The full list of X investors is revealed. The valuation has dropped by 75%. How can Musk save it?

Written by: 0xjs@黄金财经

Since Musk spent $44 billion to acquire Twitter (later renamed X) and privatized it in 2022, the public has been curious about who other shareholders of X are besides Musk.

According to an order by U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco, the complete list of shareholders of X Holdings Corp., the parent company of social media giant X, was publicly disclosed for the first time. The disclosure of this information was in response to a motion filed in July by the nonprofit Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press on behalf of technology journalist Jacob Silverman. The motion seeks to make public a list of shareholders. The list is part of another legal case in 2023, filed by several former investors. They claimed that their arbitration agreement was violated after Elon Musk acquired the company for $44 billion in October 2022.

According to documents disclosed by the court, X's lawyers initially submitted the list to the court in June 2023, and it was not made public until this week.

Source: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25057281-elon-musk-x-co-owners-court-filing

According to public information, as of October last year, Musk held 75% of the shares of X Company, and no other shareholder held more than 10% of the shares.

Who are the investors?

According to documents released by the federal court, there are 95 entities on the complete list of X shareholders. But the document only gives a list of shareholders and does not provide specific shareholding details.

These investors include:

Saudi Arabian royal prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud and his Kingdom Holding Co.;cryptocurrency company Binance;Billionaire Bill Ackman's Pershing Square; sports and media agency IMG; venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz, ARK, Sequoia Capital, Baron, DFJ and 8VC and other related funds; Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison's trust fund; Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey's trust; rapper Sean "Diddy" Combs-related entities; and at least 27 shareholders are different investment vehicles related to Fidelity Investments, a Boston-based mutual fund company and brokerage firm. In 2022, X listed only one Fidelity entity as a common owner;

Full list of X shareholders:

• 8VC Opportunities Fund II, L.P.

• ADREM X LLC

• ADREM Y LLC

• Afshar Partners, LP

• Andrea Stroppa

• Andreessen Horowitz LSV Fund III, L.P.

• Anthem Ventures, LLC

• ARK Venture Private Holdings LLC

• BAMCO, Inc.

• Bandera Fund LLC

• Baron Opportunity Fund

• Baron Partners Fund

• Binance Capital Management Co., Ltd

• Brookfield Project X L.P.

• CCM 2020 Investments LLC

• Cheng and Chen Family Trust

• CNK Fund IV, L.P.

• Danilo Kawasaki

• Dayton Family Enterprises, LLC

• Dayton Family Investments, LLC

• DFJ GROWTH IV, L.P.

• DFJ GROWTH IV PARALLEL FUND, LLC

• DFJ GROWTH X-I, L.P.

• Eden Relationship Capital L.P.

• Elon Musk as Trustee of the Elon Musk Revocable Trust dated July 22, 2003

• FIAM Target Date Blue Chip Growth Commingled Pool By: Fidelity Institutional Asset Management Trust Company as Trustee

• Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Comming led Pool By: Fidelity Management Trust Company, as Trustee

• Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Institutional Trust By its manager Fidelity Investments Canada ULC

• Fidelity Canadian Growth Company Fund by its manager Fidelity Investments Canada ULC

• Fidelity Central Investment Portfolios LLC: Fidelity U.S. Equity Central Fund - Communication Services Sub

• Fidelity Contrafund: Fidelity Advisor New Insights Fund - Sub A

• Fidelity Contrafund: Fidelity Advisor New Insights Fund - Sub B

• Fidelity Contrafund: Fidelity Contrafund: Fidelity Contrafund K6

• Fidelity Contrafund: Fidelity Series Opportunistic Insights Fund

• Fidelity Contrafund Commingled Pool By: Fidelity Management Trust Company, as Trustee

• Fidelity Destiny Portfolios: Fidelity Advisor Diversified Stock Fund

• Fidelity Global Growth and Value Investment Trust - Sub A By its manager Fidelity Investments Canada ULC:

• Fidelity Global Innovators Investment Trust by its manager Fidelity Investments Canada ULC

• Fidelity Growth Company Commingled Pool By: Fidelity Management Trust Company, as Trustee

• Fidelity Insights Investment Trust By its manager Fidelity Investments Canada ULC

• Fidelity Mt. Vernon Street Trust: Fidelity Growth Company Fund

• Fidelity Mt. Vernon Street Trust : Fidelity Growth Company K 6 Fund

• Fidelity Mt. Vernon Street Trust: Fidelity Series Growth Company Fund

• Fidelity OTC Commingled Pool By: Fidelity Management Trust Company, as

• Trustee

• Fidelity Puritan Trust: Fidelity Puritan Fund - Equity Sub B

• Fidelity Puritan Trust: Puritan K6 Fund - Equity Subportfolio

• Fidelity Securities Fund: Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund

• Fidelity Securities Fund: Fidelity Blue Chip Growth K6 Fund

• Fidelity Securities Fund: Fidelity OTC Portfolio

• Fidelity Securities Fund: Fidelity OTC Portfolio

• Fi delity Select Portfolios : Select Communication Services Portfolio

• G64 Ventures LLC

• Gerber Kawasaki Inc.

