Elon Musk Would Be a Fool to Buy Twitter

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Elon Musk Would Be a Fool to Buy Twitter

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Twitter, never a good business, has fallen apart further since Elon Musk made a $44 billion offer to buy it. The company’s market cap has fallen to $30 billion, and both management and workers are panicked and in disarray.

Most importantly, a look at the results of social media company Snap showed that sector ad revenue has begun to fall apart and will continue to do so in the near term. Twitter’s revenue and financial results will deteriorate throughout the year. Musk’s gamble will become progressively more expensive.
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The plan to buy Twitter has become more complex, which adds another level of risk. According to The Wall Street Journal, which reviewed SEC documents, “Mr. Musk’s funding plan now includes $33.5 billion in equity, up from $27.25 billion, according to a Wednesday regulatory filing.”
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Musk also must try to greatly improve the morale of a sullen workforce that could become mutinous. He will have to run a company with many employees who do not want him as an owner. They also will be anxious that he will cut the workforce to save money. The most talented employees will leave. The demand for tech workers may be at one of the highest levels in history. Twitter will be a husk of what it was just months ago.
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Musk also risks alienating users. His plans to change the service carry extreme risk. Tens of millions of people who use the service have expectations that changes to their experience will be few and incremental, which is true of almost all products and services. Musk appears to be ready to alter Twitter substantially and quickly.
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The dollar price, the employee morale issues, falling advertising rates and potential alienization of users add up to a massive set of risks, and that means Musk has agreed to a deal that will cost him more than he bargained for.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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