Let’s take a break from the constant talk of firings at Twitter (roughly 3.700 employees were let go Friday) and the fact that advertisers are fleeing the platform (for progressive political reasons, most likely), and the fact that annoying celebrities are taking a “stand” by departing Twitter and talk about an expensive joke.
The saga that was the Twitter purchase by the world’s richest person started with a joke from Musk. Did you ever notice it? The price tag he attached for purchasing the company was $54.20. Kind of a random number, but not really. The 420 was an homage to marijuana. National weed day is April 20. 420 has always been slang for pot.
So, a report on qz.com set out to try and determine how much that joke cost Musk.
When he made the offer, the $54.20 price was 38% more than the current cost of a share of Twitter stock this spring. The report took into account past valuations in mergers and acquisitions, and they landed on a stock price of $54 per share, being a generous but relatively fair offer price.
So taking into account the extra $.20 per share, getting from $54 to $54.20 would be 20 cents for the 765 million outstanding shares. The math on that comes to $153 million.
So there you go, a $153 million joke.
Another interesting aspect of the sale. Musk took out $12.5 billion in bank loans to complete the purchase. Bloomberg reported he would have to pay $1 billion in interest per year to service that loan.
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