In addition to Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity (acquired by Tesla), Starlink, Neuralink, Hyperloop, Boring Company, Musk's footprint has expanded. Today's latest news, he has become Twitter's current largest shareholder, holding 9.2% of Twitter shares, many times more than Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's 2.25%.
Many people cheered for this, thinking that Musk was responding to his fans' complaints about Twitter's dissatisfaction with the governance, but as everyone knows, this is actually a game of the year that Musk has long laid out.
A "acquisition" of the richest man
Let's talk about some details of Musk's acquisition of shares.
Musk spent a total of $2.89 billion to acquire a 9.2% stake in Twitter. At present, it has exceeded the current holdings of all individuals and institutions in Twitter.
After the news was made public, Twitter stock soared before the opening of the market today and grew until after-hours. The increase was as high as 27%. This is the highest one-day increase in Twitter's stock price since 2018. As of press time, Twitter's after-hours stock price has reached as high as $50.22 per share.
It is worth noting that according to this increase, Musk's own Twitter stock has increased by nearly $780 million. At present, his personal wealth still ranks first in the world, at $302.1 billion, far exceeding Jeff Bezos's $194.1 billion.
After posting the news, Musk personally only responded as follows: oh hi lol
The tweet attracted more than 30,000 retweets and more than 6,000 citations.
Netizens also fancy ridiculed Musk's new identity. Netizen Fontwit said: "Elon Musk, Twitter's chief Meme officer (satin player). ”
Daily Wire even drew a big picture on Twitter, saying that Musk really cut a big cake on Twitter.
Others have quipped that Twitter should give Elon Musk the title of co-founder (follow Musk's story from a Tesla investor to a co-founder):
Actor Musk's big play
So what is the concept of this 9.2% cake?
According to the Washington Post, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey currently holds a 2.25 percent stake. And this is also an important reason why he was twice "expelled" from the company and left the CEO position. In the process of continuous financing, his personal equity was constantly diluted, so that he lost his voice in the company.
According to CNN Business, before Musk threw money into Twitter, the five largest shareholders in Twitter were: the Vanguard Group, Blackrock Fund, Ssga Money Management, Aristotle Capital Management, and Wood Sister's Ark Investment Management.
Among them, Pioneer Pilot Investment Company was previously the largest shareholder, with a shareholding ratio of 8.39%, Blackstone Investment held less than 5%, and Ssga Fund Management Company held 4.54%. It can be said that in terms of amount, what Musk wants is probably not investment income at all, but the voice brought by the largest shareholders to one of the world's largest social media.
However, it is worth noting that in the shareholding application submitted to the US government, Musk's document chose passive investment, also known as static investment, which does not seem to involve corporate decisions. However, after reading the following details, you may not think like this.
Back a week ago, on March 25, Musk once posted a poll on his personal Twitter, asking fans: Please vote, do you think Twitter abides by the principles of "Free Speech"?
At the time, Musk also said: "This vote is quite important. Please vote for you carefully. ”
Voting results at the time showed that 70.4 percent of the more than 2 million voters thought Twitter was not qualified enough on this point.
At that time, netizen Brigitte Gabriel even ridiculed Musk, saying that he wanted him to buy Twitter directly.
While it now seems like a fully prophetic judgment, a week ago, most speculation about Musk's motives was that Musk might be starting a business again, starting his own social media company similar to Meta and Twitter. Even Musk released smoke bombs at the time, saying: "Is there a need for a new platform?" ”
After the vote, in the face of netizens' vote of no confidence in Twitter, Musk said: "What should we do? ”
Unexpectedly, a week later, Musk actually invested heavily to become Twitter's largest shareholder.
On the surface, Musk is responding to the call of fans and spending a lot of money to buy Twitter shares in order to change the status quo of Twitter, but what many people don't know is that in fact, half a month ago, on March 14, Musk had already thought of the whole game clearly.
According to The Verge, Bloomberg and other media confirmed that Musk has applied to the SEC on March 14 to complete the operation of increasing twitter shares, and the holdings are passive investment forms.
That is to say, the various votes and various online shouts in the next half month are just part of his big show.
Jack Dorsey was "forced" to flee twice
However, the ill-fated Twitter has gone through several helmsmen. Founder Jack Dorsey, who has gone in and out of the CEO role, surprisingly did not say anything about the matter, even though he and Musk interacted a lot on Twitter.
As the founder and CEO of a public company, Jack Dorsey holds very few shares and has very little control over Twitter. At the time of the company's founding, there was also no well-established equity system to protect the founder's control over the company. As a result, Paul Singer, a U.S. hedge fund mogul, "once wanted to squeeze him out of the Position of Twitter CEO in 2020." Paul's reason for expelling the CEO at the time was that It was unreasonable for Jack Dorsey to run both Twitter and Square at the same time.
At the time, Musk tweeted that he supported Jack's continued status as Twitter's CEO.
In addition to this voice in 2020, Musk and Jack Dorsey have reached a lot of consensus in the near future. For example, Musk said on personal Twitter that Twitter should open source its algorithms.
Jack Dorsey retweeted his support.
Looking back at the release time of these two contents, Musk has quietly completed the acquisition of Twitter stock.
Back in 2020, Twitter paid a big price to keep Jack Dorsey's seat. Twitter spent as much as $2 billion to execute a share buyback agreement with Paul's back Elliott Management. Unfortunately, the good times did not last long, and in the end, because the shareholders were mostly opposed to Jack Dorsey being the CEO of both companies at the same time, Jack Dorsey gave the baton to Paraag.
But this isn't the first time Jack Dorsey has been forced to leave the social media empire he founded.
In 2008, he was fired from the Twitter board as CEO. In 2011, he returned to Twitter as executive chairman of the company, then CEO Dick Costolo. It wasn't until 2015 that he took back the CEO position from Dick again.
Currently, Jack Dorsey's personal wealth is about $6.5 billion, mostly from Square. Currently, to prevent Twitter from going wrong, he personally holds about 13 percent of Square's shares.