bitcoin break $48,000 a couple weeks ago a project called terra buying up hundreds of millions of bitcoin every other day i spoke to the co-founder of that project he tells me that demand may have helped investor sentiment but can't take credit for bitcoin's rally. not making a dent in the $20 billion in daily bitcoin volume. back to you. >> kate, thank you very much and that will do it for "squawk on the street" this morning. "techcheck" starts right now good thursday morning. welcome to "techcheck" i'm jon fortt with carl quintanilla, deirdre bosa and julia boorstin. elon musk made an offer to buy twitter. $54.20 a share, at a valuation of 43 billion. today we're going to look into is that the right price? what's the right strategy for the business and the right process and who is the right leadership for this company? twitter's board holding an all hands meeting at 5:00 p.m. eastern to discuss the bid

you know, this is quite a story, julia. i know that you've been talking about it this morning as well. you've been covering following twitter for a long time. back up for a bit and 54.20 a share, not necessarily a bad price for a lot of people, but there's a question how is elon going to come up with that money? he could sell some of what he's got to do it, but will he? >> it seems like he's unlikely to do this by financing it all himself and selling shares we do see some pressure on tesla shares as a result of that question, but really so many questions here, jon, and guys about what's going to happen next the ultimate question is what does elon musk want to do with twitter? is he interested in it as a business venture he says he can only do with it what he wants if it's a private company and he is very publicly criticized twitter's reliance on advertising, advertising, of course, comprises more than 90% of all of twitter's revenue. so this is an ad-supported

business and he does not like that he's also been a big proponent of making a free and open platform for free speech that public town square, the global town square so, i think the question is, will he pursue this more as a non-profit venture he wants this to be a public utility and then the question then is who would he get to come in and help cofinance this there's a lot of skepticism, a lot of questions about whether the board is going to go shop this around to other potential buyers and also remember, guys that twitter has traded above $70 a share. so, maybe this isn't the best offer. >> julia, as you said, there's just so many questions and so much speculation no one really knows what elon musk wants to do with twitter. is there even a possibility, a scenario, that he would actually take it private and bring jack dorsey back? we, as far as we know, have a good relationship. we know that what elon musk doing right now is adding a lot of stress to the board, but in terms of philosophy n terms of

business, him and jack dorsey could still be on the same page? >> i don't know. what's interesting -- and i've been trying to figure out what his relationship is with jack dorsey, is that jack dorsey wants twitter to be something more like a decentralized thing that is controlled by and perhaps even owned by the people rather than controlled by one person fred wilson, who tweeted out and was an early investor in twitter, he said this is the opposite of what you want to happen you don't want twitter controlled by just one person. so i think in many ways maybe on some issues dorsy and musk would agree, but when it comes to this question of whether twitter should be controlled by the people or controlled by one person, i would say dorsy will probably disagree with him on that. >> interesting, julia. jp morgan, we have a lot of notes out from sell site analysts but jp morgan we do not expect the offer to be accepted by the board shares have greater upside if

management is able to execute on the plan to innovate the product, grow the user base 20% and build out direct response. that's a long laundry list >> that is indeed a long laundry list it's been interesting if you look at all the tumultuous at twitter over the last year, this is a company that lost its ceo, founder jack dorsey, in came agorawall, a guy who has been at the company for a while but not well known by investors. he does not have a public profile. he's been trying to manage the company and in the meantime in the past year twitter has rolled out a number of changes, product changes, the introduction of the subscription services, they hint at other potential revenue streams down the line and they gave their shareholders a road map of how they're going to be reaching different targets in the next couple of years ambitious targets both in terms of revenue and user growth so this is a company that had a plan, a post elliott activist investor plan to get its business on track and then here

