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Comment by lukasb | Hacker News Reader

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lukasb·

Well, Elon Musk just sent Twitter employees an email saying it's worth about $20B. He paid $44B for it.

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1640049750966665218

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If elon saying it’s worth 20B then 2B sounds about right

So the value was in the employees who were fired?

Their advertising revenue has plummeted since Musk took over. $20b is the Musk spin number, so the reality is even worse

My WAG is their revenue has fallen to under 2 billion a year, maybe less than $1B. Since they stopped paying the bills for things, their costs have gone way down ;-)

What was it worth when he took ownership?

It's complicated. He offered way too much. He made an incredibly poor deal with them. The market went down after he made his offer. So he put himself into a bad position. Anything is worth what people will pay for it.

I thought maybe 10b was what it was worth. And he could have gotten out of it by paying a $1 billion cancel fee, something like that. It appeared his ego prevented him from considering that. But it all goes back to him signing a terrible agreement in the first place.

> And he could have gotten out of it by paying a $1 billion cancel fee, something like that

I'm not sure why people are still repeating that. No, he couldn't, that fee would have been due if external influence would have prevented him from completing the transaction (e.g. the government banning the sale somehow).

Hmm, I guess I could be wrong, I read that in a story about the purchase.

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