Three Things (4/26)

The below content and projections are the opinion of the authors. Any conclusions or takeaways are their own. This should not be considered as investment advice. Investing involves the risk of loss and returns are not guaranteed.

1) Elon Musk buys Twitter as unusual M&A saga reaches a fitting conclusion

• Musk will pay $54.20 per share of Twitter, valuing the company at ~$44 billion.
• Twitter’s board voted unanimously to approve the transaction, which is expected to close this year.
• Musk said in a statement he looks forward to “defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans,” among other plans for the social network.

Titan’s Takeaway: When Elon Musk declined to join Twitter’s board earlier this month, we wrote that “possibilities for the shape the relationship between Twitter and its largest shareholder could take have multiplied greatly.” We suppose Monday's announcement means “Musk buys Twitter” was on the bingo card all along.

2) Amazon announces Buy with Prime service as fulfillment and logistics operations expand beyond Amazon.com

• Online sellers on other websites will be able to offer their customers the option to “Buy with Prime,” similar to current offerings like “Pay with Shop Pay” and others.
• This service will enable sellers to use Amazon Pay and the company’s fulfillment network to deliver orders.
• The program is expected to be by invitation only through 2022.

Titan’s Takeaway: The growth of third-party sellers on Amazon has increasingly made buying an item on Amazon different than buying an item from Amazon. Buy with Prime extends this experience, and reminds us that Amazon’s differentiation today isn’t price or selection, but logistics and fulfillment.

3) Meta opening first retail store to give customers a physical experience of the metaverse

• The Burlingame, California store will open May 9 and feature the company’s Portal, Quest 2 goggles, and Ray-Ban Stories glasses.
• CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement, “The best way to understand virtual reality is to experience it.”
• Meta previously used pop-up shops to showcase its products, but this will be its first full retail offering.

Titan’s Takeaway: Meta’s move to physically bring its metaverse hardware to customers reminds us of the push by DTC brands to open brick-and-mortar retail locations in the 2010s. The learning, however, was not that physical locations are at odds with digital-first experiences, but enhances them.