comes elon musk saying i'm not as interested in the business as i am in this as a tool by the way, musk doesn't like the core of twitter's business strategy so a lot of questions here i think that's one reason why we are seeing so much skepticism from analysts. >> yeah. it would be an unprecedented surrender, carl, for the current management and board to just hand over the reins to elon musk you're offering way less than the 52-week high and no confidence in management, here you take it. they might do that maybe they don't have -- >> he says he has no confidence in the board and he hasn't detailed the financing so it would be -- i can't think of a precedent and david faber this morning couldn't think of one either this morning, carl. we'll see. >> i think dow jones was the we could think of you have a big family contingent. sticking with twitter, musk

says free speech means different things in different countries leading to retaliation against both tesla and spacex. bring in nilay pitel interesting angle we haven't gotten to yet and that's the ancillary effect on his other businesses >> yeah. look, twitter is a global platform i think we all remember the highs of 2010 when we thought social media would bring democracy to every corner of the world. that was very idealistic i really hoped that would happen it didn't happen why didn't that happen countries around the world realize they have their own laws many do not have a first amendment like the united states has. they have other kinds of speech restrictions and they made sure that social media companies followed their laws so, if you think you can buy twitter and use it to export the american first amendment around the world in some way, they're quickly going to discover that other countries have strong opinions about what you can say in those countries in the way that united states is prohibited from having. then you have tesla and spacex

trying to expand into those markets. that'sen enormous risk for tesla shareholders in particular. >> that's a good point, nilay. not everyone around the world believes in free speech and here it's very divided. mark cuban brought up this idea of potential foreign ownership saying why wouldn't foreign money come in and buy twitter for the influence that it brings now, obviously that would have a tough time getting past the regulators, but could that source potentially be obscured is that sort of a real fear that investors could be looking at right now? >> investors should be afraid of that as much as the united states government and everybody in this country who cares about free speech. the other thing i would say very directly to the cnbc audience in particular is maybe you think there's a problem with free speech on social networks. the answer is definitely not giving more power to one guy the answer is market competition. and to say that he can just fix it, he can unlock twitter's potential by doing things that

no company can do on a global scale himself is just risky. that creates risk downstream from twitter to every other company that a lot of people bet on, in particular tesla, which has to expand in china and china is going to brick no decent from its speech policies from anyone and will retaliate against his companies. the amount of risk that is being created downstream from i think i should just buy twitter is extraordinarily high and it's not just twitter shareholders should be concerned it really is tesla's shareholders. >> we talked about risk and the concerns when it comes to elon musk, when it comes to tesla shareholders, twitter shareholders there's one group we haven't talked much about and that's twitter employees. i see massive risk for them right here if elon musk gets it, it seems to me like he's going to cut the head count there, right? if he's not going to rely on advertising, there's a lot of people who he doesn't need there are a lot of costins he's

going to want to get rid of if he's getting rid of revenue. if he doesn't get its, current management will be under pressure to cut as well. and so how are they going to run this company under either scenario isn't that tough in this tight labor market, nilay? >> i absolutely think so i also think if you take a company like twitter private and you take equity compensation off the table for employees, there's a lot of money in the value right now going to a lot of different things there's a lot of potentially easy upside in crypto startups for a lot of engineers who are very seasoned at building out a community product, which is what crypto kind of prides itself on being. so how do you manage the brain drain if you no longer have your best compensation tool available as a private company i don't know how you manage costs if you're cutting but then have to increase salaries to just match the upside of another public company that's offering equity as compensation that just seems extraordinarily challenging. also, fundamentally what is

twitter's asset? the network of people who use it everyone uses it you buy, take it public, start making dramatic changes to how it works and charging for it, suddenly you might lose that network. that network is not necessarily durable. there's a lot of risk for employees. do you want to work on a thing that everyone uses or paid service that is getting smaller and potentially lower compensation >> interesting by the way, the sell side today, nilay, trying to game out what he might do. some of these projections a little absurd, but said we can only assume one of his actions would be to move the company to a state where the local government shares more of his personal views similar to his move to tesla. there's that to consider, too. >> yeah. you know, the first amendment applies equally in every state of the union as far as i'm told. that's what i learned in law school i'm moving from state to state is the solution. you know, california is not making speech regulations on

