Elon Musk seems to have no measure in his ambitions to buy companies. Now, according to a tweet posted on his official account, he wants to buy no less than Coca-Cola. Will it be true and how difficult would this purchase be?
To begin with, we have to realize that Elon Musk is a real media shaker. The billionaire is not only a successful entrepreneur and visionary when it comes to business projects, he is also used to stirring up social media with sometimes controversial, sometimes simply provocative messages.
It is important to bear this in mind because, in this case, we may simply be dealing with one of the latter forms of communication, mixing humor and provocation. Let’s put it in context.
What happened to Elon Musk and Coca-Cola?
As we already know, in recent weeks, the founder of Tesla has bought Twitter for more than 44 billion dollars. This is one of the largest operations in social networks. The businessman says he is confident that he wants to improve the network’s levels of freedom of expression.
Obviously, it is a business strategy. Since then, the repercussion has indeed been such that we have seen a more active Elon Musk than usual in networks, and launching some quite controversial messages.
It is in this context he launched a tweet on 28 April in which he stated that his next purchase will be Coca-Cola to put cocaine back in its ingredients.
This announcement logically caused a double uproar, on the one hand, the announcement of the purchase of one of the most international, and most highly valued soft drink companies in the world. On the other hand, because of Musk’s alleged intention to buy and restructure the soft drink formula.
It should be remembered that cocaine was indeed present in the original Coca-Cola recipes, but it was removed in the early 20th century, even before the soft drink became globally available.
Can Elon Musk really buy Coca-Cola?
Although financially it is not clear, Coca-Cola’s purchase figures would be truly spectacular and certainly very different from those of Twitter.
Coca-Cola’s current valuation is close to $300 billion. Elon Musk’s net worth may be similar, but such a purchase means the absolute recapitalization of his entire net worth in favor of a single company. This does not seem very likely.
The possibility of obtaining such a large amount of financing, especially after purchasing the size of Twitter’s, does not seem very likely either.
On the other hand, there would be a major stumbling block in the form of Warren Buffet, the legendary Value Investing guru, who owns around 9% of Coca-Cola. In all probability, he would become a thorn in the side of anyone wishing to take control of the company.
In conclusion, although technically the purchase of Coca-Cola by the founder of Tesla could be possible, his tweet seems more like one of those stirring and controversial moves, not exempt from his particular sense of humor, to which Musk has made us accustomed. Or not?