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Twitter shares drop as Salesforce reported to be out of the bidding process
- obi1kenobi 10y agoTWTR today: https://www.google.com/finance?q=twtr https://www.google.com/finance?q=twtr
- toomuchtodo 10y agoAlready below $17/share. Ouch.
- rch 10y agoThey were below $16 back in July...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jakozaur 10y agoI don't see how Salesforce could get much value out of Twitter. They could get it out of LinkedIn (sales people use LinkedIn sales navigator a lot), but likely not at the price Microsoft has paid for LinkedIn.
- netik 10y agoWell, they bought Yammer which at the time was a direct Twitter clone (but made for small businesses.) You know what would make for a better acquisition? Amazon. Twitter has tons of customers, tons of dark fiber, lots of internal cloud technologies (mesos, etc.) and a huge international peering network of IP routers. Amazon needs a way into social and real time news.
- vosper 10y ago> Amazon needs a way into social and real time news. Why does Amazon need this?
- the_watcher 10y agoThey don't need it, but I can see why they'd perhaps want it.
- walterbell 10y agoAmazon has Twitch, a payments product and invests in original content for streaming video. Twitter has been experimenting with video streaming, e.g. sports.
- jey 10y agoThat 6% pop for Salesforce is hilarious.
- slantedview 10y agoWell played on their part.
- basch 10y agoPenske Media should buy along with some sports blogs.
- niftich 10y agoI love these 'rumors' and using terms like 'walked away' juxtaposed against one another. Wouldn't it be beneficial to start all sorts of rumors about big players wanting to buy Twitter and then when every single one of them says they're in fact not interested, the value plunges and the actual interested buyer can pick them up on the cheap? Is this legal, provided no insider info was used? Doesn't this happen all the time?
- potatolicious 10y agoYeah, what you describe is illegal - it's market manipulation.
- ProAm 10y agoBeing illegal and getting caught are two very different things.
- siculars 10y agoThis. I have no doubt one of the aforementioned suitors, or some other, will conveniently step forward and strike a deal with Twitter in the $20-30 per share range.
- mholmes680 10y agoI think you're right, but $20 - $30 is waaay too big an estimate here. I think its more like $20-24. ...maybe a foreign company at this point...
- jowiar 10y agoHow do you justify that price, though? It involves a whole lot of growth that isn't really there. Google and FB are probably the only companies that could turn Twitter profitable, but probably only at a point that justifies a sale price of around $15.
- harryh 10y agoA lot of people think that twitter could relatively easily be made profitable by significantly cutting engineering staff. http://brontecapital.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/some-comment-on-twitter-buyout-rumours.html http://brontecapital.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/some-comment-on-...
- capkutay 10y agoCan anyone comment on Salesforce future as a company? It seems like they've topped out as a sales tool. I doubt people are going to use their 'IoT Cloud'.
- shostack 10y agoThey've been making inroads into the marketing side of things for a while now with their acquisition of Buddy Media, ExactTarget, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salesforce_Marketing_Cloud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salesforce_Marketing_Cloud All the big analytics/ad tech/ESP players are trying to own this space, and unfortunately none of them do it very well because it is largely bolt-ons of various products cobbled together into a frankenstein "marketing cloud" that they can then charge ridiculous enterprise services fees to setup and maintain, and has tons of vendor lock-in (the real long-term play). Personally, while there are advantages to consolidating in some cases (the DoubleClick search/display stack works well for many as one example), I worry that many of these companies are losing focus on their core competency as a result.
- gjolund 10y agoSalesForce is more brand than product, it is the type of product you start using after your CEO comes back from golf with his other CEO buddies.
- the_watcher 10y agoI say this as someone who can't stand using it, but that's not why it's so widely used. It's widely used because nearly every experienced salesperson knows how to use it already. So when scaling a sales team and trying to minimize friction and get them producing as soon as possible, it can make a lot more sense than another CRM, even if you like it more.
- toomuchtodo 10y agoIt's the AWS of the sales world.
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- gjolund 10y agoCalled it.
- spriggan3 10y agoTwitter is valuated $10B but it's hard to see Twitter selling for more than Yahoo. It's a tool that might be useful for a tiny part of internet users , marketers, journalists and drama kings/queens but frankly for most of us Twitter is useless, worse it is actually dangerous as it has ruined careers and was used to launch witch hunts or falsely accuse people of sexual crimes. I'm not touching that toxic platform with a ten foot pole.
- troncheadle 10y agoTell you what, I have 6 dollars and most of a ham sandwich right here. Officially submitting my bid for Twitter!
- 1024core 10y agoCalled it when the news broke: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12649844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12649844 It'd be interesting to see who unloaded their TWTR holdings.
- xufi 10y agoInteresting I was surprised this happen so quick. I figured a few other companies were interested in Twitter (Google/Spotify/Pinterest) but lets see what happens
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoTwitter's payroll (to say nothing of its stock-based compensation expense) is massively bloated. Slashing staff isn't a popular play for a strategic acquirer. Too much risk the bad will leaks to your core business. This is a textbook private equity deal. Twitter's habit of ringing in the year with $500MM losses could be single-handedly cut with a 2/3rd staffing reduction (which costs lots in payroll and $800MM in stock-based compensation expense). How much of Twitter's $2bn in revenue would evaporate post-cuts. Over half? Still leaves $750MM of pre-tax income before R&D ($800MM in the FYE 2015). Cut that in half, say you lose a further 25% of revenues, and you still have $160MM before taxes yielding $100MM of net income. That's worth $1bn to $2.5bn. If you can grow that to $500MM over 4 or 5 years, you could sell it for ~20x. Discount back at 10% or 20% and you have an optimistic valuation of $4 to $7bn. Twitter's trading at $12bn. I suppose I'd bid $5.70 per share and be willing to entertain someone talking about $10 a share. I'd similarly be furious at the CEO of a company I own publicly speaking about buying the thing for twice that, as Benioff was.
- the_watcher 10y agoIt's definitely an obvious one to PE. My brother works at a PE firm, and it's pretty commonly discussed (not as something they're actually going to do, but as a thought exercise, since it's got lots of characteristics that scream PE). The problem is that Twitter almost certainly won't take an acquisition for less than it's currently trading, which rules out a lot of PE.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago> Twitter almost certainly won't take an acquisition for less than it's currently trading Would almost certainly need to be, if not hostile, done without management's coöperation. Why would they kill their golden goose?
- the_watcher 10y agoUnrelated to the content, but your spelling of cooperation sent me on a little tangent, where I found this, and found it interesting: http://www.thewire.com/entertainment/2012/04/we-resist-further-cooperation-cooperation/51631/ http://www.thewire.com/entertainment/2012/04/we-resist-furth...
- ChuckMcM 10y ago[The conspiracist spam in the comments section is funny] I find the whole Twitter story fascinating on several levels but most interesting as a non-business. I've always been a bit curious how they would make money on it, there are clearly lots of information dynamics that are valuable, but the whole "this is how millenials hear about things" seemed like it fit nicely into a media slot where it 'front ran' the headlines. Amazed that Dorsey and company have not been able to make it work.
- danieltillett 10y agoTwitter will be bought, but only when the price comes down quite a bit more. Payroll will be cut massively and it will become quite a nice little cash cow for someone.
- the_watcher 10y agoIt won't sell unless it's bought at premium.
- danieltillett 10y agoThat is true, but the premium is a price lower than today. Twitter is a great business, but not one that can support the current share price.