Plunging U.S. revenue at X risks opening up a "massive hole" on its balance sheet that Musk needs to plug to stave off its financial collapse.

Musk’s repeated outbursts against advertisers have dried up the main source of revenue for the loss-making company formerly known as Twitter. A recent decision to sue them for heeding his own advice to not buy ads on the platform hasn’t helped. At some point, he will have to provide a fresh infusion of cash to salvage his $44 billion takeover.

  • Sgt_choke_n_stroke@lemmy.world
    31·
    5 months ago

    Whats interesting is the NRA spent billions in TV propaganda running a news channel and that venture ended up bankrupting the whole organization. It looks like musk is falling in the same trap

    • auzy@lemmy.world
      221·
      5 months ago

      The problem with Tesla really is Elon.

      If he sells his majority stake, I suspect it would be a lot better.

      The biggest reason against buying them is him. They also make more than cars (their powerwalls seem alright).

      If X fails though, I suspect all those bigots will flood over to here (Facebook and X seem to be distracting them for now).

      Let them have their nazi prison. Just make it not profitable

      • InternetUser2012@lemmy.today
        21·
        5 months ago

        If he sells it all, I’ll buy a Tesla the next day. Until then, dinosaur bones for me. Unless an economical and very powerful aftermarket swap parts become readily available.

      • A7thStone@lemmy.world
        81·
        5 months ago

        Personally I’d be wary of putting a giant brick of lithium in my house, especially from a company with the questionable quality control of Tesla.

        • auzy@lemmy.world
          3·
          5 months ago

          I agree partially, but in practice, the LFP batteries should be fine (I would never trust the PowerWall 2).

          Unfortunately, been looking at other alternatives, and there don’t seem to be many seamless home batteries that cut in instantly in the event of a power outage (like an online UPS) either.

          The reality is though, I expect Tesla to lose this market anyway (they only just introduced the PowerWall 3 in AU… Even cheap chinese manufacturers have been using LFP for a while)

      • Iheartcheese@lemmy.world
        82·
        5 months ago

        The people who aren’t buying Teslas because they hate Musk aren’t gonna change their mind because he sold some stock. The company is tainted forever.

        • auzy@lemmy.world
          5·
          5 months ago

          They won’t a tiny amount… But controlling share they might.

          I can’t afford a Tesla. However, my biggest concern is that musk will half arse firmware or sabotage the company somehow.

          If he doesn’t have controlling share, that’s a win and I suspect quality control will likely improve too

        • LowleeKun@feddit.orgDeutsch
          2·
          5 months ago

          I mean i am too poor and don’t need a car but i could see myself buying a tesla once elon really is gone and the other two factors change for me.

        • ...m...@ttrpg.network
          31·
          5 months ago

          The company is tainted forever.

          …he didn’t found the company, engineer the cars, systems, nor infrastructure: there’s a lot of salvageable value in tesla if he goes away…

          • auzy@lemmy.world
            1·
            5 months ago

            The only real engineering he’s done is likely the boring company (who the duck wants to drive in a claustrophobic one lane tunnel) and the submarine thing the cave divers said wouldn’t work (so he called them pedos)

            • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
              2·
              5 months ago

              He didn’t engineer anything because he doesn’t know how. At most he drew some kindergarten levels drawings on a white board.

              • auzy@lemmy.world
                31·
                5 months ago

                The reality is… He is an engineer. Not all engineers have good ideas.

                The difference is, he won’t accept criticism

                I do software development and have had a few crap ideas (I once thought I could make a optimised OpenGL library using Matricies). The difference between normal people and him, is that when I got told it was a crap idea, I deleted the project. When he gets a crap idea, he attacks the person giving feedback, so there is NO incentive to provide anything but good feedback

                When you’re surrounded by yes men you’ll only increasingly become over confident in yourself

                • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
                  11·
                  5 months ago

                  No, Elon isn’t an engineer. He doesn’t have an engineering degree from an ABET certified school, no FE or PE license, nor does he understand basic engineering or design principles.

                  You can lick his boots and lie all you want, but Elon is a rich bitch trust fund baby who takes credit for the ideas of others and you defend him. It’s honestly sad, coming from a mechanical engineer, that you as someone who works in software development, would call him an engineer.

      • tacosplease@lemmy.world
        2·
        5 months ago

        Having worked with Tesla I can tell you not all their problems would leave with Elon, but it would certainly be a great start.

