Twitter investors should be very careful about trusting Elon Musk

Back in July, just after Elon Musk announced to the world he was bailing on his $44 billion purchase of Twitter, he was asked if he was merely looking for a way to renegotiate his deal for the ubiquitous social-media platform because markets had soured. 

“Do you want to buy at a lower price or walk away?” one adviser inquired. Musk’s answer was unequivocal, I am told: For all his whining about just discovering all those fake accounts (aka bots), its bad management, etc., he loved the property, loved its relevance, and was an addicted user. 

He also thought he could make something out of a pretty lousy business (no cash flow, sputtering earnings) by taking it private and not answering daily to shareholders. But he was starting to look pretty dumb by overpaying while shares of his famed EV company, Tesla, along with everything else in tech (Twitter shares included) were collapsing. 

He wanted the company but wanted to pay less — no matter what he was saying on his Twitter feed about looking to call it off, sources tell me. 

Granted, trying to decipher what Musk really means at any given time is often like nailing Jell-O to a wall. 

Maybe that’s the secret to his success. Recall how he convinced lenders and stockholders they should cut him slack when concerns grew over his accounting practices and EV production. Nonsense, Musk said: Tesla’s problems were being overblown by evil short sellers looking to drive its value down. 

Only later did he admit that for all his attacks against the bad old shorts, Tesla was indeed poised for Chapter 11 bankruptcy just a few short years ago. 

Musk overcame all that, of course. Tesla became a stock-market darling and the world’s foremost electric-vehicle manufacturer. Musk is now worth an estimated $220 billion. 

Pulling a fast one 

That doesn’t mean it always pays to follow Musk’s lead if you’re an investor. Yes, Tesla — at least until the tech correction — was a market darling. But in 2018, Musk pulled a fast one. He said he was prepared to take Tesla private at a significant premium of $420 a share. The funding for the massive buyout was totally “secured.” 

Those investors who cut him the slack rejoiced, and shares of Tesla surged. But the celebration did not last long. Not long after, the “secured funding” turned out to be another one of Elon’s alternative facts and the stock cratered. 

Ouch. 

This is why it strikes me as odd that so many smart investment-types appear to be buying his latest yarn that he’s once again looking to buy Twitter and at his initial offer of $44 billion, which is about $40 billion more than any rational investor would offer for this dog with fleas. 

Twitter shares closed Friday at $49.18, pretty close to Musk’s offer of $54.20. Many of the original banks look like they’re coming back to the table to provide debt financing. Initially, Musk enticed friends like Larry Ellison of Oracle and VC superstar Marc Andreessen to throw in some equity and they haven’t said they’re not interested. 

The question I still have is: Why? Musk came back to the table only after Twitter sued him for reneging and the case was about to be heard by the Delaware Court of Chancery. And it wasn’t going well for him. Discovery made Musk look like he fabricated the whole bot concern. (Surprise!) In fact, he was talking about the need to weed out the fake accounts — before he even bid. 

Also, Twitter’s business model of no real cash flow and sputtering earnings is getting worse, analysts say. Yes, Musk turned out to be the only person in the world rich and crazy enough to want to fix the company’s business while promising to deprogram the progressive bias of its algorithms. 

You can see why people like ­Ellison (one of the few Silicon Valley Trump supporters) and Andreessen (himself a libertarian free-market-type) initially liked Musk owning what is considered the global town square. Ditto for the banks that decided to lend to Musk based on the fact that his currency for the deal was his then-high-flying Tesla stock. 

But Tesla stock is down more than 30% since Musk first announced his bid (along with his net worth). With higher interest rates, banks should be more reticent to pony up money for a depreciating asset that could lead to hundreds of millions of dollars of losses when they look to unload the risky debt from their balance sheets. 

Musk’s own bashing of management and bots, most of it via Twitter, no less, shouldn’t instill confidence in Twitter’s future with those who looked at putting their own skin into the game. It’s just another excuse for advertisers to cut their rates and further squeeze the company’s weak cash position. 

Are banks locked in? 

Maybe these really smart investors will come to their senses and officially bail on Elon in the coming days. Also, the banks could be largely locked into their financing because of the prior commitment so they can’t easily escape. Or maybe Elon is spinning another tall tale to delay the court case (it’s now being pushed out to at least the final days of ­October amid the new talks) and pressure Twitter to accept a lower bid. 

One thing I do know is that getting people to believe his BS is part of how Elon got so rich.