Just last year, Twitter’s market cap was more than double what it is today. Since then, they have managed to grow revenue by 48% while reducing the losses by 9%. So, with all that, I think $29B is a steal for the acquisition.
EDIT: my last response here was uninformed.
> And speaking about science fiction, what will Alphabet/Google do to turn around Twitter?
Clearly you have not read the post, and are jumping to conclusions.
Also the competition in the bidding process matters. There are a limited number of players who can/will swallow an acquisition this size. Public companies never get bought for these numbers. Why would Google bid that when a 30-40% premium would be enough for most shareholders to vote yes?
On twitter itself, I feel the quote, "clown car that fell into a goldmine" attributed to mark zuckerberg is pretty appropriate.
I doubt that a 40% premium will be enough. But I can see your skepticism. A lot of acquisitions never make sense.
Periscope doesn't fulfill the "toothbrush" principle, aka stuff that you use every day. That's how Google does M&A. Their corporate development people have talked about it publicly.
Also, the shares turnover every 26 days given that about 26MM shares trade every day. Hard to say that a majority of the shareholder base would not accept a 40% premium.
Tell me please of other public companies which also were acquired by public companies for that multiplier.
> Clearly you have not read the post, and are jumping to conclusions.
I read the post and it offers a childish reason why Twitter should be acquired by Google.
It seems like there's good evidence that Twitter is limited by the Twitter - most people don't like to scream at the world (post a stream of public crap) and for those that do, Twitter is kind of the lowest quality pedestal to stand while you do so.