twitter. but i think he might move to a different country. that seems potentially dangerous. at the end of the day, the big kind of conflict in america is between the government wants to regulate tech companies and they say we're the stewards of american values and export around the globe and that's challenging. this is one of the moments where i think it's important to say actually having this company based in america and rooted in the american first amendment is important and that also means that it has to -- has its own right, own first amendment rights in america and can do what it wants in this country. that's a very delicate balance i'm not sure that any academic or corporation or person on twitter my mentions every figured it out but it's the central tension of every social networking service based in this country. >> yep as twitter shares at the low today traded above yesterday's high by just 5 cents we're going to watch the street's reaction. nilay, thank you nilay patel. >> always a pleasure.

we're going to get to the valuation piece of this. $54.20 the right price for twitter? and if musk walks away, what is the right price then here to discus nyu stern school of business professor also known as the dean of valuation it's great to have you on a day like today simple question, is that the right price? i know that many have pointed to the fact that it was higher, almost $80 last year, but over five years, the price starts to make a little more sense >> and i know at the moment this story is more political story than a business story, in my view you tell me which side of the red/blue divide you're on, i can tell you what you think about this particular -- at least potential deal but i want to talk about twitter as a business. nine years ago when twitter went public, i valued it and the story it told about twitter is it's got lots of users and can't figure out yet how to monetize them nine years later, that's exactly the same story this is a company that is stuck

on the same story for nine years which tells me that either a problem with the management, you know, whether it's jack dorsey or agrawahl or problem with the platform i don't think that bringing in new management can fix the platform problem the platform yourself is three things when you think about it, the first is revenue 280 character limit used to be 140. second is time limits. you can tweet almost instantaneously and third feeds on impulses. people feel the urge to say what's on their mind and that gets people into trouble people come to twitter the same reason you slow down to watch a car wreck on the highway you see fights happens on twitter. i hear people acting twitter is creating this huge potential plus for humanity, i say it's a simple experiment. more of twitter seized to exist, would we all be worse off in some significant way

so first let's start treating twitter as if it was a national treasure it's a company it's done some good. it's done some bad i could live without twitter i could live with twitter. i think we need to be careful about not putting this company on a platform and thinking as a national treasure that needs to be saved at all costs. >> okay. maybe in terms of the business model, but what about in terms of its influence, would you be sort of blase about you could use it or not use it, the government should not care or care because whether or not you like using or don't you can't deny its influence is huge and you even said that maybe they're looking for a white knight to sweep in. >> it's got both positive and negative influences, right you talk about influence, influence cuts both ways so i think twitter has affected the national discourse and we can arguewhether it's for the good or the bad. so i think that from the point of has it affected the way we interact with each other, absolutely but has it affected in a

positive way i'm still not sure so, i think that somebody might buy the platform for the political influence it can get and i personally think it's a mistake for musk to do it for the same reason i thought it was a mistake for jeff bezos to buy "the washington post." essentially by buying "the washington post," i think bezos opened amazon up to a political backlash my worry is not about twitter. it's a tiny company relative to tesla but the potential backlash it could create for tesla which is after all the crown jewel in musk's holdings. >> huh well, microsoft wanted to buy tiktok, the u.s. operations not long ago how do you then think about the value of social networks and whether, you know, twitter might see another bidder and how investors should think about that in this context clearly twitter is not tiktok. tiktok has been doing extraordinarily well and hasn't ended up in that bind that you

mentioned that twitter has been in since the very early days but to what degree do those comps fit in >> i think if you have a established business of substantial value, i would stay away from the social media space as far as i can. i think that what you get is negatives vastly exceed what you get as positives by buying these big social media platforms the companies that are there -- facebook has no choice but to live in the social media platform look how quickly facebook is trying to run away from its core business you don't change your name unless you feel that something toxic about something you spent a decade building. that i think is revealing. i'm glad microsoft, as a microsoft shareholder i don't want them to buy tiktok. i think you're buying more pain than gain in the long term >> yeah, you could certainly apply that to elon musk and twitter. as always, thanks for your insights >> thank you now let's turn to the business strategy.

