IF trump is arrested AND convicted

[Dinner]

BTW the $15 billion got transferred from Twitter to his holding company X Holdings.

https://gagadget.com/en/twitter/234294-musk-has-liquidated-twitter-inc-the-social-network-has-a-new-owner-amp/

[-Jrabbit]

I likewise read the Twitter Files.

[pchang]

Only if you were one of the idiots who lent Elon $13B to make the purchase. They got their first payment of $300M in January, but who knows how long that's going to last. The banks were hoping to sell that debt to investors, but no one wanted to buy.

[Dinner]

It seems the balance shifted due to being saddled with debt from the purchase. Which, sadly, is how most hostile take overs are done.

[EPW]

Concerning.

[JohnT]

One of the most common lies, one which is easily debunked, is the claim that Twitter was losing money.

It was not.

Let’s look at what sort of company Elon bought and see if what we’ve been told about Twitter matches reality. To do that, we’re going to review the basic financials in Twitter’s last 10k, published February 2022.

Let’s start with their balance sheet:


I highlighted one line - cash and cash equivalents (we will see this again in the Statement of Cash Flows) - to show that Twitter wasn’t “running out of cash”. It had $2 billion, up from $1.8 billion the year before.

Also, note they weren’t close to being insolvent, not with $14B in assets and $6.7B in liabilities.

Looking at this from an M&A standpoint, for a $46 billion deal, there’s neither a lot of cash to raid (for pay down of debt) nor are there a lot of plant/equipment one can sell off. One of the classic moves, of course, is to buy a company and then sell divisions to pay down the debt - but Twitter doesn’t really even have that, do they? OTOH, they may have a lot of patents which are undervalued... but I doubt it.

LOL, I wonder what poor bastard is calling those doubtful accounts (line 5).

OK, I have three charts for the Consolidated Statements of Operations. The first is summary dollar figures:


This second breaks down the revenue category:

The third is the above chart expressed as a percentage of total revenue:

Let’s look at revenues first:

89% of revenue, $4.5 billion, is advertising. This is the revenue base which builds that balance sheet above. To Elon’s point, there is no material revenue from users.

So… let’s say we want 10% of our revenue to come from our users. That’s $500m. At $8/month, that’s 5,200,000 people needed to subscribe to Twitter Blue, so for every $100m of growth you will need slightly more than 1 million new users. (Of course, this service will have a cost element of its own, the structure of which I have no idea because it’s new and not disclosed here.)

Do note that in 2021 Twitter paid out a one-time $785m litigation settlement, which itself is the difference between a $221m loss and a $544m profit for FY2021.

Also, in 2020, there is a $1 billion charge for the provision of income taxes. That one time charge… like the 2021 settlement… was the difference between an operations loss and break-even. In 2019 (top chart of these three), Twitter benefited from a $1 billion income tax provision, which was paid the next, so it looks as if they just deferred a tax payment for one year.

Lastly, let’s look at the expense categories R&D and SG&A because much of that is the payroll which Elon has slashed.

So R&D is $1.25 billion, S is $1.2b, and G&A is $600m.
Assume, what… 60% is payroll?
$3.05B * 60% = $1.8 billion in pre-Elon payroll ($240k per employee assuming 7,500 employees).

With but 2,700 employees remaining, looks like Elon may have saved $1.15 billion in payroll… but payroll isn’t merely an expense. He also lost his sales team(s).

Next is the Statement of Cash Flows:

The first highlighted line shows that, once everything is accounted for, Twitter is cash positive from operations. The bottom line shows that once investments and financing activities are accounted for, Twitter’s cash position has increased by $200 million a year for the past 2 years.

So… in conclusion, Twitter is an average company. Not very profitable, not burdened with losses or debt, it could have kept chugging along with no need of a savior. In some ways, it reminds me of 1975-era AMC (American Motors Corporation) - the smallest of an near-monopolistic market, they survived by offering products (the Rambler, the Jeep) which filled niches ignored by the larger companies (GM, Ford, Chrysler).

