Last night, musk announced that it plans to purchase all the issued ordinary shares of twitter it has not yet held with cash of $54.20 per share, with a total transaction amount of about $43 billion. Musk previously owned more than 9% of twitter.
Although Musk’s private wealth is expected to exceed $200 billion, it is mainly linked to the shares of Tesla and SpaceX. Therefore, some analysts said that musk may need to sell more Tesla shares to complete the transaction. After the successful acquisition of twitter, musk may have to spend time and experience managing twitter, which worries Tesla investors and analysts.
Gene Munster, managing partner of loop ventures, a venture capital firm that owns Tesla shares, said: “Musk’s attention has been distracted. He has a lot to do and has been involved in many different projects. This is a bad news for Tesla’s share price and may last for one to three months.”
Tesla is the world’s most valuable carmaker, and its share price has fallen by more than 9% since musk disclosed on Monday that it holds more than 9% of twitter. Yesterday, Tesla shares fell 3.7%.
Analysts said that although musk talked about the potential changes he wanted to see twitter make, Tesla also faced its own challenge, that is, the need to increase the production of new factories in Berlin and Texas. At the same time, Tesla’s largest factory, the Shanghai factory, was also temporarily shut down due to the epidemic.
“Musk is Tesla and investors don’t want to see Tesla lose this lead,” said Craig Irwin, an analyst at Roth capital partners, a securities firm
Investors’ concerns are not unreasonable. Last year, musk himself said that he worked seven days a week between Tesla and SpaceX. In addition, he also led the brain chip start-up neuralink and the tunneling company.
Analysts also said that another worrying issue is how musk will finance Twitter’s potential transactions, which may include the sale of shares and huge loans.
Wells Fargo analyst Colin Langan said musk, who owns more than 9% of twitter, needed $39 billion to complete the deal. In the future, if musk sells more Tesla shares, it may put further pressure on the stock. By the end of last year, musk had sold 10% of its Tesla shares.
In addition, according to the company’s policy, Tesla executives can pledge their company’s shares as loan collateral, but the maximum loan cannot exceed 25% of the total value of Pledged Shares.
This means that musk can borrow $42.5 billion by pledging all its shares worth $170 billion. However, according to a document submitted by Tesla last year, musk has taken more than half of its Tesla shares as collateral to obtain some personal debts.
Musk said on Thursday that he had the corresponding assets to buy twitter, but did not disclose specific details. At the end of last year, musk sold more than $16 billion of Tesla shares.
Howard Fischer, partner of Moses & singer law firm and former senior trial lawyer of the SEC, said: “Musk may bear huge debts in the future.”