If other companies follow suit, then it becomes a race to the bottom for all, except those at the top.

No, improving efficiency across the economy would usher in a new golden age.

Buy a company for $44 Billion, and now offers equity at $20 Billion valuation?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-offers-new-equity-grant...

The company has lost over half its value in just 5 months.

He overpaid and that was already well known before he even took the reigns.

Overpaying by well over double is... a bad business decision. Is it not?

Even as bad as the stock market was last year, very few companies lost 50%+ of their value.

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There's a lot of other decisions that are very strange coming out of Tesla, such as the removal of RADAR and Ultrasonic Sensors. Does Elon Musk really believe he can compete against next-generation companies when he's removing sensors from his cars?

* * *

I mean, the Nasdaq 100 lost almost 30% in 3 months, from March to June of last year. Doesn't mean every CEO fumbled that bad. Or maybe it does!

Elon needs to grow Twitter by 50% before he has 'only' a 30% loss.

There is a huge difference between 55% drop that Mr Musk has experienced with Twitter, and the 30% drop you're talking about.

EDIT: > from March to June of last year

That seems like a weird comparison? An apples-to-apples benchmark would be the Nasdaq 100 from November last year (when Musk finished buying Twitter) to March this year.

It's not worth $20B, that's just his ego talking. I can see it being worth $4B. It has no long term path to any kind of high growth multiple. Twitter was always an amazingly useful concept but not a big money making business idea. At best it could become like a steady ultility company.

I'm steelmanning my argument. But yes, you're right. I can't imagine a real VC firm buying Twitter today at $20+ B.

Note that Twitter has a $13 Billion loan with $1.3 Billion/year in interest payments in a rising interest rate economy while VC banks like SIVB are failing. That means to buy Twitter at $20B valuation, the VC firm would need to spend $33 Billion. ($20 B valuation + $13 Billion loan)

I honestly don't see this company having enough runway to even reach the $1.3 Billion/year interest payment, let alone the rest of it's liabilities or costs.

He'll need to find a way for Twitter to get a lot of government subsidies or contracts for that future...

Bingo.

This Twitter saga is more like his PayPal days when he sent the company into a nosedive with bad management.

Tesla valuation is dropping and years of neglect is catching up to them. SpaceX keeps on raising money, likely because they keep on losing it. And both of them grew a lot during period of cheap money, fueled by huge amount of lies.

Hardly golden examples of how to run business.