<story><title>Musk’s Twitter purchase was a leveraged buyout</title><text>Some people are giving Musk a pass for today’s layoffs because Twitter is unprofitable and needs to cut costs. But the real pressure for cost cutting and the layoffs is that Musk purchased Twitter via a leveraged buyout. He loaded the company with $10B of additional debt and now is facing annual $1B interest payments. The dramatic layoffs with no severance are thus the result of Musk’s decision to buy the company and the acquisition strategy of using a leveraged buyout.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>m348e912</author><text>I am actually curious how Musk is going to pull this off. Twitter is actually in a way worse financial situation than it was two weeks ago due to the massive amount of debt incurred in the buyout process (and the associated payments). Layoffs are a must and cutting infrastructure costs is also crucial, however it&amp;#x27;s critical that twitter starts generating some serious revenue.&lt;p&gt;Some advertisers have paused buying, and the $8 blue check thing could help a little but there is major ground to make up and I don&amp;#x27;t know how it get&amp;#x27;s done in the short term. I&amp;#x27;ll be getting some popcorn, but I am rooting for Musk to figure this one out.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>csours</author><text>How much lifting can the check mark do?&lt;p&gt;Twitter has 450 million users that log in at least once a month.&lt;p&gt;450,000,000 MDAU * $8 * 12 months = 43.2 Billion&amp;#x2F;year&lt;p&gt;But they won&amp;#x27;t sell 450 M check marks. If we take that 100% down to 1% (4.5M), you&amp;#x27;re back down to $432 MM &amp;#x2F; year, which isn&amp;#x27;t enough to cover the interest payment.&lt;p&gt;Are there even 4.5M who want a check mark? The current estimate is 420,000.
That would be $40 MM &amp;#x2F; year. If you payed 10 people $200,000&amp;#x2F;year to support and develop features for the check mark, that would be $2 MM&amp;#x2F;year, and your profit would be down to $38 MM &amp;#x2F; year.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s say that you had one low wage screener for every 10,000 check marks (to make sure they have a good time and don&amp;#x27;t see too much spam) That would be 42 employees, add another 3 for management (but they get paid more). The screeners cost $20,000 each because they&amp;#x27;re offshore, so that&amp;#x27;s $840,000. Add another $200,000 for their management and that&amp;#x27;s another million a year down the drain.&lt;p&gt;If you want to run your own numbers, here&amp;#x27;s a sheet (make a copy): &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;docs.google.com&amp;#x2F;spreadsheets&amp;#x2F;d&amp;#x2F;15WtfofzrEWE65nQH63_ZQAZB6p6oGpq19ufBlzYJ8bs&amp;#x2F;edit?usp=sharing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;docs.google.com&amp;#x2F;spreadsheets&amp;#x2F;d&amp;#x2F;15WtfofzrEWE65nQH63_Z...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Musk’s Twitter purchase was a leveraged buyout</title><text>Some people are giving Musk a pass for today’s layoffs because Twitter is unprofitable and needs to cut costs. But the real pressure for cost cutting and the layoffs is that Musk purchased Twitter via a leveraged buyout. He loaded the company with $10B of additional debt and now is facing annual $1B interest payments. The dramatic layoffs with no severance are thus the result of Musk’s decision to buy the company and the acquisition strategy of using a leveraged buyout.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>m348e912</author><text>I am actually curious how Musk is going to pull this off. Twitter is actually in a way worse financial situation than it was two weeks ago due to the massive amount of debt incurred in the buyout process (and the associated payments). Layoffs are a must and cutting infrastructure costs is also crucial, however it&amp;#x27;s critical that twitter starts generating some serious revenue.&lt;p&gt;Some advertisers have paused buying, and the $8 blue check thing could help a little but there is major ground to make up and I don&amp;#x27;t know how it get&amp;#x27;s done in the short term. I&amp;#x27;ll be getting some popcorn, but I am rooting for Musk to figure this one out.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ryandvm</author><text>Not me, I&amp;#x27;m rooting for this guy to develop a little humility.</text></comment>