well turning out of perhaps the biggest business headline this
week really the past few weeks and that's billionaire Elon
musk's twitter takeover shares of twitter on the move today
. They are down over these past two days,
but they did jump yesterday on news about musk's cash
deal, Takeover price of$54, apiece. And
that would be for evaluation of 44 billion. Well
, there are many unanswered questions. What is the
strategy for making free speech or priority on the platform
? Is it a done deal to begin with and
will, must be pulled in so many different directions
running Tesla SpaceX, the boring company neuralink and now
twitter. Well, joining me now is a hot
10 Diab managing partner at Gerber, Kawasaki, a
wealth and investment management firm and Bruce Goldfarb president and
Ceo at Rocca pia Partners, a firm that specializes
in activist investor advisory. Hot time. I'll start
with you. I do believe that your firm owns
Tesla. I'm just curious if you still own Tesla
, how big that steak is and Tesla's stock down
today. What does it mean for those shares?
Um, hey, thank you for having me Kristen
uh, yeah, we do own Tesla. We
do it on a lot of, it's actually our
biggest holding in the firm. Obviously shareholders today are
not happy or at least scared. We're not selling
any of it. I don't think this, this
purchase affects any of Tesla's performance. I think if
anybody looked at their earnings last week would understand that
Tesla is really just getting started there really executing in
so many different ways and and really amazing ways and
in this E. V. Space I think people
are scared because uh the deal has some leverage that's
tied to Tesla stock and people are worried that maybe
people Ellen will sell some of his stock but I
don't think that's that's likely interesting Bruce. I want
to bring you in here as well. Your firm
specializes an activist investor advisory. Are you bullish on
this twitter deal? Do you think musk made the
right move? And what does it mean for twitter
? Well, it's an exciting time for twitter shareholders
. Kristen remember that when these deals are announced,
we don't know what is the path going to be
to get it too close. And we we we
can work for investors. We work for activists.
We also work for companies in these types of situations
And right now both sides, both the company and
the must team are out trying to get a handle
on who's buying the shares, Who's selling the shares
and ultimately what's that going to mean to getting the
deal done? I think where the pricing is right
now. Uh it's a deal that has all the
prospects of getting done. But obviously there are the
concerns that are extraneous to the deal that the shareholders
of Tesla for example have concerns as a Tesla shareholder
. What kind of time and attention is hell I'm
going to devote to the various companies that he works
on and if you're a twitter shareholder, you,
you do have concerns about execution going forward. But
right now, the, the concerns are getting together
the details to explain the transaction to get shareholder approval
hot time. Another question for you, I,
you're sticking with your Tesla investment for now. The
firm is despite the stock down double digits today on
the back of this news and Elon musk is becoming
an even busier billionaire. In fact, the world's
richest billionaire, what would cause you to sell the
Tesla state? What's the impetus for any investor watching
, wondering how long should I hold onto my Tesla
shares? Uh, we have no intention of selling
our Tesla shares anytime soon, but obviously, you
know, we were watching everything. I think our
biggest risk is if something happens to Ellen, uh
, you know, Tesla is run by some very
, very competent executives and so forth. But obviously
Ellen says the vision, I want to talk about
Bruce's statement, which is why we, we also
have a small position in twitter and we're definitely happy
with the deal and I don't think there's any risk
of the deal not being executed because usually anti trust
is the issue. So, you know, if
you're on the, if you're on twitter at 54
20 I think that's a, that's a good number
. Um, and the reality is I think the
deal will probably close in the next two or three
months Bruce, what does this mean for twitter investors
? Do you think it was a good deal for
them and of course for twitter users going forward,
what should they be focused on? I know you
said execution is one factor. What else should people
be questioning? Well, there is political risk in
getting this deal done. There's a lot of attention
to twitter. There's a lot of attention to all
of the technology and media and how that impacts our
lives day to day. But from the point of
view of shareholders and that's really where we focus on
helping our clients reach out to shareholders, help communicate
with shareholders and getting transactions accomplished. I think there's
an awful lot of tail winds here to getting the
deal done, one is priced, one is helping
the fact that morgan Stanley and the other banks are
involved here with the death side, the announcement that
Ellen is committing the equity that, that he's going
to put forward. And so from that perspective,
things are moving forward. But ultimately the devil's in
the details here and those details aren't fully formulated in
documents for investors to read. And so when you
have investors who are arbitrage in the situation, they're
waiting for more of those details. The traditional investment
firms are looking for the details too. But if
if I had to vote on a deal today based
on what we know, I would think as an
investor, you'd be supportive the way Hachem, so
indicates hot time back to you. I know you're
active on twitter, I know others at your firm
are active on twitter as well for the user.
What do you think twitter looks like under Elon musk
leadership? What does the user experience like? I
love twitter. Um, I don't think, I
don't think there's anybody on earth that knows how powerful
twitter is more than Elon musk. He's used it
so well for so many years to promote Tesla,
to promote, you know, to to fight short
sellers and so forth. So, I think what
Ellen can do is really can improve that that experience
by maybe removing some of the bots, you know
, Russians are manipulating twitter. Uh, there is
a lot of, you know, uh really,
really kind of spam that comes at you. So
I think the product can be improved and I think
, and nobody can argue that this platform is so
powerful for journalists, for politicians, for corporations and
if that experience can be better, it really be
a fantastic product Bruce. Another question for you is
clearly privacy is at play here, amazon former Ceo
and founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos, um, not
so keen on this deal saying must, does potentially
um exposed and give leverage to china if this deal
actually does go through, but for the user experience
, should they be concerned about privacy on the platform
as this potentially transitions from a public to a private
company kristen, I'm not a privacy expert, but
we do understand how investors make use of the platform
and we understand how people communicate through the platform.
In fact, at our firm, we make use
of social media to reach out to investors. So
it's important to be able to know that these platforms
exist and it's great to know that there's going to
be people using them. That's really going to be
the concern private companies and when, when private equity
kind of deals are done, it's designed to make
a product better and ultimately, I think that's what's
going to happen here with twitter. Alright guys,
great conversations. So many questions still unanswered, but
you helped us. I break them down a little
bit here on shatter news. On Closing Bell.
That's hot time DF managing partner, Gerber, Kawasaki
and Bruce Goldfarb President and Ceo at Tocopilla Partners.
We appreciate it.