NEVER" think to take conflicted money>>.
That's one theory. But there could be something on the horizon. Something that isn't right around the corner, but coming up in the distance that the banks want to have cash on hand for. Usually you see a much larger discount, like 60 cents on the dollar, for "holy shit, this stuff is toxic but we need to offload it discreetly before everyone else wises up."
I don't think point one and three apply to Musk's particular set of loans. But who knows?! Only the bankers do.
I’m sorry for being a pedantic loser but you don’t need to use quote/unquote in text form—you can simply put quotes around the word. We use it in speech to convey that a word or phrase is quoted.
I.e. ”someday”
On the one hand, yes.
On the other hand, even if it is unnecessary effort, spelling it out can be a form of rhetorical emphasis distinct from simply putting it in quotes.
My theory is more based on vibes and multiple continuous layoffs from the majority companies over the last few years.
The only thing that we can be pretty much certain on is that the banks think twitter is overvalued and think other Investors see it as undervalued.
Hard to say right now. The article suggests that the banks are just trying to free up cash on their balance sheets. However, this could instead be an indication that they are looking for a "bigger fool" to take the losses. I personally think the bottom won't fall out of Xitter until the tesla share price crashes. Elon bought some time with credulous fools with the ridiculous cybercab demo, but that can't last forever. At that point I think the only question is whether SpaceX gets pulled down with all the rest of the musk ventures
If he has a falling out with Trump, he's toast.
Trump is greedy it'll take a lot for him to fall out with his main cash cow.
I wish it said what the effective yield will be for bond purchases if they sell for the expected price. Is that yield consistent with other bonds with similar ratings?
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