will twitter work as a subscription model instead of primarily ad-driven business that would be a big change that could come with its own risk let's ask somebody who knows from inside the company, vivian schiller was twitter's global chair of news, also former ceo of npr, now the executive director of aspen digital. vivian, good morning there are real costs here when it comes to running twitter in a moderated way. and maybe we haven't talked enough about costs we talked about, well, what if certain revenue goes away and if twitter isn't profitable for a while bhu this would be a major cash drain for elon musk and potential partners to run this, wouldn't it? >> well, he's claiming that he wants to eliminate all content moderation whatsoever. so i suppose in his mind he thinks he can zero those costs out. but of course it's completely impossible to have no content moderation there is no such thing even truth social and some of the other right wing per tenders

to twitter they all have terms of service they all have content moderation policies and nilay explained later, twitter explained earlier, twitter is a global company. so, there are different laws in different parts of the country it's just not possible if you eliminate all of that, it would quickly become a sewer and unusable and destroy any value that was remaining left in twitter. >> so that's a reason for perhaps elon musk not to buy it under his current plan but it's not necessarily a reason for shareholders not to try to off load it at 54.20 a share, right >> well, i suppose look, there's a reasonable conversation to be had about how do you unlock more value from twitter? to be sure, it is not kept up -- that's the understatement of the day. it's not kept up with its other big tech platforms in terms of growth of daily active users and

revenue without a doubt because twitter is fundamentally locked into a single, incredibly effective model. i think one of the reasons that you have not seen much change in twitter over the years, i mean, little things around the edges to be sure, is because it works. and anything that you do to undermine that core value proposition of why people come to twitter and why it's so influence shall will undermine its core value and potentially destroy the entire company >> i wonder what you think twitter's purpose is because i'm thinking of one example, let's take the will smith academy award episode. widely tweeted about in realtime ratings for that show on linear television didn't move that much, vivian really what it does is funnel news to other news outlets and beyond that, i wonder how much practical value it has given the fact that the percentage of americans who were on it is small >> yeah. the percentage on it is small. but twitter's influence punches way above its weight whatever happens -- just look at

donald trump you don't even need to go to will smith you know, the number of people that saw while he was still able to tweet trump's tweets was minuscule compared to the amplification of that message and the power it had and the ways that it ricocheted around the world, not just with the public but with the most -- with titans of industry, with world leaders, the influence of twitter cannot be overstated and it is not reflected in the ordinary kinds of metrics that shareholders looked at now, i understand, you know, that as a shareholder you may want to unlock that value. but, there is a real question and i've seen absolutely no good ideas of how you unlock more of that value without destroying its core purpose, its core intention and its core value >> yeah. vivian, such a good point that influence totally disconnected from how it's valued and in that sense it is so hard to know what

elon musk wants to do with it. if you had to venture a guess, what do you think he wants to do with it? is this about making money for him, increasing growth, revenue? >> this is elon musk in my opinion taking his favorite toy out of the toy box and playing with it and getting exactly what he's getting today, which is a hell of a lot of attention everybody talking about him. will this happen boy, i would not bet my twitter stock on it. i don't think will happen. i don't have any twitter stock at the moment. but if i had, i wouldn't bet it. i don't believe that it will happen i think this is -- he's getting the attention that he wants. he's very effective tweeter, let's face it. but he doesn't have a vision and just to say we're going to, you know, amplify free speech around the world shows an incredible lack of sophistication of what content moderation really means. >> well, if you're not betting on it happening, would that mean selling here or would that mean

buying here? i'm not sure actually asking you that because i know you don't have -- >> good. >> that is the question, right vivian schiller, thank you. >> sure. happy to be here. we'll talk more twitter and elon in a little bit including the m & a angle, what's the deal-making strategy here and what might that mean for investors as we are right at yesterday's intraday high. we'll talk to kara swisher on musk, dorsy and all the personality at play when "techcheck" continues. (cto) ♪ i want the world. ♪ ♪ i want the whole world. ♪ (ceo) ♪ i want today. ♪ ♪ i want tomorrow. ♪ (dispatch) ♪ i want it noooooow! ♪ (vo) get 5g that's ready right now.

