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From the beginning of buying stocks to reaching a consensus with the board, Musk "hit" Twitter in less than 21 days. Immediately after, he extended the hand of capital to another huge company, Coca-Cola.
On April 28, local time, Musk tweeted that "Next I'm buying Coca-Cola to put the cocaine back in." The tweet took just a few hours to generate more than 100,000 comments and a million likes.
Musk tweeted: Next I'm going to buy Coca-Cola and put cocaine back;
Image from Twitter screenshot
However, just an hour after the announcement of the acquisition of Coca-Cola, Musk sent another tweet - "Let's make Twitter maximum fun!" ", which also makes everything more confusing.
Buffett, the god of stocks, who claims to drink 5 cans of Coke every day
Image from the web
Speaking of Coke lovers in the rich circle, everyone's first reaction may be buffett, the stock god who claims to drink 5 cans of Coke every day, but in fact, Musk's love for this drink is not inferior to the former.
During the difficult years when Model 3 production capacity was climbing, Musk drank 8 cans of Diet Coke every day. The large amount of caffeine intake even caused him to lose peripheral vision for a while.
Musk has surpassed Buffett in the number of daily cola drinks, but in the plan to acquire Coca-Cola, the latter is Musk's biggest obstacle. As Coca-Cola's largest shareholder, Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway holds 9.23% of Coca-Cola.
After owning the world's most valuable new energy vehicle company, the head social media platform Twitter, Neuralink, which can use brain-computer interfaces on humans, SpaceX, an aerospace company dedicated to landing on Mars, and The Boring Company, Musk is still not satisfied and began to "flirt" with beverage giant Coca-Cola. This makes people wonder, what does the world's richest man really want to do?
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Buying Coca-Cola is much greater than buying Twitter
For a long time, a major negative label on Musk was "mouth hi", and the main "credit" for this stereotype was also attributed to his relevant tweets about privatizing Tesla in 2018. In this incident, Musk was not only crowned with the hat of "mouth hi", but also offended the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In the end, the privatization was unsuccessful, and he also lost the title of chairman of Tesla and handed over a fine of $20 million in his own name and Tesla's name...
Musk tweeted in 2018 that he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share
Image from Twitter screenshot
But in the process of acquiring Twitter, he washed himself well. On the one hand, he first bought shares to become a major shareholder of Twitter at a steady and accurate pace, then refused to enter the board of directors and announced the acquisition plan, and finally sent a text message "threat" to break the "poison pill" plan and quickly attacked Twitter; on the other hand, he used his strong public opinion effect to appear on the TED speech, and lost all the responsibility for Tesla's privatization incident a few years ago to the SEC, including but not limited to:
"I've never cheated shareholders, I'll never cheat shareholders, I'm for Tesla's survival, for the benefit of shareholders..." "SEC officials are Basstards(jerks) who threaten me that if I don't do that, the banks will stop funding, which will bank tesla go bankrupt immediately. It's like pointing a gun at your child's head, and I'm forced to admit that I lied to save Tesla..." and so on.
Privatizing Tesla at the time was difficult, but it was not impossible to complete. After all, at the price of $420 a share at the time, he only needed to scrape together $72 billion to achieve his dream. Although Twitter is the world's leading social platform, its $44 billion acquisition price is not much for Musk today. But Coca-Cola is different, and it is much harder to buy the company, which can affect almost every family in the world, than it was to complete the privatization of Tesla four years ago and buy Twitter the other day.
According to Forbes statistics, as Musk's assets are $290.3 billion, while Coca-Cola's market value is $280 billion, plus the $44 billion spent on privatizing Twitter, even if you are the world's richest man, I am afraid that you will not be able to sustain it in the face of such two huge amounts of funds.
But this is After all, Musk, many seemingly impossible things are not necessarily impossible in his hands.
"For now, although Coca-Cola is very large, it is not impossible to acquire." On this issue, Zhang Junyi, an analyst in the automotive industry, made an in-depth analysis to the auto market story. Today, Coca-Cola's largest shareholder, Buffett, is not in a good position, and the performance of Berkshire Hathaway, which he manages, is not ideal, and within the company, the two major shareholders of the California Public Employee Pension and the National Center for Law and Policy in the United States are jointly "forcing the palace" to seek to remove Buffett from the chairmanship, which makes the 92-year-old stock god overwhelmed.
Soldiers on the front lines of World War II drink Coca-Cola
Image from the web
From the perspective of funds, according to Musk's influence, as long as he shows his intention to acquire, there will definitely be a consortium to support him and provide funds for him. Of course, there are many other factors to consider in the success of acquiring a huge business. This incident once again shows Musk's extremely strong personal marketing ability, according to Zhang Junyi's words, "Musk chose a super brand to do the article this time."
The reason why Coca-Cola is called a "super brand" is because its influence has reached unimaginable levels, even larger than all of Musk's current companies combined.
"In the previous business landscape, whether it was Tesla, SpaceX, etc., or newly acquired Twitter, the audience affected was limited after all. Coca-Cola is different, its audience covers all countries, all races, regardless of the southeast, south, northwest, men, women and children, even during World War I and World War II, can be sent to the front line as supplies, is a global explosive, and the impact and connection behind it are incomparably huge. ”
For Musk, once this matter is proposed to start, it will bring him a huge blessing, and even if it is not successful, his image in the minds of the outside world will rise to a certain extent.
But the most uncomfortable thing is that Musk's announcement of the acquisition coincided with the mention of cocaine, a notorious traditional drug. But looking at his past remarks and actions, it seems that this matter is not difficult to understand - in 2018, he had publicly smoked marijuana on a live show, and in 2021, he had said in an interview that psychedelic drugs should be legalized...
