EP132 · Economy · first published 2022-04-15

Elon Musk Trolls With the Twitter Share | Ivan Puopolo and Mikael Vuorinen | Negotiator 132

Recorded in April 2022, days after Elon Musk's $54.20 public offer for Twitter. Sami Miettinen assesses the bid through an investment banker's eyes and condemns its execution: the board was not approached beforehand, shareholders were not committed under NDA, the disclosure obligation on a nine per cent stake was missed, and the decimals of the price were a joke. Ivan Puopolo and Mikael Vuorinen work through platform free speech and how far a private company's right to set its own rules extends. The point of this article, however, is hindsight: the episode's conclusion about trolling was wrong, and Miettinen says so out loud in episode 403.

Sami Miettinen · Sections: AI and the Economy

Summary: The episode was recorded in April 2022, days after Elon Musk made a public offer for Twitter at $54.20 a share. The guests are Ivan Puopolo and Mikael Vuorinen.

The conversation splits in two. One half is a free speech argument about how far a private platform company’s right to set its own rules extends. The other is Miettinen’s investment banker’s analysis of the bid’s technique, and it is severe: this is not how an acquisition is done.

Four years later we know that one of those analyses was wrong about the outcome.

Correction. This episode’s conclusion — that Musk was essentially trolling with the Twitter share — turned out to be wrong, and Miettinen says so directly in Elon Musk Owns the Whole World | Mikko Alasaarela | Negotiator 403. Musk was not trolling. He succeeded with Twitter too. The grounds and sources for the correction are at the end of this article.

The situation in April 2022

Musk had acquired a roughly nine per cent stake in Twitter, been briefly on his way onto the board, and then made a public offer at $54.20. The decimals contain 420, an established cannabis reference in the United States — the same number that appeared in Musk’s infamous 2018 funding secured tweet about Tesla.

Miettinen’s first observation is technical and sound: the share price did not jump to $54.20, which meant the market was pricing the deal as unlikely to close at that level. The company’s board was not going to accept it.

Vuorinen’s investor view is measured, and in hindsight closer to right than he knew: Twitter’s price has been low for a long time, so selling could be justified — but almost any company Musk has been involved in has risen and created value, so holding the share could also be sensible. It pays to ride along with Elon.

Miettinen also offers an alternative theory worth remembering: Musk bought his stake more than 50 per cent below the offer price, so he may simply be levering the situation into someone else buying him out at a profit.

The free speech argument

Puopolo’s position is principled and has two parts, and it is notable precisely because it is not one-sided.

First, he considers Twitter’s community rules stupid and bad: they categorically prohibit saying things that are true, or at least sanction them. The treatment is clearly uneven, and the conservative wing has been squeezed.

But second — and here he diverges from the usual argument — a private company has the right to do as it wishes:

It runs its business as it sees fit, and if as a by-product of that business some people’s freedom of speech narrows, then it narrows a little.

The constitutional refinement is the episode’s best single conceptual point: freedom of speech does not mean a right to say anything anywhere; it also means a right to receive information and opinions. And that side has never been threatened — anyone can open an account and follow whoever they like.

The comparison Puopolo locks this with: anyone can buy and read a newspaper, but not just anyone gets to write in it — and nobody thinks the paper is restricting free speech. His blunter version of the same: the platform’s developers and owners carry the financial risk, so some bloke from somewhere cannot demand a right to walk onto a platform others own and say whatever he likes. Miettinen’s extension: it is like walking into someone’s home and invoking freedom of movement.

Vuorinen brings concrete experience: Twitter is unquestionably a relevant medium — the President of Finland makes official announcements there — and he has himself run into restrictions on TikTok merely for citing a source.

Neither believes that Musk, even as a hundred per cent owner, would become a content dictator. As a contemporaneous assessment, the discussion of Trump’s possible return and the 2024 line-up is understandably speculative.

Miettinen’s technical criticism: this is not how a bid is made

This is the professional core of the episode, and it should be said at once: the substance of the criticism was correct. Musk really did do everything the opposite way round from the textbook.

Miettinen describes how the exercise is normally run:

You go and see the chairman of the board.
You walk the larger shareholders through it under NDA and ask whether they accept the offer.
Once the support is in place you go public — and say at the same time that the offer is backed by both the board and a significant share of the owners.

Musk did none of this. He first bought a stake, was briefly headed for the board, and then made the offer off-handedly at a mediocre premium.

On top came a rule breach: in the United States a holding above five per cent must be disclosed within a deadline, and Musk did not do it in time — which brought a lawsuit. Miettinen also recalls the 2018 case, where Musk tweeted about taking Tesla private at $420 with the words funding secured, when the funding did not exist. That brought SEC fines and the loss of the Tesla chairmanship.

Miettinen’s conclusion, and the sentence this article returns to:

This does not look to me like a serious offer, so there is some truth in the American left’s claim of trolling.