    • Spraynard Kruger@lemmy.world
      19·
      5 months ago

      I don’t know much about trading stock, but I do know SpaceX is not a publicly traded company. That means his buyers for those shares are super limited, so each potential buyer would likely be super wealthy and would have more say over the company than any one individual in the horde of public buyers that would buy up the Tesla stock. Plus, him needing to divest from Tesla might actually drive Tesla stock up a little (eventually), since he won’t have as much control of the company as he did before. It seems he would still be the largest shareholder after the selloff, but this would close the gap between him and the next largest shareholder. He owns over 3x more Tesla stock than the next largest shareholder.

      www.investopedia.com/articles/insights/052616/top-4-tesla-shareholders-tsla.asp#:~:text=Tesla is the world’s most,%2C Vanguard%2C and State Street

    • CaptSneeze@lemmy.world
      3·
      5 months ago

      I’m noticing, but failing to see why that’s significant. Is something interesting going on with spaceX?

      • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
        12·
        5 months ago

        He’s using Tesla, a publicly traded company, as a piggy bank and transfering wealth from it to the privately owned Twitter and SpaceX. This is stealing from Tesla shareholders but because they’re fucking idiots they’re just letting it happen instead of dumping their stock and suing.

      • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
        1·
        5 months ago

        Well someone already said that. I do agree, maybe he’s just fucking stupid. Even I or any other non CEO could have done as good a job since the guy doesn’t actually have to code anything. He literally just needs to show up and steer the company towards business opportunities, which he didn’t do. But he could have planned it too since he actually wanted revenge on the company from the beginning.

    • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
      112·
      5 months ago

      Can we please, please stop with this nonsense.

      1. Why did he fight a lawsuit to get out buying it? How many levels of 4D chess are we on in this demented conspiracy theory where he wants to buy something, so he sends a bunch of very expensive lawyers to court for months to try to get him out of buying it?

      2. Why did he rename it to X? X is his baby. That’s not hyperbole, the X brand is so important to him that the literally named one of his children X. He got kicked out of paypal for trying to make X happen. The man is absolutely obsessed with X. It is his white whale. You don’t bequeath that legacy to something you’re trying to kill.

      Stop giving Musk credit by pretending there’s some kind of genius plan behind everything he does. He’s the richest man on earth, he does not need you to suck his dick for him. He can pay people for that.

      He doesn’t have a secret evil plan. He’s just really, really stupid. He’s a textbook example of how people who start with wealth and unearned confidence will frequently become even wealthier because we have a fucked up clown show of an economic system. That’s all there is to it.

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
    63·
    5 months ago

    That’s because it is almost exclusively tied up in his various corporate holdings that include everything from rocket builder SpaceX and brain chip company Neuralink to his latest startup, xAI.

    None of these investments are easily fungible. Only Tesla is a publicly traded company. So the easiest solution at his fingertips is to liquidate a portion of his remaining 12% stake.

    Let it fucking burn.

  • SmokumJoe@lemmy.world
    20·
    5 months ago

    I don’t understand how you can sue a company that doesn’t want to advertise on your platform

    • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
      15·
      5 months ago

      From what I understand, they’re trying to (mis)use a law to the effect that companies cant all get together and boycott a competitor in order to try to drive it out of the market. If my understanding is correct then, for example, if say Ford and GM and such happened to also run electric taxi businesses, and those taxi businesses bought cars off the open market where in theory they should buy whatever they think gives them what they need at the best price, even if from another car maker, then it wouldnt be legal for them to all go and say “we make electric cars, and Tesla does too, so lets not buy anything from Tesla, regardless of how cheap or good their products are, so they lose business” (Assuming that the Teslas in question would in fact be perfectly suitable for said taxi companies needs that is). They’re trying to sue an advertising industry group, claiming that they’ve done this kind of thing. Except the members of the group in question arent really competitors to Twitter, and in any case, the quality of advertising is thought to diminish if the ads are next to objectionable and bigoted content, since its thought to hurt the advertised company’s image, so if my understanding is correct, it should be simple enough for them to argue “We’re not colluding to hurt your company, your product just isnt up to our standards so we arent buying it”

    • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
      34·
      5 months ago

      You can sue anyone for anything. It’s just a matter of how long you fight it before it gets thrown out.

  • Zier@fedia.io
    451·
    5 months ago

    2 4 1 deal, how to trash 2 companies at once. Good job space karen!

    • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
      English
      5·
      5 months ago

      I get challenged to provide a motive every single time I say this, but I’ve been convinced since just a few months after the purchase that the entire goal has absolutely been to destroy it. And with some of the moves he has made, I’m frankly surprised it took this long.

      He continues to be hostile to most of the user base that made twitter popular, all the censorship/freezepeach stuff, how he destroyed verification, his bullying of advertisers, etc etc. I’m NOT a business genius but these seem like obvious glaringly awful business moves and they just keep coming.