Judging from Musk's previous remarks and behaviors, he supports soft drugs. Of course, his current remarks on Twitter only prove that he has this idea, and he does not necessarily do it, but with his influence, after these ideas are announced, it will definitely have an impact on Coca-Cola's stock price. Zhang Junyi said that the mention of drugs seems to have become the biggest potential negative impact in Musk's acquisition declaration.
"At present, sustainable investing (ESG investment) has become a big trend. On the one hand, Musk is engaged in clean energy, which is in line with ESG investment, on the other hand, he has invested in the military industry and addictive drinks. This does not seem to be in line with ESG's investment philosophy, and this may make some investors change their attitude towards him. ”
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What exactly is Musk going to do?
Twenty years ago, starting with zip2 and PayPal, Musk successfully earned his first pot of gold. Soon after, Musk used this wealth to take the lead in setting up space company Space X, and then invested $6.3 million, becoming Tesla's largest shareholder.
At that time, people may not have imagined Musk's later madness. At that time, more people thought that Musk simply wanted to build an electric car. However, in fact, making electric vehicles is only the beginning of Musk's personal business landscape.
Starlink Overview Figure | Image from the web
Because before long, people from the outside world saw a series of Musk-related companies such as Solar City, Starlink, Infrastructure/Boring Company, Artificial Intelligence Company (Open AI), Healthcare/Brain-Computer Interface Company (Neuralink) and so on.
It is worth noting that before Tesla succeeded, Musk was doing these things all the way with doubt and ridicule. Many people don't understand, think he's a crazy person, and some people think he's a genius. With a series of controversies, he eventually sat on the throne of "the world's richest man".
Ironically, the questioning and ridicule of him in other circles has also evolved into praise and admiration. Many people are still speculating about what he is going to do next, but it turns out that no one can think of it.
However, throughout Musk's 20-year entrepreneurial history, some people still want to try to outline Musk's ultimate goal. In their view, Musk's ultimate goal is to go to Mars, because this is his dream in the early days of entrepreneurship.
As early as 2001, Musk planned a "Martian Oasis" project, planning to build a small test greenhouse on Mars, so that crops from Earth can try to grow in the soil of Mars. In order to realize the plan, he even ran to Russia to prepare to buy rockets. However, in the eyes of people at that time, this was nonsense, no one believed it, and in the end he could only find a way to do it himself.
Musk's Business Map Draft: The Story of the Car Market
In the eyes of these people, there is no energy on Mars, so Musk laid out solar energy Solar city; Mars air is thin, no oxygen, special soil, so with the Boring Company's sealed pipes, hyperloop; humans can't withstand the Martian environment, carrying the brain-computer interface (Neuralink) also have to go up; Mars lacks food, his brother founded the indoor urban agriculture company Square Roots business is organic food. Grains and vegetables can be grown in harsh environments.
In this way, Musk's business line seems to be becoming clearer and clearer. It not only involves basic issues such as people's diet and housing on Mars, but also takes into account the spiritual life of human beings, such as Dogecoin, Coca-Cola and cocaine. Of course, this is only the speculation of some people and has not been confirmed.
"Today's international situation is quite unstable, and the game between governments has given Musk the opportunity to 'seize power'." Musk's strength is not only in cars, travel, and even not just in the economic field. In a sense, Musk has already pointed out all the 'skill points'. In the face of the recent public opinion of Musk's acquisition of Twitter and Coca-Cola, auto analyst Zhang Junyi said to the car market.
Image from the web
"Musk is not an entrepreneur in the traditional sense, and you can't learn anything from him that has to do with making money and learning success, so don't look at his story with that mindset." A domestic business tycoon once said this.
But there is no doubt that Musk's success has attracted countless people to follow suit. Tesla's success, in particular, has given it a large following in China. Just like Jobs at that time, he was imitated by many domestic technology companies and mobile phone manufacturers.
And now Musk, some people call it "Jobs II". In the face of Tesla's soaring, many domestic car company leaders have followed suit, but from now on, it is impossible to learn. Because Musk is not a man of the automotive industry, he is a collection of capital of the American era.
Zhang Junyi also believes that "China's auto people, especially new power companies, their rise has caught up with the dividends of the Internet economy, but the gap between them and Musk is still too big." When encountering some problems, we do not even have the ability to solve them, and can only rely on the strength of the state to 'cry' to the government. Musk is not the case, in this round of Shanghai resumption of work, Tesla was the first to respond, and tweeted praise for the extraordinary achievements of Chinese factories, on the one hand, to appease investors, on the other hand, but also to the Chinese government to show goodwill and support. ”
Image from the web
In his view, although Chinese car companies also have multi-industry layout companies that invest in aerospace, mobile phones, and even controllable nuclear fusion, they are more from a financial point of view, not a revolutionary touch, which is too big a gap with Musk. This gap also exists in the automotive industry itself, and it is difficult for the new Chinese forces to even correct their own net profit margin, and Tesla can already achieve long-term profitability. ”
Times change, and every era will give birth to an unparalleled business leader, like Jobs and Bill Gates. For them, the outside world can easily find an obvious label. For Musk, however, you'd be hard-pressed to find an accurate title to describe him. Because compared with the leaders of the past, his business map is more three-dimensional. entrepreneur? merchant? engineer? adventurer? Musk's shadow can be found in every title, but each title cannot be crowned in its entirety.
Previously, when acquiring Twitter, some people joked that all of Musk's actions were to control public opinion and eventually run for the president of the United States. But in fact, according to the relevant laws of the United States, he was born in South Africa and did not have the conditions to run. But after mastering the business of travel, energy, public opinion, spiritual life, biomedicine, infrastructure, and interstellar travel, who can guarantee that he will not "ascend the throne" on Mars?
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