IF trump is arrested AND convicted

[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.

[pchang]

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

[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.

[EPW]

Concerning.

[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.

[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/

[EPW]

He's lost his mind, if he ever had one.

[JohnT]

Lol, even the NY Post differentiates between Americans and Republicans:

Trump surging in Republican voter polls, sinking with Americans

https://nypost.com/2023/04/12/trump-strong-among-gop-voters-but-struggling-with-americans-overall/

An ABC News/Ipsos poll, in the field April 6 and 7, showed that Trump’s unfavorable rating climbed to 61% from 55% a week prior. The former president’s favorability rating sank to 25% from 29% in that period.

In the same poll, 80-year-old Biden’s unfavorable rating fell slightly from 49% to 48% and his favorability rating rose to 34% from 32%.

Go ahead and make him your nominee, guys and gals. PLEASE!

[pchang]

Trump has a history of being an incredibly potent value destroyer. Starwood was an early indicator. Now, he is working on the Republican party.

[PLATO]

Sigh...So much truth in 3 sentences

[PLATO]

Go ahead and make him your nominee, guys and gals. PLEASE!

The more pressure they put on Trump without actually convicting him of something means more trouble he will cause if re-elected. He is a vengeful man and now has four years of knowing how to undermine the system from within.

Trump re-election = Bye-bye Ukraine and Taiwan. Bye-bye U.S. position as a trusted ally. Hello new world order led by authoritarianism.

Macron senses it and is wanting Europe to stand up...because it may be standing alone.

[Geronimo]

Trump is one of the only people who can push me to give my vote to Biden.

[EPW]

At least Trump is pro-Disneyland.

[Jon Miller]

Morning Consult has gone -13, -15, -13 for Biden.
YouGov has gone -10, -6, -3 for Biden.
Rasmussen has gone +1, -4, +2 for Biden.

Those are the last 3 weeks (and the only ones who have done this for the last 3 weeks). Morning Consult seems to dominate 538s prediction.

JM

[My Wife Hates CIV]

Oh... you mean misinformation like Trump won the election? He still claims he got more votes, and conservative media still pushes it.
It's all BS. But now it's the Media's fault he lost, even though the conservative media keeps telling his lies.
All media has an agenda. The days of neutral media seems to be dead, much to the shame of somebody with a journalism degree.

If Trump had correctly handled the Covid outbreak, he would be president today. Instead, he screwed it up and it cost him an election.
Even though he is a liar, a crook, pond scum and a terrible person, he still would have been elected thanks to his cult of brain dead followers if he had just done his job with Covid.

hillary - lied - about everything russia against trump. are you this silly stupid???? lets talk BS.

[pchang]

And why does anything Hillary done have any thing to do with what Trump has done?

[Berzerker]

why do you think we got Trump?

[PLATO]

Whataboutism rules!

[BeBMan]

At least Trump is pro-Disneyland.

There's real-life Disneyland everywhere he goes

[JohnT]

LOLOMG, of course. I mean, when bad people start lying, then they get caught in their lies, I mean... whaddya gonna do?

https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-move-on-twitter-files

"At a certain point, I think we need to move on from the Twitter Files," Musk said(Opens in a new tab) in a Twitter Space audio chat earlier this week. "I think there's a few things left. General, there's not a lot that I'm aware of that's left."

"It's mostly just like, you know, let's move on to the future," said Musk.

Remember, the Twitter Files were promoted by Musk and his supporters as a big deal. Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and a few other writers hand-picked by Musk began publishing reports based on internal Twitter documents and access provided to them by Musk. These documents supposedly showed Twitter's bias against conservatives as well as interference by the U.S. government to censor certain posts and users.

In reality, the released information showed former Twitter employees engaging in fairly even-handed, basic content moderation found on almost any social media platform. Nevertheless, Musk's curated narrative broke through with conservatives and Musk fans. There were even Congressional hearings held based on the Twitter Files where former employees shared just how much was missing from Musk's chosen documents.

Emphasis mine.

Berz, you were had. Your information sources literally lie to you, and you just swallow it hook, line, and sinker.

[pchang]

Because the lie was so appealing to Berz.

[JohnT]

Would like to note that, since Twitter is now officially "X corp", we can rename the Twitter Files the X-Files... with, I'm sure, the same amount of credibility.

The Truth Is Out There!