David Bridges
Jefferies senior equities analyst Brent Thill has some very divergent opinions about Tesla and Twitter — and some concerns about the future of the social media company under Tesla CEO Elon Musk — if and when the drama-filled deal to purchase the company goes through at the end of the month.
Thill said Musk has his work cut out for him to turn Twitter into a finely-tuned Tesla.
“I own a Tesla. … It’s our favorite car in the family. And it’s because of the user interface. It’s a safe car. It has a clean UI. It drives itself. There are so many features about it. It’s just, the user interface of that car is amazing.”
Twitter, on the other hand, is “the single worst experience online. It’s awful,” said Thill. “And so when you think about the usability, that’s the first thing [Musk] has got to go after. Make the product more usable.”
Thill said the back-and-forth battle between Musk and Twitter had to stop. “The drama had to end. And they had to move forward. And so hopefully, get it sealed, move on, reset and recast the strategy of the company, and try to salvage where he’s at because right now, he’s got a big, damaged — he’s got a damaged goods. And he’s got to contend with it now,” said Thill.
Thill said the repairs Twitter needs are clear. “You have to make the user interface and the ability for people to consume easier. It has to be elegant. It has to be prettier… It is the furthest thing from any other user experience I’ve witnessed, and I think they need to fix it.”
In addition to addressing design and functionality, Thill said Twitter faces other challenges. One likely hurdle is a decline in advertising income. “What we’ve seen from Snap, Twitter, Meta, Amazon, across the board, ad growth rates have fallen out of the sky.” And Thill doesn’t expect the situation to change anytime soon. “Our economists at Jefferies are forecasting a recession into next year and [that] the GDP goes negative. In that environment, the first thing you turn off is advertising dollars. It happens in every downturn.”
He also said Twitter’s cost structure needs to change. “What’s the business case? Is it subscription? Is it advertising? Is it a combination? What is he going to do with the business model? We don’t really know. He said, ‘I don’t like the advertising on it.’ He doesn’t like bots. You go through the list. Like, there’s a lot of things. So I’d say the first thing — and I think he has an incredible opportunity— is to really get the product nailed. That’s going to be his first priority.”
While there are a lot of unknowns, Thill said one thing is for sure — Musk will continue to make headlines. “The entertainment factor of this is going to continue on. …Ultimately, this drama still is probably not over. And there’s going to be many chapters to come that are written. This is probably in the early series of the book. So stay tuned.”
Dave Briggs is an anchor for Yahoo Finance Live. Follow him on Twitter at @davebriggstv.
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