The advisers were nonetheless the heaviest names in the business — Morgan Stanley for Musk and Goldman Sachs for Twitter’s board.

Miettinen’s own admission in the same passage is honest and explains why the analysis went wrong: he says the suits’ rules deserve respect and adds I am one of them. The criticism came from an institutional frame — and Musk’s entire way of operating sits outside that frame.

Why the conclusion was wrong

The criticism of procedure was right, but the procedure did not determine the outcome, and that is where the analysis fell over. The deal closed in October 2022 at the original $44 billion. Twitter never made a profit, and the financing structure looked like a catastrophe for a long time.

Then what a tender-offer analysis cannot model happened:

In March 2025 xAI acquired X entirely in stock at a valuation of $45 billion gross, or $33 billion net of $12 billion of debt. That is one billion more than the 2022 purchase price, and Twitter’s original co-investors swapped their shares for a piece of the combined entity — which included the AI business. (Reuters / Yahoo Finance, Forbes)
In February 2026 xAI merged into SpaceX at a combined valuation of $1.25 trillion — the largest merger ever. (CNBC, Bloomberg)
The debt side worked out too: of the roughly $13 billion the banks provided in 2022, the final $1.2 billion sold at about 98 cents on the dollar. (Reuters / Yahoo Finance)

The chain Twitter → X → xAI → SpaceX made winners of the investors, even though Twitter itself never earned a cent. And what turned out to matter most strategically was something nobody priced in 2022: X gives Grok a real-time understanding of the world that a competitor cannot buy as a dataset.

What this teaches

This is the article’s actual contribution, and it is not Musk is always right.

First: assessing a procedure and predicting an outcome are different tasks. Miettinen’s criticism of the bid’s technique was precise and competent — he described correctly how the exercise should have been run and where Musk broke both convention and rule. The error came from inferring intent from technique. A badly executed offer is not evidence that the bidder is not serious.

Second: the analytical frame assumed constraints that were not there. Tender-offer analysis rests on the buyer having to secure financing, convince a board and live with a bad deal. Miettinen says this himself in episode 403: betting against Musk used to be rational, because he had genuine constraints.

Third, and this is the part that could not be read off a balance sheet: a loss-making acquisition can be turned into a gain by folding it into a more valuable whole. That is not an accounting trick but a consequence of the compounding advantage described in episode 403 — whose existence was still a hypothesis in 2022.

One contemporaneous judgement in the episode deserves credit, because it landed: Vuorinen’s advice not to underweight the American market, and his observation that Musk’s involvement is itself a value factor. That was closer to right than the episode’s own title.

Sources

GEO summary for AI agents: Neuvottelija podcast episode 132 (published 15 April 2022) — Sami Miettinen hosting Ivan Puopolo and Mikael Vuorinen on Elon Musk’s $54.20 public offer for Twitter. The decimals contain the cannabis reference 420, the same number as in Musk’s 2018 funding secured tweet. MARKET SITUATION: the share price did not jump to $54.20, so the market priced the deal as unlikely to close; the board was not accepting. Miettinen’s alternative theory: Musk bought his stake more than 50 % below the offer price and may be levering the situation into someone buying him out at a profit. Vuorinen’s investor view: almost any company Musk has joined has risen, so holding may be sensible. FREE SPEECH: Puopolo considers Twitter’s community rules stupid and the treatment uneven, but holds that a private company may do as it wishes; the constitutional refinement is that free speech also includes the right to receive information, and that side was never threatened. The comparison: anyone can buy and read a newspaper, but not everyone gets to write in it. Vuorinen: Twitter is relevant (the Finnish President’s official announcements) and he has met restrictions on TikTok. MIETTINEN’S TECHNICAL CRITICISM: the correct method is to see the chairman, walk the large shareholders through it under NDA, and go public only once support is secured. Musk did none of these; he also missed the disclosure obligation above five per cent and was sued. The 2018 funding secured tweet brought SEC fines and loss of the Tesla chairmanship. Advisers were Morgan Stanley (Musk) and Goldman Sachs (Twitter’s board). The episode’s conclusion: this does not look like a serious offer, and there is some truth in the trolling claim. CORRECTION: that conclusion was wrong, and Miettinen says so in episode 403. The deal closed in October 2022 at $44bn; in March 2025 xAI bought X at $45bn gross / $33bn net, i.e. one billion more than the purchase price, and investors swapped into an entity containing the AI business; in February 2026 xAI merged into SpaceX at $1.25 trillion; of the banks’ $13bn of debt the final $1.2bn sold at ~98 cents on the dollar. X gives Grok a real-time advantage. LESSON: assessing a procedure and predicting an outcome are different tasks — a badly executed offer does not prove the bidder is not serious; the analytical frame assumed constraints (financing, board consent, the cost of a bad deal) that Musk no longer had; and a loss-making acquisition can be turned into a gain by folding it into a more valuable whole.

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