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elon musk's offer to buy twitter for 54.20 a share is around $43 billion as the world's richest person, though, he doesn't exactly have that much cash in his checking account. robert frank has a look at how musk could finance that purchase robert >> well, dee, you're right he's worth about $260 billion, none of that is actually liquid. so there are basically three ways to fund this deal if he ends up doing it now first and least likely he could sell tesla shares. 17% stake in the company worth about $180 billion if he sold that, that would dump 40 million shares on to the market and reduce his stake to about 13% from 17% and that fear alone is why tesla

shares are down around 3% today. still, musk has always seen his shares in tesla and those sales as a last resort in fact, the only reason he sold that 16 billion in shares last year was to pay taxes on that compensation plan. he could also pledge his shares and maybe his stake in spacex as collateral for loans now one time he had over a third of his tesla shares pledged as collateral and write off the interest on the loans for taxes but those loans could also weigh on the tesla share price most likely he gets financing from private equity, venture capital or maybe a few of his billionaire friends like peter teal or larry ellison. now musk does have about 2 billion in cash from those stock sales last year. maybe he used that to buy his current twitter stake. his s.e.c. filing this morning citing, quote, the completion of necessary financing as a condition of any deal. so john, he has the wealth

he just doesn't have the money >> yeah. >> back to you. >> but he could get it so, maybe not funding secured but his credit score is probably good enough to come up with it thank you. >> yeah. so who else might make an offer for twitter? our next guest thinks elon is in a league of his own. saying the platform is all his unless twitter rejects the bid and demands i here price former m & a investor banker bill cohen bill, welcome. before we get to the other folks involved here, how careful does twitter's board have to be about knowing how he plans to finance this before looking like they're going along? >> they have to see the back of his eyes they have to see that his funding is, in fact, secured they have to see that his financial house is in order, that he can actually pull off the deal and assuming he's offering all cash, which i

assume he is at the moment, that he's actually got it together. now, as robert said, there are a lot of different ways. he could also borrow money twitter has something like let's say roughly a billion dollars of ebitda he could certainly borrow a fair amount of money against that to add to the rest of the cash that elon is going to have to accumulate here. >> but the problem, bill, that i can't -- one of the many problems i can't figure out but the biggest one is he's talking about tearing down twitter's existing business model. how will he get anyone throwing money in when he's not clear how they're ever going to get it out? >> look, this is the biggest risk for elon musk here. one of the things that makes twitter so interesting and provocative and why so many of us are obsessed with it is because sort of like a daily battleground but if he does a number of things that he's talking about doing, making sort of a right wing echo chamber, for instance, or bringing back donald trump, then he's going to alienate

maybe half or two thirds of the audience that uses twitter then he'll be the king of nothing and then that ebitda will shrivel up versus one of the things he's talking about eliminating advertising. then that ebitda will shrivel up and the people who lent him money or borrowed the money that he borrowed to make this offer he won't be able to pay back on the other hand, once again, he's the world's richest guy net worth 275 billion. if it had to come out of his tesla stock or his net worth or all the other ways he has to make money or other things that he's doing, you know, he can probably make good on it and that's what investors or lenders would count on >> bill, all those things that you just outlined or thought of that could happen if elon musk takes control, you can see that happening if they did it as a public company out in the open doesn't that add more fuel to elon musk's argument that they would have to go private to do the things he wants to achieve in the longer run? >> oh, i agree

going private would allow him to do these things that he wants to do some of which are crazy, but he has to be careful because, you know, if he does some of the things that he wants to do, even as a private company, he risks alienating the people who make twitter possible, which is the users. and if he alienates enough of the users, then they're going to drop off the platform. they're not going to have that lively debate that we all come to know and love and/or love come to know and hate and that's going to be sort of the end of it he'll be the king of nothing he'll have won his prize but what will the prize look like after he wins it and does the things he wants to do. he's walking a very fine line here, i think. >> so maybe the board, as you suggest, will say show us the money and we'll see what elon does bill, thank you. >> my pleasure thank you. ♪ we're going to have lots more on this developing story next eara swisher weighs in after the dot a n'gonywhere.

