Tesla Twitter Spirit Airlines and NASDAQ
July 6, 2022
Mr. Andrew Cecere
CEO
US Bankcorp
800 Nicollet Mall
Mpls., MN 55402-7014
Mr. Tim Welsh
Vice Chair Consumer Banking
US Bankcorp
800 Nicollet Mall
Mpls., MN 55402-7014
Dear Mr. Cecere and Mr. Welsh,
Yesterday I received a response from your organization regarding my June 17 letter addressed to both of you. Perhaps I should have marked my envelope personal as it was intended for you. It is included with this letter and I would appreciate your reading it.
Lynn C./Executive Communications stated that she was sorry your advertising “offended” me- Please note as stated in my letter I was “disturbed, saddened, and disappointed”- which is a very different tone, meaning and sympathy from “offended”. As some in our society move more towards meta data and artificial intelligence, greater hostility is likely to resort if they are as imprecise as Lynn C.- or perhaps whomever prepared the form letter if it is a form letter.
I encourage you to read your own mail. Harry Truman did. Former President Richard Nixon after he was out of office did- and he responded to every correspondence himself, the Queen does, and Jamie Dimon does. SEC Chair has highly trained staff read his new e-mail through which he is soliciting help.
I wrote him yesterday and am now sharing it with you and Mr. Dimon and Acting Comptroller of the Currency Mr. Michael Hsu, both of whom are copied on this letter.
Crypto has finally found the appropriate home in our government! It is not a security and it certainly is not a commodity- it is Pokeman and beyond and it has grossly misled many people who were perhaps desperate or covetous/greedy or intellectually enamored in a professorial/academic sort of way. Acting Comptroller Hsu knows what he is doing and has legal authority and courage. I pray you listen to him and follow his lead. I have previously written Mr. Dimon and asked that he do likewise.
Our nation has very serious financial issues that are so audacious that they are self-evident to any one with common sense who bothers to look- yet few may understand the mechanics and decisions that got us to this point. When I said in my June 17 letter, Let’s keep banking simple- I meant it!
This was sent yesterday:
Dear Chairman Gensler,
The following was sent to a different audience but I thought it warrants your attention:
Twitter has a valuation of $44 billion- what Mr. Musk has offered to pay and Spirit Airlines which is soon to be acquired by Frontier Airlines $2.5. Both are publicly held companies. Their financial statements are relatively similar and Spirit comes with 110 planes (assets).
Over the Past 5 Years: Twitter Spirit Airlines
(Range per year)
Total Revenue 3-5.2 Billion 1.8-3.8 Billion
Net Income Before Taxes 423 Million in 2018 519 Million in 2019
-411 Million in 2021* -431 Million in 2021
Total Assets 10-14 Billion** 4-10 Billion
Total Liabilities 2-5.5 Billion 6.4-6.7 Billion
*Twitters tax provisions have varied widely from tax payments of over $1 billion in 2020 and a tax credit/negative provision of over $1 Billion in 2019 and $700 million in 2018.
**9.5-11 Billion of Twitter Assets are Invested Capital: Invested capital is the total amount of money raised by a company by issuing securities to equity shareholders and debt to bondholders, where the total debt and capital lease obligations are added to the amount of equity issued to investors.
The 40+ Billion dollar premium may only be worth it to Mr. Musk!
Mr. Musk’s money is largely from Tesla stock:
Tesla has a market cap valuation greater than Ford, GM, and Toyota all combines and struggles with legitimate profitability and at times even being a “going concern”- building cars in the parking lot, etc. Deterministic Statistics have been inappropriately used in the stock market starting in the 1980’s and have facilitated “gamed” and ever escalating valuations for the market as whole and benefited and perhaps even employed by select companies- as evidenced by Game Stop in 2021. While the whole is market is largely escalated due to the software trading that relies on deterministic statistics, certain companies such as Amazon and Tesla and others have approximately the same slope to their catapulted growth in price per share. Deterministic statistics were developed by NASA for the space program and were developed to solve for unkown variables through maximizing or minimizing the unknown variable through a series of iterations of ranges of the know variable. It was never intended for the Stock Market and it started by Renaissance Technologies in the early 1980s and is now the norm. SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) Chair Gary Gesler has now taken an interest in this area and openly asks for input. Civilitiville USA contributes on a regular basis. We have shared our concerns with Mr. Musk, Speaker Pelosi and several others.
Now for a couple additional points: The Social Media Industry has entered maturity and in some cases a saturation point. Note that a significant portion of Twitter’s revenue is foreign suggesting that growth in the U S Market may be limited.
Regarding Tesla- It is not a technology company. It is an electric car manufacturer. The self driving aspect of Tesla’s business is not market driven but rather a fancy of Mr. Musk’s and a subset of his bordline cult following. There are many safety hazards and they are in fact a danger that the relevant government agencies have failed to address. Tesla’s technology in this area goes against the grain of industry thinking regarding safety practices in this niche industry.
Meme Stocks, Unicorns, and Crypto Currency are all schemes, disruptive, audacious, and present themselves as a fait accompli, much like South Korea did regarding hard drives in cell phones in 2005. I wrote Jay Clayton in 2017 and suggested there should be a government financial audit of every publicly held corporation and there should. I pulled of random sample of 3 NASDAQ listed U S firms and they all were beyond reason. One was a small holding company in CA that had a printing company it acquired for $10 million, a floor cleaning company it acquired for $5-$10 million and one other non descript company that it acquired for about $5million. There was no synergy and it was not profitable yet it had a market cap of over $125 million. The second company was a healthcare company that for 5 years had never had any revenue yet it had a market cap of over $1 Billion and the third was equally ridiculous. As a highly trained statistician, 3 for 3 grand losers presents a problem and there 2 degrees of freedom.
With index funds, mutual funds, and institutional investors playing a majority role in the market, few are paying attention to the financial fundamentals let alone the business fundamentals. Back in the day we used to call high growth low profitability companies a problem child (BCG). Need I say more! I think non profitable companies that struggle to invent a road to profitability and are a social and societal detriment like Uber- well jail time might have been the result if they had ever gotten through all the check points present prior to the false reality full of ill gotten gain those in positions of authority like yourself struggle with calling out today.
Attached you will find an overview of Social Media’s share of Advertising Revenue and it’s implications. Note that mining someone’s data for advertising purposes is really manipulative and predatory and never should have been allowed. In marketing research, it was considered a major violation of ethics to use survey data from someone to then try and sell them and what we have today, commonplace on social media is in reality indecent.
You are in our prayers and today I prayed for courage.
God bless you and those at the SEC.
Susan
Susan Lein
Secretariat
Civilitiville USA- An Umbrella of Humanitarian Efforts
6730 Vernon Ave S Suite 220
Edina, MN 55436
952-426-3720
I pray you think about what you read. Read the letter previously sent. Say some prayers for our country, even if you have never prayed before and know that you are in my prayers.
Merci,
Susan Lein
Cc: Lynn C. Executive Communications U.S. Bank, Mr. Jamie Dimon, Mr. Warren Buffet, Acting Comptroller of the Currency Mr. Michael Hsu, SEC Chair Gary Gensler
Civilitiville USA- An Umbrella of Humanitarian Efforts