Elon Musk's cryptic 'Love Me Tender' tweet baffles investors

Elon Musk tweeted Love Me Tender, an Elvis Presley song, a day after Twitter adopted a “poison pill” to protect itself from the billionaire's $43 billion cash offer to buy the social media company.

After Musk’s TED talk on Thursday, he hinted at the possibility of a hostile bid in which he would bypass Twitter’s board and put the offer directly to its shareholders, tweeting, “It would be utterly indefensible not to put this offer to a shareholder vote”.

In another tweet over the weekend, Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist” who has been critical of Twitter and its policies, replied to a post of his from 2017 where he had asked “How much is it (Twitter)?” with an upside down smiley.

The world’s richest person caused a stir last week after he filed a $43 billion proposal offering $54.20 a share for the social network, which led Twitter to adopt a so-called poison-pill provision on Friday to make it harder for Musk or a group of investors to acquire more shares. 

If Twitter directors ultimately reject him, the world could learn whether Musk was truly threatening a direct appeal to shareholders or had just added the 1956 Elvis Presley hit Love Me Tender to his playlist.

Musk may try to partner with investors including Oracle, given that its co-founder Larry Ellison is on Tesla board, along with a group of private equity firms including Thoma Bravo, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Mandeep Singh and Ashley Kim wrote. 

Over the weekend, Musk said the economic interests of Twitter’s board are not aligned with shareholders. He was responding to a tweet about board members’ stock holdings, saying that with the departure of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, the board “collectively owns almost no shares.” He had previously tweeted the board risks liability if it acted against shareholders.   
 

Twitter has hired Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, the latter of which has sparred previously with Musk over the valuation of millions of dollars in Tesla stock warrants.

Tesla autopilot stirs US alarm as ‘disaster waiting to happen’

Derrick Monet and his wife, Jenna, were driving on an Indiana interstate in 2019 when their Tesla Model 3 sedan operating on Autopilot crashed into a parked fire truck. The incident was one of a dozen in the last four years in which Teslas using this driver-assistance system collided with first-responder vehicles, raising questions about the safety of technology the world’s most valuable car company considers one of its crown jewels.

Now, US regulators are applying greater scrutiny to Autopilot than ever before. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which has the authority to force recalls, has opened two formal defect investigations that could ultimately lead Tesla Inc. to have to retrofit cars and restrict use of Autopilot in situations it still can’t safely handle.

A clampdown on Autopilot could tarnish Tesla’s reputation with consumers and spook investors whose belief in the company’s self-driving bona fides have helped make Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk the world’s wealthiest person. It could damage confidence in technology other auto and software companies are spending billions to develop in hope of reversing a troubling trend of soaring US traffic fatalities.

It also could also bring long-simmering tensions between Washington and Tesla to a boil. Musk has already derided NHTSA 

as the “fun police” and chafed at President Joe Biden’s unwillingness to lavish the company with praise. Bloomberg