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♪ quick break from twitter to get a gut check on taiwan semiconductor raising outlook after strong earnings report earlier this morning the chip manufacturer saw sells year over year and up 12% from last quarter sales to smart phone chip makers did dip but demand for chips used in high performance computing applications picked up the slack. automotive chip sales up 26% fueling $17.6 billion revenue showing to kick off 2022, carl >> all right, jon. historical look at twitter's valuation is coming up pretty interesting stay with us hybrid work is here. it's there. it's everywhere. but for someone to be able to work from here, there has to be someone here making sure everything is safe. secure. consistent.

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♪ let's turn to the crypto universe, partnering with our friends at nbc news on this. it's been a little more than seven months since el salvador made bitcoin a national currency country's president promoted it but there are two questions people want to know, does it work and does anyone really use it nbc's god di schwartz spent 48 hours on the ground in el salvador to find out. >> we're here in el salvo doer, take the promise and dream of bitcoin and turn it into an official currency.

these atms people load up their phones how does it work we got $199.01 two hours later not sure where the 99 cents went, but money is on our phone. >> spescial lines for people paying in bitcoin. >> they said their transaction had been cancelled shows we're down about $14 went through on our account. >> second time we tried to use bitcoin with a zriek in el salvador and 0 for 2 >> gadi is back from el salvador great to see you, man. what an assignment talk about what this was like? >> well, it was a lot more misses than there were hits, but it was working down in el salvador and saw a lot of signs for a lot of major chains, american chains, that accepted bitcoin. mcdonald's, starbucks saying they accepted bitcoin. however when you went to go pay with bitcoin you noticed two

things one, no one else was paying with bitcoin, two a lot of times when you tried to pay with bitcoin it would take a wile. that grocery store, went to the grocery store, very stressful ten minutes waiting for the transaction to come through on their end. it cleared on our end. so that was $15 out of our account that never arrived at the grocery store. then they told us, sorry, you can't leave with the groceries because we haven't gotten the money. so we had to pay double. we paid with the credit card so in terms of actual practical use, when you're talking about currency, you need it to work 100% of the time and just doesn't work 100% of the time. >> is there a sense that the people want this to get smoothed out? >> yes and no. the people right now they were given $30 in bitcoin when this all rolled out there is nothing like incentivizing people with free money, right so, whenthey first started, there was a lot of hype. there were long lines at those cashiers, atms people pulled out that $30 if they could other instances where people's

$30 wouldn't be in their accounts for some reason there were other instances where it would take too long for the transaction to go through. so, that was six, seven months ago. for the most part most have stopped using the wallet and are now using cash. >> wow and no government has gone whole hog quite like these guys. >> exactly. >> i assume we'll see a lot more on nbc great stuff. thank you. dee? >> fascinating look as he says currency has to work 10 o 0% of the time much more on twitter and musk. much more ahead on theho sw. kara swisher is next stay with us 7 million kids develop their passion for learning through our grow up great initiative. and now, we're providing billions of dollars for affordable home lending programs... as part of 88 billion to support underserved communities... including loans for small businesses in low and moderate income areas.

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not letting go of the twitter story quite yet. bring in co-founder and new york times contributor kara swisher who herself has been responding to friends on twitter. you said all bets were off, kara you were right >> yeah. well, you never know what elon is going to do, right? in this case it could be one of two things he could be trying to sell his shares and using this as cover, that i tried i tried to do it obviously wall street sort of thinking that with the price not really rising that much, it's stayed pretty flat so if he's offering 54.20, which is a wee joke, he also, besides being an offer, and making best and final offer, that could be the case the other case is he wants to buy it very difficult it's very expense i have even for the world's richest man. as i note before with you the

