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THE HEADLINES

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THE TWEET HEARD ‘ROUND THE WORLD

In 240-characters or less, Elon Musk sent shares of Tesla up 11%. The tweet? “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.” Trading of TSLA was halted around 2 PM because, like masturbation on an airplane, moving markets in this manner is at the very least frowned upon.

The borderline illegal declaration, if true, would value Tesla at $70B+, making it the largest leveraged buyout of all time. For those keeping score at home, Elon Musk holds 20% of Tesla’s shares, so it is unclear how he plans to pay for the take-private power move.

Coincidentally, or in conjunction with the tweet (depending on who you ask), the company announced that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, or PIF, has built a 5% ownership stake in the EV company.

Elon plans to allow current shareholders to sell at $420 or hold shares with windows to buy and sell every 6 months.

Looking beyond the astronomical buyout price, the plan so crazy that it might just work makes sense. Elon believes the move will decrease “wild swings in [Tesla’s] stock price” and decrease short sellers “incentive to attack” the company.

Water Cooler Talking Point: “You can bet your Boring Company Flamethrower that the Feds are going to do more than kick the tires on this one. Time to lawyer up, Elon.”

 

I THOUGHT YOU NEW

Remember when Meg Whitman left Hewlett Packard in January this year, and everyone was all, “da fuq is NewCo?” Well, in the words of Christopher Wallace, “if you don’t know, now you know.”

WndrCo, the parent company of NewCo, closed a $1B funding round which includes investments from 10 American media giants, and even Alibaba.

NewTV plans to produce entertainment for “easy, on-the-go mobile viewing.” Founder Jeffrey Katzenberg’s (the co-founder of DreamWorks) master plan is to produce short 10-minute original programming. Because 22-minutes is just too damn long.

There are some skeptics who think that there isn’t enough evidence to indicate that this is what people actually want, but $1B says there are enough investors willing to find out.

Water Cooler Talking Point: “$1B is a big bet to make on a completely unproven idea when you’re name isn’t SoftBank.”

 

RELEGATED

LA Rams owner Stan Kroenke is going all in on futbol, agreeing to take full ownership of London’s Arsenal.

Stan who had already held a 67% ownership interest in the club shared custody with Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov. The deal, which values the club at $2.3B, will end the protracted battle between the two for full ownership.

Turns out the winning side of the Revolution has its red, white and blue fingerprints all over English soccer. Rivals Man U and Liverpool are, ironically enough, both owned by the Glazer family, who holds stakes in the Tampa Bay Bucs and Boston Red Sox. Fulham, Bournemouth, Crystal Palace and West Ham United are also partially or fully American owned. Suck it, England.

Water Cooler Talking Point: “As they say in London: ‘pip, pip cheerio, Alisher Usmanov.'”

 

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IN OTHER NEWS

 

• Keep hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times. Shares of Snap skyrocketed after a mixed earnings report before settling lower in after-hours trading. Snap’s revenue beat expectations ($262.3M vs. $249.8M expected) and daily active users fell 2% from the previous quarter. But Evan Spiegel can rest easy next to his supermodel wife knowing that he has the support of Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, who invested $250M in the company.

 

• The US will impose additional 25% tariffs on $16B worth of Chinese goods beginning on August 23rd in the latest installment of “anything you can tax, I can tax better.” This is exhausting.

 

• China isn’t saying it is going to use Apple and it’s trillion dollar market cap as a bargaining chip in the ongoing trade war but it did warn that the company needs to share more profit with the Chinese people or face “anger and national resentment.” Shots fired.

 

• Things that MoviePass’ parent company Helios and Matheson shouldn’t be investing their time and resources into? Producing a movie starring Bruce Willis that revolves around a man who loses 10 minutes of his memory. But alas, this is the world we live in.

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