When does Elon run out of borrowing capacity? | Hacker News Reader

When does Elon run out of borrowing capacity?

forbes.com

3 pointsZigurd12 comments

This article claims that, prior recent declines in the price of $TSLA, Elon had already pledged 92% of his stake in Tesla.

How does this work? Are Elon's margin requirements being met? Is he getting a sweetheart deal on margin requirements? Have the terms been renegotiated?

Over the past year, Elon Musk has sold $40 billion in $TSLA. Some of that goes to to the taxman, some to his self-directed "charity", but even if he only keeps half that, 50% of $40 billion is better than the 20% ($12.5 billion loan from $62.5 billion in shares).

Tesla -- in theory -- also has limits on how much he can put up for margin but Morgan Stanley cutting him off is more likely than the Tesla BoD cutting him off.

My understanding is that Musk didn't end up taking any loans out against his tesla shares for the twitter deal. It was a 12 billion dollar leveraged buyout loan, some outside investor money, and the rest was from him selling stock instead of taking loans against it as he usually does.

A better question might be is When does Musk run out of rich friends and financiers willing to blindly hand him money?

Rich friends are good for a mere billion here and there, which is what Larry Ellison put in. Jack left half a billion on the table when he could have cashed out. But they can't provide tens of billions, which is the scale at which Musk has borrowed.

All this debt collateralized by Tesla shares is what will squeeze Musk at scale. Musk will never get a dime out for every dollar he paid for Twitter. That money is gone for good. On top of that, the value of Tesla shares he has used as collateral is down by 60%. Twitter revenue has collapsed. An operating profit is a distant dream. Interest payments loom.

My guess is that Musk, who was trying to trash talk his way out of the deal, finally closed the deal because he believed he could "flip" Twitter, if not for a profit, for less than a settlement would have cost. That's looking like a losing bet.

He should have cashed out a billion from Tesla and walked away from the deal.

The billion dollar fee was in the case that the deal broke down for reasons outside Musks control. He made a binding offer, he couldn't just say "I changed my mind", pay the billion and walk away.

This is correct. There was never a discretionary exit from the contract. Any settlement would be a negotiated amount. In principle it could be less than $1B. But accepting anything much short of the agreed price per share would have gotten the board sued by shareholders who, understandably, wanted the full amount.

> he could "flip" Twitter, if not for a profit, for less than a settlement would have cost.

That doesn't really match with what he's done since buying it though IMHO. If that's the goal, why get involved as he did, instead of handing over quickly to someone else to manage it and slim it down with less waves?

Pundits are still claiming Twitter is running "better than ever." When people always tell you you are wonderful and doing a great job, you might start believing your own line of bull.

> closed the deal because he believed he could "flip" Twitter, if not for a profit, for less than a settlement would have cost

I think he closed it because he and his billionaire buddies didn't want to go through court depositions. Who knows what shenanigans might have been exposed from that.

"Apr 28, 2022, 05:24pm EDT" - predictions and speculations on something that is now a done deal.

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