It surely wasn’t worth $54 a share - the Statement of Equity (below) has a book value of $9.125 - and I don’t think this company is positioned as to lose 80% of its workforce and still keep operating under the same financial structure. I mean, the balance sheet now has an additional $13 billion of debt added on to it! There goes the shareholder’s equity, once a positive $7 billion now a negative $6 billion!



Balance sheet wise, it's in a far worse position than prior to purchase. The shareholder value, once $7 billion, is now a negative $6 billion.

So the entire financial rationale given to the public as to why Twitter needed "saving" is complete bunk. It is now in worse financial shape than prior to the purchase, and one doesn't need an MBA to figure this out.

[pchang]

Disinformation works best when it tells people what they want to believe.

[JohnT]

Hmmm. Free speech for me, but not for thee:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/04/11/free-speech-twitter-is-now-globally-blocking-posts-critical-of-the-modi-government/

You know, when you decide to become Apolyton's Facebook Grandpa of the Right, you're gonna take some lumps. It's always easiest to lie to ourselves, is it not? Like a lie which states that the First Amendment applies to private entities when it clearly does not.

[JohnT]

Four days later and your response is... that?

[Berzerker]

Is the government telling Musk to censor Substack? If not, that aint analogous to the Twitter Files and if it was that would be wrong and unconstitutional too. Idk the dispute they have but I do know it will be used for the harvesting of straw men

As for Democrats challenging election integrity

https://twitter.com/dom_lucre/status...69795974459392

[JohnT]

Team!

I regret to inform you that I will be posting my content elsewhere given the free speech, edge-lord billionaire I debased myself for has decided that censorship is, in fact, good.

Signed,

Matt Taibbi

https://flic.kr/p/2orLqF7

Primary citation:

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1644428913651642387?t=8UqtmGlGpSUwFr8Kkhq_Pg&s=19

[Dinner]

The racist pig Abrams still claims she has two elections stolen from here. She even lost several lawsuits where she claimed nonexistent "voter suppression" resulted in a "stolen election".

https://sos.ga.gov/news/raffensperger-defeats-stacey-abrams-stolen-election-claims-court

[Dinner]

Pchang, factually untrue. Here are two links showing Hillary whining about "stolen election".

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019/05/06/hillary-clinton-warns-2020-democratic-candidates-stolen-election/1116477001/&ved=2ahUKEwjWwt-T6Jb-AhVaJUQIHQ2VBw0QFnoECCMQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1A43DJ7lUsR5XlXTIHO9pG

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://news.yahoo.com/amphtml/hillary-clinton-maintains-2016-election-160716779.html&ved=2ahUKEwjWwt-T6Jb-AhVaJUQIHQ2VBw0QFnoECCYQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2h1LwMBSOs7c1YI36xyJoy

[Jon Miller]

There is Hasan (MSNBC) and Taibbi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a597e6Wv_xg

Another debate with Destiny (streamer personality) and Zweig, Woodhouse and Ottman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TWMPzGDvUM

JM

[pchang]

Yo, pchang, things are going well! What have I been up to? ****, a novel's worth... I think the last time I was here was 2018 and I was still married then.

Got divorced Christmas Eve 2019, my daughter (Sophia) graduated from HS in June of 2020 and immediately adulted herself: moved to NYC, found a job paying $55k/year, lived in NYC for two years to become a resident of the state, and now goes to school there with zero student debt and a world of opportunity before her. I run a business where I advise people on franchise buying (really, most of them are scams), am deeply in love with a woman who was born in the USSR (and she, me), and I take on stupid-and-immoral-as-**** (are there any other kind?) MAGAT's with ease and aplomb.

You?

I now work for Meta. I help make VR headsets do what our corporate customers want them to do. When Covid broke out, I got the chance to move, so I left the SF Bay Area for Los Angeles. The weather is warmer and I live just a few blocks from the beach in Santa Monica. My son graduated from college and now works in Biotech in the Boston area. I’m still married to the same woman after 27 years. I’m thinking of retiring soon. I’d like to start travelling more and enjoying the rest of my life.