Some of that depends on whether Twitter can partially self-fund the acquisition itself over time.
Most likely it can, that much more so if Musk negotiates a lower price. Debt is very inexpensive right now, especially for large corporations with a strong balance sheet. If Musk owns all of Twitter, he gets their $6 billion in cash and their balance sheet has no consequential debt issues.
Twitter is operationally profitable, despite being very poorly run in terms of cost structure. Their margins on sales should be far greater than at present; they have a bloated employee count and have for a very long time. There's no reason Twitter can't spit off $1b in operating income on $5b in sales.
Further, Musk has ~$9b in cash (per Bloomberg), lots of very rich friends (eg Ellison, Google founders, VC billionaires, etc etc) that believe in him, and lots of assets in Tesla and SpaceX he can borrow $10b-$20b against if needed.
That said - I don't think levering himself to the moon is wise and I don't think paying $40b+ for Twitter is smart. Particularly at this point in time (with the global economy shaky, the US economy contracting in real terms, China's economy shaky, and financial markets sinking).
Most likely it can, that much more so if Musk negotiates a lower price. Debt is very inexpensive right now, especially for large corporations with a strong balance sheet. If Musk owns all of Twitter, he gets their $6 billion in cash and their balance sheet has no consequential debt issues.
Twitter is operationally profitable, despite being very poorly run in terms of cost structure. Their margins on sales should be far greater than at present; they have a bloated employee count and have for a very long time. There's no reason Twitter can't spit off $1b in operating income on $5b in sales.
Further, Musk has ~$9b in cash (per Bloomberg), lots of very rich friends (eg Ellison, Google founders, VC billionaires, etc etc) that believe in him, and lots of assets in Tesla and SpaceX he can borrow $10b-$20b against if needed.
That said - I don't think levering himself to the moon is wise and I don't think paying $40b+ for Twitter is smart. Particularly at this point in time (with the global economy shaky, the US economy contracting in real terms, China's economy shaky, and financial markets sinking).