Mark Cuban Concludes Elon Musk ‘Is F*cking with the SEC’ as Part of Pump-and-Dump

Michael LucianoApr 14th, 2022, 7:21 pm
 

Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban said Tesla CEO Elon Musk offering to buy Twitter is a way of “fucking with” the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A filing disclosed on Thursday indicated Musk offered to purchase the company and take it private at $54.20 a share. Twitter shares opened the day at more than $48 a share and closed just above $45.

Such a move would cost Musk more than $43 billion. Although he is the world’s richest man and has a net worth of more than $250 billion, much of that is in Tesla stock. It is unclear if he has the cash necessary to buy Twitter outright at the moment.

Musk bought $2.9 billion shares of Twitter last month to become the company’s largest shareholder with a 9% stake. (Vanguard has since increased its stake to 10%.) The company announced Musk would join its board of directors before reversing course. The seat was contingent on Musk agreeing not to hold more than 14.9% of the company’s shares.

Cuban tweeted on Thursday he thinks that Musk is messing with the SEC by purchasing a huge stake in Twitter and hyping a faux takeover in an effort to goose the stock price before selling.

Cuban noted Musk’s infamous 2018 tweet claiming he secured funding to take Tesla private.

“Price go up,” Cuban tweeted. “His shares get sold. Profit.”

In 2018, Musk tweeted he had secured funding for a go-private bid for Tesla at $420 per share – in the middle of the trading day, no less, causing the stock price to spike 11% to $379.57. Like his suggested Twitter price, the Tesla figure contained “420,” a number popular in marijuana subculture.

But it turned out the wasn’t funding secured and Musk had not filed the requisite paperwork with the SEC. However, as Cuban noted, he has in this case, thus allowing him to talk about it publicly

In response, to the “funding secured” tweet, the SEC launched an investigation into Musk and Tesla. The billionaire and his company agreed to a settlement whereby Musk would step down as board chairman, pay a $20 million fine, and agree to pre-clear with in-house counsel any tweets material to Tesla’s stock price. The company also paid a $20 million fine.

Since then, Musk has repeatedly trashed the SEC in public. In a 60 Minutes interview, he said, “I have no respect for the SEC.”

On Twitter, Musk suggested that the agency fellate him.

And on Thursday, he referred to the SEC as “bastards” during an interview.

Since it was publicly revealed he bought 9% of the company, Twitter shares have risen about 15%.

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Michael Luciano - Senior Editor

Mike is a Mediaite senior editor who covers the news in primetime. Follow him on Bluesky.