Twitter undervalued by Musk

Forager is disappointed by the sale of Twitter to Tesla founder Elon Musk as it believes the company is more valuable than Musk’s sale.

In a webinar, Steve Johnson, chief investment officer, and senior analyst Chloe Stokes at the fund manager said they had a holding in Twitter which they first bought in 2020.

Musk agreed to buy Twitter last month for $61 billion in a bid to shake up the social media company. Shares in the company had fallen 5.6% since the announcement on 26 April and was down 10.1% over the past year.

Stokes said: “As shareholders, we can’t help but be disappointed. We bought [Twitter] because we thought the platform had a lot of potential.

“It’s obvious that we think it’s worth more than the bid, because we held it through periods where it was trading much higher and still thought it was worth more than those higher prices. So, we are definitely not happy from a price perspective.”

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Johnson added the purchase of a social media company by a single person would highlight regulatory concerns over free speech.

“There’s going to be a huge amount of regulatory and political scrutiny here on the power that is going to give one person so much influence. It may well accelerate some things that I think need to happen. It needs to be regulated.

“There needs to be an independent body appointed by an elected government that decides where are the limits on what you can and can’t say. And provides an avenue for people to appeal against a private company declaring that you shouldn’t be saying what you’re saying. That should not be the job of a privately-owned company to do that.”