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Comment by 4khilles | Hacker News Reader

Why would Twitter profits matter to shareholders after they divest?

The parent believes, based on Elon's own claims, that part of his plan of raising the money is to get some existing shareholders on board, essentially having them finance the deal, obviously by promising them a stake in the future private company.

They are also assuming an existing shareholder would only do this if they believe the future private Twitter would be a more profitable endeavor for them, which Musk's comments really shouldn't inspire confidence in.

Ah, thanks for clarifying. I misread the parent's comment. Looks like they were referring specifically to the shareholders that choose to stay on as investors.

That does make it seem less serious IMO, given he made the same claim about somehow keeping shareholders when he pretended he was going to take Tesla private

They wouldn't be divested. He's said he intends to allow the maximum number of shareholders legally allowed to continue as shareholders, that is, the biggest investors get to not divest if they want.

GP is implying that since Musk is relying on this in order to finance it since he doesn't have 43B in cash.

>He's said he intends to allow the maximum number of shareholders legally allowed to continue as shareholders, that is, the biggest investors get to not divest if they want

If this is a plausible scenario, and I don't know that it isn't, do you think it's what he means or is trying to express?

Because it seems to me that the way he says he'll keep the shareholders, it's intended to communicate to his countless groupies that they will somehow still be able to own Tesla in their Robinhood accounts. Which would be nonsense, right?

The real question is why would shareholders that care about profits own Twitter stock? In its entire history there have been 2 years it didn’t lose money and actually recorded a profit.

The hard part about these companies is user engagement.

Currently, Twitter userbase is ripe for monetization.

It's all about potential future profits. Not everyone agrees on what those profits could be, and hence why there is a market for shares, and is the reason why share prices are not stable.

Essentially, the holders believe that past performance is not reflective of possible future performance. The shorts and sellers and non buyers believe that us the case or that there are more efficient allocations of their money.

The employee’s RSUs?

Good point! I wonder what happens to unvested RSUs in an acquisition like this.

Went through a similar situation where a company was taken back private. The RSUs converted to cash value day of deal close and had a staggered payout with roughly the same vesting schedule.

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