Amid Twitter’s mass layoffs, don’t overlook it started with a $150 million weed joke

Twitter started shedding 1000’s of its staff on Friday, Nov. 4—probably half of the 7,500-person workers—only one week after being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk.

The layoffs are an emergency cost-cutting measure for Musk, by some estimates the world’s richest man, after executing a leveraged buyout of the social media firm with $12.5 billion in financial institution loans. Paying off that debt will value Musk about $1 billion yearly, based on Bloomberg.

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The layoffs are the byproduct of a lopsided deal. Musk first proposed, and finally did find yourself, shopping for Twitter for $54.20 per share. On the time, the worth was seen as excessive (38% above the inventory worth when Musk began shopping for up shares) however not outrageous. The one really outrageous side of the worth was that Musk selected to make a weed joke with the bid (420 is slang for marijuana.).

On this present day of mass layoffs at Twitter, let’s calculate simply how a lot that joke value.

Musk weed joke value a minimum of $150 million

Let’s assume that, if had been in any other case bored with making a dumb weed joke, Musk would have bid a flat $54 per share to accumulate Twitter. (Valuations in M&A typically appear arbitrary, so maybe $53, and even $50, would have been sufficient to succeed with out the dumb weed joke, however we’re being beneficiant). That pegs the price of the dumb weed joke at $0.20 per share, to get from $54 to the $54.20 that Musk in the end paid, dumb weed joke and all.

Twitter had simply over 765 million excellent shares. Multiplying the overall share rely by $.20 per share provides us $153 million. That’s the minimal quantity Musk spent on the dumb weed joke.

However Musk’s debt funds will not be a laughing matter. He owes $1 billion in curiosity every year and simply laid off half of the corporate to attempt to lower prices. If he didn’t spherical as much as $54.20, it’s probably he may have saved lots of of individuals’s jobs.

What number of jobs may Musk have saved?

It’s troublesome to divine the common wage of a Twitter worker. However since we’re already utilizing back-of-the-napkin estimates, let’s not be deterred.

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We do have information about salaries for H-1B visa candidates, which could fairly characterize a pattern of Twitter’s complete workers. Taking the common salaries for every listed place, based on the aggregator H1B Grader, and averaging these, we get a imply wage of about $185,000. Dividing the $153 million by the estimated common Twitter wage provides us 827 jobs.

Sure, what was as soon as a $0.20 rounding error to make folks chuckle at his provide may have value 827 folks their jobs at Twitter.

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