Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has made a $300M “strategic” investment in Twitter, according to Bloomberg.com:
Alwaleed, who leads the 2011 Arab Rich List, and his investment company agreed to buy a “strategic stake” in Twitter, Kingdom Holding said today. A strategic holding means more than 3 percent, Ahmed Halawani, a Kingdom Holding director, said in an interview. That would give the San Francisco-based company a valuation exceeding $10 billion.
Alwaleed is described by Bloomberg as a businessman and an investor. But Alwaleed is a politician, not a businessman– he is a member of the Saudi royal family, and his capital and wealth are continually generated by the Saudi royal family’s political control over Saudi oil fields. Similarly, Alwaleed is an “investor” in businesses like Citi and Twitter in the same sense that the CIA “invested” in Google and Facebook– for information and for control, not for economic or financial profit.
If this is a challenging view to accept, let’s consider just this recent purchase of his Twitter stake from insiders. According to the article, an industry research group recently cut their forecast for Twitter’s 2011 ad revenue from $150M to $139.5M. What kind of value multiplier did Alwaleed “invest” in if he paid $300M for more than 3% of the company which is now valued at over $10B?
Let’s give Alwaleed the benefit of the doubt and say that Twitter’s 2011 ad revenue comes in at $150M. Let’s further assume that Twitter is a highly profitable company and 30% of their revenues drop down to the bottom line and become net profit. That’s $45M of net profit in 2011.
At a $10B market cap, Alwaleed’s investment was made at 66.6x Price-to-Revenues and 222.2x Price-to-Earnings. I should hope I don’t need to do the math for you to show what kind of growth expectations you have to factor into those ratios for them to make sense.
Now, ask yourself, have you ever heard of the “Best Investor In the Universe”, Warren Buffett, investing in companies at these kinds of multiples? Ask yourself, what kind of margin of safety does Alwaleed have here when paying so much for so little. Ask yourself, is it a credible idea that Alwaleed is truly a successful businessman and investor who has managed to grow his personal fortune to $19.6B (according to Wikipedia) since 1979 by investing at such high multiples?
Alwaleed “is a savvy investor and the hot thing in the IT world is social networking,” said Nabil Farhat, a partner at Abu Dhabi-based Al Fajer Securities.
Historically, how do even “savvy investors” fare investing in the latest “hot thing”?
As hinted at earlier, there is a more reasonable explanation for why Alwaleed invested in Twitter, why he has invested in Citi and News Corp., and why he invests in almost anything– Alwaleed is part of a political front and he makes investments as part of a political agenda. Politics is not an economically efficient system, it cares not for scarcity and cost in the economic sense of productive effort and opportunity cost. Political systems get their revenues from coercion, and they use economic resources as but another means to their arbitrary political ends.
Why did Alwaleed invest in Twitter? Because Twitter played an embarrassing role in the recent “Arab Spring” of revolutionary fervor across the Middle East this year and Alwaleed and his sponsors want to be in a position which allows them the knowledge and influence of the insider, of control. This is what is meant by the savvy Mr. Alwaleed’s “strategic” investment in a not-so-profitable social media favorite.
Why did Alwaleed invest in Citi? Because Citi is a centerpiece to the financial chicanery involving the global drug trade controlled by the CIA, the power-politics of world political intrigue and espionage and the dangerous, corrupt game of arms dealing and the financing of imperial military adventurism.
Why did Alwaleed invest in News Corp.? To control the news!
Let us not confuse legitimate businessmen and investors with political operatives and speculators any longer!
A House Rises 