• GFNCI LLC

• Gigafund 0.21, LP

• Glacier Ventures LLC

• Go Mav, LLC

• HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud

• HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud

• IMG US, LLC

• Jack Dorsey Remainder LLC

• Jack Dorsey Tr Ua 12/08/2010 Jack Dorsey Revocable Trust

• Kingdom Holding Company

• Lawrence J. Ellison Revocable Trust

• Linda Ye and Robin Ren Family Foundation

• Litani Ventures

• Luchi Fiduciaria SR POS. 365

• Manhattan Venture Partners X LLC

• Mirae Asset Innovation X ONE, LLC

• Mirae Asset Project X Fund I, LP

• Olivier Janssens

• Q Tetris Holding LLC

• Ross Gerber

• Santo Lira LLC

• SC CDA1 LLC

• SCGE Fund, L.P.

• SCGGF III – U.S./India Management, L.P.

• SCHF (M) PV, L.P.

• Scott Nolan

• SC US/E Expansion Fund I Management, L.P.

• Sean Combs Capital, LLC

• Sequent (Sch weiz) AG as Trustee of the Debala Trust

• Sequioa Capital Fund, L.P.

• Series N Dis, a series of Atreides Special Circumstances Fund, LLC

• Shahidi Tactic Group, LLC

• Steve Davis

• T. One Holdings LLC

• The Pershing Square Foundation

• TM33 Partner Holdings LLC

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• Tresser Blvd 402 LLC

• UnipolSai S.P.A.

• Variable Insurance Products Fund II: VIP Contrafund Portfolio - Subportfolio A

• VYC25 Limited

• X Holdings I Investment, LLC

In 2022, Musk and the above investors spent $44 billion to acquire Twitter (later renamed X). Fidelity said this year that X's market value has fallen by about 75% since Musk acquired it.

One of the worst acquisitions on Wall Street

According to the Wall Street Journal, Musk's acquisition of Twitter was disastrous, and the loan used to acquire Twitter has become the worst M&A financing transaction for banks since the 2008-2009 financial crisis.

According to public information, seven banks participated in Musk's acquisition and privatization of Twitter in 2022, including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays and four other large banks, which provided Musk's holding company with about $13 billion in loans.

Typically, banks that provide cash loans for acquisitions usually try to quickly sell the debt to other investors in order to remove it from their balance sheets. But this did not happen in the Twitter transaction. The banks were unable to sell the debt without incurring huge losses. This is mainly because Twitter's financial situation is so bad that they have not been able to find anyone willing to buy the debt. This means that they are burdened with the worst "overhang" loans in history, or stuck on the bank's balance sheet.

Since Musk took over the social media, Twitter's market value has fallen from the $44 billion that Musk originally acquired to about $12.5 billion, a decrease of nearly 75%.

The Wall Street Journal reported that although these banks are currently collecting interest on Twitter's loans, some banks are eager to move these bad loans off their balance sheets, so they can only silently write down these hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in loans. Twitter's bad deal has also caused some banks to fall in the rankings of investment banks. Bank of America and Morgan Stanley's top two spots in the banking industry rankings were taken by JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, which did not provide loans for Musk's acquisition of Twitter.

At the same time, the salaries of some bankers have also been affected by these loans. In 2023, the top investment bankers on Barclays' mergers and acquisitions team were told that their salaries would be reduced by at least 40% from the previous year. Sources said that Barclays had multiple pending transactions that affected its overall performance, and the Twitter loan was the largest transaction.

Save X: Payment, traffic and AI

As mentioned above, there are multiple reasons for the plunge in Twitter's market value.

Part of the reason may be Musk's behavior at X and his modifications to many features of the website, which are believed to have led to user loss. At the same time, during Musk's tenure as CEO of Twitter, the company's relationship with advertisers has been tense, leading to the loss of advertisers, and advertising is the majority of Twitter's revenue.

On the other hand, X is struggling between the high interest on the acquisition loan and the dismal revenue. It is said that X needs to pay $1.5 billion in debt interest every year, which even for Twitter before it was acquired, accounts for nearly one-third of its $5 billion in revenue.

Faced with X's miserable situation, Musk is also seeking to save X's valuation in three aspects: payment, traffic and AI.

Payment: The payment function is an important reason for Musk's huge acquisition of Twitter. Musk has repeatedly stated that he wants to turn X into a universal application similar to WeChat. Data shows that X Payments, a subsidiary of X Payments, has obtained money transmission licenses in 28 states in the United States. It seeks to obtain licenses in all US states by the end of 2024 and launch X payment functions in the United States. Musk's ambitious goal is to make X the largest payment institution in the United States. X is very likely to support cryptocurrency payments in the future, and may even launch its own US dollar stablecoin.

Traffic:Traffic is needless to say. Musk himself has 195 million and nearly 200 million fans on X. He is extremely active on X, making various comments on various topics such as politics and economy, and trying his best to attract users to X. On August 13, 2024, Musk personally went down to talk to Trump's Twitter Space, with 1.3 million people online at the same time, and the total number of Space listeners reached 270 million.

Of course, Musk's traffic on X is a double-edged sword. "Musk maximizes the political value that X brings to him. In turn, people's trust in X will be polarized."

AI: Now humans have one foot in the AI ​​era. Grok, the main product of Musk's AI company xAI, has been integrated into X. Currently, all X premium subscribers can use the Grok robot for free. Grok can achieve three goals in one go. It can activate users to convert into X subscribers, allow users to use Grok to create content and spread it to bring more traffic, and use the content produced by X users to train the Grok AI model.