$Apple (AAPL.US)$ In the few weeks since Musk joined Twitter...
In the weeks since Musk's arrival on Twitter, he has been a person who loves to tinker, from 'bloodbathing' executives, violent layoffs, to launching the user account 'Blue V Certification.' From Musk's entrepreneurial experience, he has always been someone who loves to try new things.
From the early days of Zip2 and PayPal to later ventures such as Everdream, Tesla, and DeepMind, it's been a cycle of entrepreneurship, selling, and then starting again.By using the money earned from the previous project to support the next 'money-eating monster,' Musk has mastered this strategy.
This time, the acquisition of Twitter is no exception. After completing the $44 billion acquisition, Musk sold $3.95 billion worth of Tesla stocks.Tesla, which makes the most money, has become the cash cow among all of Musk's projects.
Musk, the person who loves to try new things
In the few weeks since Musk joined Twitter, a series of "thunderous tactics" have completed the work of possibly a year for others, including "bloodshed" of executives, violent layoffs, and the launch of user account "blue V verification".
From Musk's entrepreneurial experience, he has always been a person who "loves to play around".
His first bucket of gold came from Zip2, a business information website founded with his brother (similar to an online business directory), with initial funding of $0.02 million provided by his father.
In 1999, Zip2 was sold to Compaq for $0.307 billion, and Musk netted $22 million from the deal.
In November of the same year, Musk took out $10 million from the proceeds and founded the internet electronic payment platform X.com, which was later renamed PayPal after merging with Confinity, its main competitor at the time. In 2002, Musk sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion, and as the largest shareholder of the company, Musk made a profit of about $0.18 billion from this transaction.
It is these two initial funds that supported the early development of Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity.
In 2002, Musk invested $0.1 billion to establish the space exploration technology company SpaceX. While focused on researching rockets, Musk also took the time to invest $6.5 million in Tesla Motors, becoming the largest shareholder and chairman. It wasn't until the departure of Tesla's founder, Martin Eberhard, in 2007 that Musk truly took control of Tesla.
In 2006, Musk invested $10 million to co-found the photovoltaic power generation company SolarCity with his cousin, and in 2016, Tesla acquired SolarCity for $2.6 billion in stock.
In addition to the above well-known cases, Musk has also invested in data software company Everdream and gaming platform Game Trust. Both companies were acquired by Dell and Real Networks in 2007, bringing Musk investment returns of 15 million and 1.5 million US dollars respectively.
He also received returns of 2.5 million and 92 million US dollars respectively from his investments in mobile advertising company OneRiot (acquired by Walmart in 2011) and artificial intelligence startup DeepMind (acquired by Google in 2014).
In 2013, when Musk was stuck in traffic, he conceived the idea of building a high-speed railroad and founded The Boring Company, launching the Hyperloop project. The goal is to achieve a distance of approximately 350 miles (560 kilometers) in 30 minutes. The initial concept design of the Hyperloop train was jointly completed by engineers from Tesla and SpaceX.
In 2017, Musk established Neuralink, a neurotechnology company, to develop implantable brain-machine interface technology. According to data from dealroom, Musk invested approximately 0.15 billion US dollars in this company.
Of course, in the subsequent investments, besides investing his own initial capital, Musk has also increasingly used the power of capital to attract large amounts of venture capital to support the high-speed rail and brain-machine projects.
Tesla: The Golden Goose
Looking back at Musk's entrepreneurial experience, it can be said that he has been quite busy. From 1995 to 2002, he completed three startups. After incubating and maturing a project, Musk immediately cashed in and invested in the next stage of entrepreneurship.
As mentioned above, it was relying on the success of Zip2 and PayPal that Musk's "Musk Universe" was formed. From the entrepreneurial process after 2005, Tesla played an important role in it.
According to Tesla's prospectus in 2017, Musk's personal undischarged loans were about 0.5 billion USD, of which 0.209 billion USD was owed to Morgan Stanley, 0.213 billion USD to Goldman Sachs, and 85.5 million USD to BofA. These loans secured with Tesla stocks were used for the operation of SpaceX, Boring Company, and other companies. After Tesla went public, Musk fully utilized the ability to borrow against Tesla stock.
Not only in terms of funds, Musk is also very adept at using other resources of the Tesla team, with a high degree of integration between the management and technical teams of SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity.
Tesla is one of the few profitable investments in Musk's current portfolio. After enduring a difficult first decade, Tesla finally achieved its first quarterly profit in Q1 of 2013, with a net income of 11.24 million USD, which also led to a surge in its stock price.
Starting from the second half of 2019, boosted by the unexpected progress of the Shanghai factory construction and the development of electric vehicles, Tesla's stock price soared again at the end of 2019. From the beginning of 2020, profitability for Tesla became a non-issue.
In terms of the time dimension, Tesla can be considered as one of Musk's longest-standing projects. However, even after achieving profitability, Musk began to massively reduce his shareholding of Tesla stock within just one year.
In 2021, Musk exercised over 2.15 million Tesla stock options at a price of 6.24 USD per contract, while selling 0.934 million shares of Tesla stock after exercising the options. Documents submitted to the SEC stated that the sale of the mentioned stock was to pay taxes resulting from the exercise of the 2.15 million options.
After this, Musk's share sales were unstoppable. According to statistics, in 2021 Musk sold over 20 million shares of Tesla stock before the split, cashing in nearly 22 billion USD.
The scale and influence of Tesla now are beyond comparison to Musk's initial ventures Zip2 and PayPal. Although Musk, who now holds multiple roles, does not devote all of his energy to Tesla, and is also involved in 'super high-speed rail' and space exploration, it would be very difficult for the 'fickle' Musk to follow in the footsteps of his initial entrepreneurial project and exit completely.
Moreover, in the peak period last year, Tesla's market cap once reached 1 trillion US dollars. According to previous mortgage loans or sell-offs for cash, Tesla can definitely be considered a "cash cow", at least compared to SpaceX, which is still burning through money. Tesla has grown to the point where it can provide stable cash flow.
Just recently,In order to promote the "new favorite" Twitter, Musk once again "sold" Tesla's sharesAccording to the latest filing submitted by Musk to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC),he sold over 19.5 million Tesla shares for three consecutive trading days from November 4th to 8th, with a value of approximately 3.95 billion US dollars. According to Twitter's previously released quarterly report, its quarterly loss reached 0.27 billion US dollars as of June, and the cash on its balance sheet is now only 2.7 billion US dollars. Indeed, this financial situation urgently needs a new blood transfusion.
Using the money earned from the previous project to sustain the next one also aligns with Musk's usual practice.However, this may not be fair to Tesla, which is still in intense competition in the electric vehicle market, and it may also be an important reason for the recent continuous decline in Tesla's stock price.
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