other night, to get this money, he's going to have to do with his twitter shares or find a lot of rich friends and economically it's problematic given twitter's business history so, i'm not sure what's going on here i think he means it but doesn't mean it. i don't know how else to say that i sound so equivocal, but that's the way it is with elon. >> yeah. you can see shares now below yesterday's high, down about half a percent on the day. you have said that apple probably not interested, but that beniof kicked the tires before what's your sense about other parties? >> i don't know. you know, it's a low price for what twitter should be, right? but it isn't it isn't so he's making kind of a low-ball offer because it was up in 77 last february and even higher for a lot of the year then it declined until he came back and made it go up again so, if you think of this as one of the few independent sites on the internet with which is high profile, not that big, not a great business, it's one of the few you can pick up for under

$50 billion. that might be valuable to a bigger company that said, it comes with all kinds of hooks, including what to do about trump and, of course, elon, its biggest shareholder. so a lot of companies, you know, i got a lot of business companies, staying away from this one, no way hedge funds and private equity people might see value here. i'm not sure it's a lot of money. it's a lot of money. it's a big bet. >> kara, nine days ago jack dorsey tweeted i'm really happy elon is joining the twitter board. cares deeply about your world and twitter's lead in it they would be an incredible team that last part hasn't aged well. but what strikes me about this is twitter is a company with many founders at one time were fighting for influence and none seem to care about it anymore. they're letting this other guy stroll in and jerk the company around michael dell, steve jobs, certainly didn't let this happen when their companies were in trouble. what does that say about twitter

and this moment? >> well, they did for a little while, right you don't know what's going on we just taped a pivot episode and scott galway had a great idea, why doesn't elon go with a dou in some way. he could raise the money pretty easily, every dentist in the world would want to be investing with elon musk, even if it's not economic but i don't know they moved on to other things, right? they moved on to other things. twitter is a really hard thing to manage. the one thing i agree with elon is it should be a private company. it can't do what it needs to do as a public company. that doesn't matter that it should be a free platform, free speech platform or subscription which i think it should. so, he's right essentially about the problems of changing it. i just don't know if he can afford it. it will be interesting to see or if this is just a way sell his shares at a profit. >> the ceo of ftx had an

interesting twitter threat on what a decentralized twitter might look like, how they could monetize this this web 3 play. kara, i wonder who might actually benefit from owning twitter? certainly elon musk has had a lot of benefit from his tweets considering that his advertising budget for tesla has been nothing. but is there another company that could really harness the influence of twitter to its advantage whether that be in big tech or media or something that we are not thinking of i'm thinking back to oracle and tiktok no one saw that coming. >> maybe some of these digital finance companies. i think sam bankman freed, for example, it could be very valuable to people who have crazy money, where the stock is out of whack with where it is. if you're a big company, like if you're apple, no way are you touching this thing. why would you? plus you have to deal with elon and trump? no thank you you know, marc benioff, i tweeted him, he sent me a smiley emoji, that's all i got back from him you know, i think it's expensive and a big bet on something that still hasn't proven itself out as a business. but you can see some of these

finance people doing that. and doing it a different way in this decentralized idea was pushed by jack dorsey and parag. i think as a private company it makes a lot more sense out of the limelight in terms of public thing, public attention and scrutiny at the same time, it's -- i think even if these rich people especially on the right -- on the more right side of tech complain about twitter or whoever complains losing money is another thing i think they like money more than going on about free speech. and so we'll see we'll see. we'll see. >> finally, kara, i see biz stone, one of the founders, wished ned segel happy birthday today. twitter cfo. and we'll get this employee meeting this afternoon i wonder, we're going to hear some leaks out of that, don't you think? >> oh, yeah. i think employees -- one of the problems is if he takes it over, you'll see an exodus they should go over to metta why do they want to deal with this possible craziness. by the i warks let me just say, elon has every right and earned

the respect around creating something out of nothing whether it's tesla or spacex this seems like a distraction and if i was a tesla shareholder even though they love him, this is a lot to love you know, and they may want -- they may want him to focus on the things he does best, which are cars and spaceships and the stuff he has done there is astonishing. this feels like a side hustle in some ways. >> right well, we did mention earlier, tesla now down almost 3.5% on some of those concerns kara -- >> wall street knows i trust wall street on this one. the stock market knows what this is that's what i would look at. >> kara, thank you kara swisher. >> that would be a fun quote to take out of context. but we won't look at social media valuations is up next stay with us ♪

