this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
614 points (98.9% liked)
Technology
59429 readers
2874 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
$500m to Elon is like $500 to the average American
Not so much at the moment.
He borrowed 44 bn to buy Twitter and has a 1.5 bn payment coming up.
He is of course more liquid than any of us, but the fact that he keeps not paying various bills seems to indicate that he's having cash flow problems and is having to scrounge for his loan payment.
This is just one of many multi million dollar payments that musk and/or Twitter are fighting.
He did not borrow 44 billion to buy Twitter.
He put about ~13 billion dollars of debt on Twitter itself, so he had to come up with about 31 billion in equity. He was able to secure third party equity commitments of around 7 billion (Larry Ellison, the Saudis, etc.). He also held a minority interest of about 4 billion in Twitter. He funded the remaining 20 odd billion with a combination of cash (from cash holdings and selling Tesla shares in early 2022) and equity margin loans on his remaining Tesla shares. It is understood that he likely paid off most of his margin loans as he continued to sell further Tesla shares in late 2022.
The 1.5 billion interest expense you mention is just for the bank debt (that the banks still hold, and have been unable to sell), and is Twitter’s responsibility, not Elon’s.
This is a long way of saying that I think the banks will own Twitter within 6-12 months. They will not roll over like landlords, and its far more clear cut for a missed loan payment.