He’s mortgaging Twitter itself to the tune of $13 billion, split between bank loans and junk bonds that together will cost about $960 million per year to service.
He’s borrowing $12.5 billion against his holdings of Tesla stock, which will cost him about $1.125 billion per year in interest and amortization costs.
On top of the $2.1 billion per year in debt servicing costs, Musk is also going to have to pay Twitter employees cash to make up for the stock-based compensation they’re currently receiving. Business Insider’s Linette Lopez reports that amount is likely to be more than $900 million this year.
By the numbers: Add it all up and Musk is making roughly $3 billion of demands on Twitter’s cashflow, while Twitter isn’t throwing off anything like that much money. Its EBITDA over the last 12 months — its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization — came to just $547 million.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member