Elon Musk Buys 9.2% of Twitter, Becoming Its Largest Shareholder

That's a real tweet.

A couple of weeks ago he put up a poll asking if Twitter fulfills its necessary function as an open market for ideas, and if it was sufficiently dedicated to free speech. He cautioned people to "think carefully" because their answers would be consequential.

70% of his respondents said Twitter does not value free speech.

And now he's the biggest shareholder in twitter, with a stake worth over $2.7 billion.

Obviously he's not a majority shareholder but he is big enough to start making demands.

Elon Musk took a 9.2% stake in Twitter Inc. to become the platform's biggest shareholder, a week after hinting he might shake up the social media industry.

...

Musk, 50, polled his more than 80 million followers on Twitter last month, asking them whether the company adheres to the principles of free speech. After more than 70% said no, he asked whether a new platform was needed and said he was giving serious thought to starting his own.

I wonder if that was a fake-out. Or... I wonder if he claimed he was going to start a competitor to Twitter to reduce the price of Twitter's shares, so that he could buy his stake more cheaply.

Twitter has previously bowed to pressure from large stakeholders:

Twitter is particularly vulnerable to outside pressure because unlike Google, Facebook, Amazon and Snap, the company's founders don’t have special voting control over its future. The company has just recovered from activist pressure by Elliot Management that started in 2020 which led Dorsey, who was serving his second stint as CEO of Twitter, to set a succession plan.

I can't believe that this is true:

It's unclear what Musk is planning with his stake. The filing with the SEC shows that the date of the event that triggered the disclosure was March 14. The type of form used often indicates the investor isn't seeking to acquire control of a company, or to influence who controls it.

Obviously he has an interest in reshaping Twitter.

"It looks like Elon has his eyes laser set on Twitter," said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives in a research note, adding that the stake could lead to a "more aggressive ownership role."

Twitter's stock price surged on the revelation that Musk had taken a big position in it, which wound up making Musk over a billion in a few weeks:

Musk, already the world's richest person according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has made about $1.1 billion on his holding since mid March, based on the pop in Twitter’s shares in early trading Monday.

Unfortunately, Trump's venture "Truth Social" continues lagging.

April 4 (Reuters) - The two Southern tech entrepreneurs had the two qualities that Donald Trump's Truth Social startup needed: tech-industry expertise and a politically conservative worldview aligned with the former president, a rare combination in the liberal-leaning industry centered in San Francisco.

Josh Adams and Billy Boozer - the company's chiefs of technology and product development - joined the venture last year and quickly became central players in its bid to build a social-media empire, backed by Trump's powerful brand, to counter what many conservatives deride as "cancel culture" censorship from the left.

Less than a year later, both have resigned their senior posts at a critical juncture for the company's smartphone-app release plans, according to two sources familiar with the venture.

The departures followed the troubled launch of the company's iPhone app on Feb. 20. Weeks later, many users remain on a waiting list, unable to access the platform. Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) Chief Executive Devin Nunes, a former Republican congressman, said publicly that the company aimed to make the app fully operational within the United States by the end of March.

The company has an app for iPhones but no app for Android phones, which comprise more than 40% of the U.S. market, though the company has advertised seeking an engineer to build one.

My financial advisors Ryan Long and Danny Polushuk speculated that Trump ordered the site to be launched early, despite it needing maybe another year of development. They believe this because the site "launched," in its fragged form, on Presidents Day.

posted by Ace at 01:21 PM

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