The biggest news in the tech industry these days is Musk's acquisition of Twitter.
The title of acquirer is blinding, he is the world's richest Tesla CEO, Mars colonization initiator, commercial manned spaceship pioneer, pioneer of online payment tools, earth tunnel technology breaker, human brain implant technology disruptor • realistic version of "Iron Man" Musk.
The acquisition price is as high as $44 billion. What is this concept?
Jordan, with a population of 10 million, will have a GDP of only $43.7 billion in 2020.
Twitter is a world-class social media with more than 200 million monthly active users, a weapon for Trump's victory in the 59th president, and a spoiler for Trump's defeat in the 60th president.
The acquisition of the century came too suddenly, leaving a series of questions in the minds of the melon-eating masses:
Why would Musk want to buy a company that continues to lose money?
Is it really to help Trump get back the Twitter account?
Where does Musk, with only 3 billion cash flows, go to scrape together $44 billion? Will he sell Tesla stock?
After the acquisition is completed, what impact will it have on the Chinese and Chinese Internet? What would Ma Yun and Ma Huateng think?
……
Don't be anxious, and listen to me one by one.
Some say Musk's acquisition of Twitter is a five-year-old business war. They flipped through Musk's chats with a radio host and found that Musk had asked "how much Twitter is worth" in 2017.
It's just a joke. 2017 was the hardest and most painful year of Musk's career, when he was busy dealing with the "Wolf of Wall Street" who shorted Tesla, and was caused to lose sleep all night by the capacity problem of model 3.
It wasn't until 2019 that Musk breathed a sigh of relief.
On January 7, 2019, Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory officially started construction.
On December 30, 2019, Tesla completed the first delivery of the Shanghai Gigafactory.
Then, the full-powered Shanghai Gigafactory gradually became Tesla's primary production base, solving the production capacity problem that had plagued Musk for more than a decade, and the opponents of that year turned to the rainbow fart, saying that he was the "light of mankind".
Tesla's stock began to swell up like a rocket, sending Musk to the throne of the world's richest man.
This spring, the news of new factory deliveries came from Berlin, Germany, and Texas, USA, which can guarantee Tesla three years of worry-free. Musk, who has stabilized the rear, has begun to realize his dream journey. This is like Genghis Khan eight hundred years ago, constantly conquering the outside world and expanding the territory of the empire.
But there are so many companies in the world, why does Musk have a fancy to Twitter?
You know, Twitter has been in a state of "losing money", losing $1.14 billion and $221 million in 2020 and 2021, respectively.
In the track of the Internet community, Twitter has no advantage, and its monthly active users are only half of Snap, one-fifth of Instagram, and one-tenth of Facebook.
The average person would never buy Twitter, but Musk is not an ordinary person, but a "spy sent to Earth by Mars."
First of all, Musk is a natural talker and needs a platform to express himself.
He and Zuckerberg had a holiday, so he didn't register a Facebook account, but spent a lot of time on Twitter, posting more than a dozen or twenty tweets a day, accumulating 86.2 million followers. These fans all hold Musk like a god, but the "horse" is the first to look.
Musk used his Twitter influence to repeatedly cut leeks on virtual currency and make a lot of money.
He first silently bought a large amount of Dogecoin, and then publicly said that "Space X will send Dogecoin to the moon", and when countless people followed the trend to buy Dogecoin and the price of Dogecoin soared, he secretly sold Dogecoin at a high position, and jokingly called Dogecoin a "scam"...
But Musk, who has been insecure since childhood, feels that Twitter has "changed its flavor".
In January 2021, when Witt announced the banning of Trump, Musk was very panicked, cold in his lips, dead and sad, afraid that Twitter company managers would shoot him.
So Musk began to put a hat on Twitter, saying that they violated the right of American citizens to free speech, occupied the moral high ground, and kept their accounts.
But Musk didn't expect that a bigger enemy would emerge. A group of politicians launched a campaign on Twitter to "force the richest man, Musk to pay taxes."
Here is a supplementary knowledge point, although Musk is "rich and invincible", but the taxes paid and the donated love money are negligible, even inferior to ordinary Americans.
His hundreds of billions of dollars are all paper wealth brought about by Tesla's rising stock price, and he doesn't actually have much cash income. In 2019, Tesla paid Musk an annual salary of $23,760, a monthly salary of about $2,000, and he also had to raise a wife and 7 children. So Musk doesn't have to pay personal income tax.
American tax officials were not convinced, and waited for Musk to collect transaction taxes when he sold stocks and consumption taxes when buying luxury goods.
But the ghostly Musk never sells stocks, does not buy luxury goods, does not have luxury houses, luxury cars, luxury watches, and lives completely by the standards of middle-class families, so that the people in the tax office are always empty.
But politicians don't stop there, they decide to "treat others the way they do."
On March 19, 2021, Senator Bernie of Vermont took the lead in launching a public opinion offensive against Musk on Twitter, saying that Musk and Bezos owned more than 40% of the wealth of the bottom people combined, and accusing his behavior of extreme greed, immorality, and unsustainable.
At the instigation of Bernie Lawmaker, a wave of donations from the rich has emerged on Twitter, and opposition to Musk has grown.
The online fire quickly burned offline, and at the end of 2021, the US Congress began to discuss the taxation of billionaires.