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it was a $36 billion market cap in early 2014 and it's 36 billion right now. however, almost all of that underperformance relative to social media peers occurred before about five years ago. if you look at the five years up until now, you actually see twitter has outperformed of course, meta had the massive stumble, so this is a lot about how facebook has done relatively and snap over this five-year period if you go into six years, twitter has done okay coming off the low base and it didn't participate into the rush into fang-type stocks into 2014, '15, into '16 presumably, they're looking for a way to build the case to obviously not take the supposed take it or leave it bid at 54.20 a year we haven't done that terribly recently it was higher last year before the bid and thof course, this outperformance was before elon

musk had it and thanks to facebook's stumble, up until a couple of months ago before musk did reveal his stake, guys >> mike, at the same time, when we take a look at valuation especially in terms of the revenue multiple is twitter is between an alphabet and a snap and you can use that argument to sort of say this is properly priced >> on a fundamental basis, twitter has never looked cheap even though the stock has not performed very well and what are these couple hundred million, very plugged in users and the necessity and the essential service. it hasn't traded on financial terms very closely, and to me, that also brings up some of the questions around musk's bid and everyone says he'll get private equity well, the math doesn't work very well for this took a take pride in transaction of twitter if you're looking at the numbers and servicing the debt and try

to make a return down the road >> indeed. a lot of the downgrades today. i mean, if the stock ever trades on fundamentals point to higher expenses, russia-ukraine troubles and that's why they're cautious of multiple compression now. mike, thank you very much. one shareholder rejecting the bid. we'll tell you who in just a moment (cto) ♪ i want the world. ♪ ♪ i want the whole world. ♪ (ceo) ♪ i want today. ♪ ♪ i want tomorrow. ♪

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is this wagging? - good right? just when you thought there couldn't be more news on twitter, julia boorstin has a couple of more nuggets julia? >> that's right, carl. saw saudi billionaire tweeting, i don't think the proposed offer by elon musk comes close to the intrinsic value of @twitter given its growth prospects being the longest and long term shareholders of twitter. we reject this offer we will hear from elon musk directly today he is speaking at the ted conference we are opening up the elon musk interview live plus another major surprise and tune in at 9:45 a.m. pacific and

this could be truly epic and it could, indeed. i'll be monitoring that, carl, and of course, we'll bring you fwas the latest. >> julia, interesting that you've got this billionaire pu pushing the board in another direction. i wonder if there will be other voices >> it's been interesting watching twitter and watching others such as fred wilson weigh in, and we'll be watching, of course, that meeting that twitter is having with its employees this afternoon at 5:00 p.m. eastern, 2:00 p.m. pacific. >> not to mention, julia, of all of the earnings that are coming in the coming week j&j, ibm, netflix, tesla will be one of them and we will hear him ostensibly, maybe talk directly about how his main business is going. >> yeah. i mean, that's the question, how much is all of this distracting from what's going on at tesla? we've been watching those tesla shares under a little bit of pressure this morning, but i think investors, whether they're

of twitter or of tesla would be curious to hear from musk what his plan is for this company. >> right a huge story today that will push bank earnings to the side julia boorstin, thank you. have a great, long weekend and rest up for earnings next week let's get to the half. >> all right, carl thanks so much welcome to "the halftime report "qwest i'm scott wapner front and center, the offer heard around the world, the twitter takeover by elon musk, whether it happens and what it means to investors let's debate that with the investment committee, joining me, shannon saccocia, josh brown, and jon najarian of market rebellion.com yields are up sharply and there's the ten year up 280 which means the nasdaq is up, and nearly a 200-point decline, and s&p has gone negative. you have about 4% moves in rates