Under strong public pressure, Musk was forced to sell Tesla shares and pay $11 billion in taxes, becoming the richest man in U.S. history to pay the highest amount of taxes at a time.
Therefore, Musk made up his mind that he must buy Twitter and completely tame the management of Twitter Company, in order to firmly hold the "pen pole" in his hands, to defend his public opinion position, and to prevent the enemy from "fanning the flames".
In order to be able to win Twitter smoothly, Musk has developed a perfect course of action to beat the Twitter board to the ground.
When his friend, former Twitter CEO Dorsey, was forced out of office, he bought Twitter stock through his trust fund.
Buy a little today, buy a little tomorrow, add up to more, and by the end of March, he had 73.5 million shares of common stock in his hands, or 9.2% of the shares.
Sensing the smell of gunpowder, Twitter executives took the lead and invited Musk to join the Twitter board of directors to participate in the daily management of Twitter.
Musk was very touched, but still declined the invitation. He doesn't want a seat on the board, but 100 percent control.
On April 14, Musk offered to buy Twitter's issued common stock for $43 billion in cash at $54.20 per share.
The Twitter board launched the Poison Pill Project in order to block the "barbarians" at the door:
Once Musk holds more than 15 percent of the shares, all shareholders except Musk can buy Twitter's newly issued shares at half price.
Musk had already anticipated such a drama and immediately activated Plan B:
Within a week, Musk directly came up with $46.5 billion in financing, cash.
Tempted by money, Twitter's board eventually softened.
But Musk's "arrogance" also had a negative effect, tesla stock price plunged 12.18% on March 26, the single-day market value evaporated by $126 billion, the largest one-day decline since September 2020, Musk's personal wealth shrank by $32 billion.
Why is that?
Because Tesla investors suspect that Musk's acquisition will drag Tesla down.
Musk said he would provide $21 billion in equity financing, but did not say exactly how it came about.
Musk has only about $3 billion in cash and liquid assets, and could provide that equity financing by selling or mortgaging Tesla shares.
However, fortunately, the overall market in the US stock market is better, and on April 27, Tesla's stock price rose a little back.
At present, everything is still under Musk's control. It is expected that within this year, the acquisition process will be completed. Trump, who has more than 80 million followers, may "return the king.".
While Musk in the United States was studying the acquisition of Twitter, China's Ma Yun was frantically selling his media business, including the "Chinese version of Twitter" Sina Weibo.
In September 2021, Alibaba announced the sale of a 5.01% stake in Mango Super Media. Mango Super Media is a new media company owned by Hunan Television.
In October 2021, Ant Group has sold all its shares in Caixin Media.
In December 2021, sources said Ali planned to sell all of its 29.6 percent stake in Weibo. The takeover may be Shanghai Culture Radio, Film and Television Group (SMG).
In March 2022, Ant Group sold all 15.7% of its stake in Technology Media 36Kr for a total transaction price of US$6.8 million.
Not only is Alibaba "slimming down", But Chinese Internet companies such as Tencent, ByteDance, and Baidu are shrinking their business.
On December 23, 2021, Tencent announced that it will pay approximately 460 million shares of JD.com shares it holds to Tencent shareholders as an interim dividend, and Tencent's shareholding ratio will be reduced from 17% to 2.3%, and it will withdraw from the ranks of major shareholders.
The reduction of Chinese Internet giants in the capital market is in response to the country's anti-monopoly requirements.
From January 1, 2021 to December 14, 2021, the State Administration for Market Regulation issued a total of 118 anti-monopoly penalty cases, of which 89 involved Internet enterprises, accounting for 75.42% of the total. The most famous case is the 18.228 billion yuan fine issued by the Municipal Supervision Bureau to Alibaba.
In addition to strong domestic control, Chinese Internet companies have also suffered a blow from the US government.
At the end of 2020, then-President Trump signed into force the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act, which requires foreign companies listed on U.S. exchanges to comply with U.S. auditing standards or face delisting.
Since March this year, the SEC has published a total of five batches of "scheduled delisting lists" for the Foreign Companies Accountability Act, involving a total of 40 companies.
The financial giants on Wall Street in the United States have downgraded the entire Chinese Internet sector and continued to sell stocks in the air.
This reminds me of a post-break phrase, "The Eight Precepts of the Pig Look in the Mirror – Inside and Out Are Not Human."
These U.S.-listed Chinese stocks have fallen again and again, and they have fallen and fallen endlessly. At the same time, American technology Internet companies have enjoyed the benefits of the Great Water Release in the United States, and their stock prices have repeatedly reached new highs.
Therefore, the market value gap between China and the United States technology Internet companies is getting wider and wider.
On April 27, 2020, Apple's market capitalization was $1,238.1 billion, equivalent to the market capitalization of five Internet companies in China combined.
By April 25, 2022, the U.S. company's market capitalization was $1,256.58 billion more than the combined market capitalization of China's 50 Internet companies.
Taking the time a little longer is more telling. In 2018, the global technology companies had a market capitalization of top 20, and there were 9 Chinese mainland, only 2 less than the United States. By 2021, there are only 2 Chinese mainland left, and the United States has grown to 15.
Hopefully, Chinese Internet people will get out of the quagmire as soon as possible and return to the field.