ENVIRONMENTALISTS PROTEST IN FRONT OF SEMPRA HEADQUARTERS
Demonstration decries high rates, climate policies
A group of about 25 environmentalists gathered Friday morning in front of the headquarters of Sempra, the Fortune 500 energy company based in San Diego, protesting the company’s use of natural gas and the rates charged by San Diego Gas & Electric, one of Sempra’s subsidiaries.
The demonstration coincided with Sempra’s annual shareholders meeting.
“Sempra is the parent company of SDG&E and has been overcharging San Diego ratepayers, using their monopoly for decades and building a fracked-gasmethane empire of energy infrastructure to basically stop us from transitioning to a renewable world, make huge profits that we pay for (and) sell all this gas to Europe and Asia,” said Scott Kelley of SanDiego350. “It’s an absolute climate disaster.”
A spokesperson for Sempra said, “We respect the right of demonstrators to express their views peacefully.”
As for utility rates, the spokesperson said, “SDG&E is keenly focused on addressing energy affordability while building a safer, stronger energy system that can withstand climate threats and accommodate a growing amount of renewable energy, battery storage, and electrified transportation and buildings as California aims to reach carbon neutrality by 2045.”
SDG&E raised its rates at the start of this year, with the class average for resi
count of bot accounts was correct, conceding that the estimate may be low. “In making this determination, we applied significant judgment, so our estimation of false or spam accounts may not accurately represent the actual number of such accounts, and the actual number of false or spam accounts could be higher than we have estimated,” the filing says.
A review of Twitter filings with the SEC shows that the company’s estimate of spam bot accounts and similar language expressing uncertainty about it have been in Twitter’s quarterly and annual reports for at least two years, well before Musk made his offer.
Sara Silver, a professor of business journalism and financial communication at Quinnipiac University, said it appears Musk is using the number of spam accounts as a pretext to pull out of the deal.
“To claim that this is the reason that he’s putting the deal on pause, it’s not credible,” Silver said. “This is not a new issue for him. It’s not just entering his consciousness now.”
Stock in both Twitter and Tesla swung sharply in opposite directions Friday, with Twitter stock falling 9.7 percent and shares of Tesla, which Musk has proposed using to help fund the Twitter deal, rising 5.7 percent.
But shares of Tesla, which Musk has been selling to fund some of the acquisition of Twitter, have tumbled since it was revealed that the social platform had become a Musk target.
Tesla shares have lost a quarter of their value in the last month and have fallen from about $1,150 in early April when Musk confirmed he had taken a huge stake in Twitter to $769.59 Friday.
“It’s become much more expensive for him to buy this company using his Tesla shares,” Silver said.
An SEC spokesperson declined to comment.
Musk’s net worth, estimated by Forbes earlier this week at $240 billion, was $232 billion as of Friday.
Academic researchers in 2017 attempted a census of all of Twitter’s active English-language accounts and estimated that up to 15 percent were bots of some kind. Emilio Ferrara, a professor at the University of Southern California who helped lead the research, said Friday that Twitter has gotten better at detecting and constantly deleting spam accounts — but they are added to the platform all the time.
“It’s really hard to pinpoint the figure overall,” he said. “It’s not possible — unless you are Twitter — to make a comprehensive estimate of the userbase.”
Tesla shares may have also benefited from Twitter bot accounts over the years. A University of Maryland researcher recently concluded that such bots have been used to generate hundreds of thousands of positive tweets about Tesla, potentially buoying its stock in years when it was under pressure.
Neither Tesla nor its supporters have taken responsibility for those bots.
Investors assessing the deal have had to weigh Musk’s legal troubles and the possibility that acquiring Twitter could be a distraction from running the world’s most valuable automaker.
Musk has already sold off more than $8 billion worth of his Tesla shares to help finance the Twitter purchase.
Originally Musk had committed to borrowing $12.5 billion with Tesla stock as collateral. He would borrow $13 billion more from banks and put up $21 billion in Tesla shares that would go to banks in exchange for cash when the deal closes.
Last week, Musk announced commitments of more than $7 billion from investors that would reduce the number of Tesla shares he would have to post as collateral.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, who follows both Tesla and Twitter, called Musk’s tweet “bizarre“and said Wall Street is skeptical. “The street view is that he’s trying to find an excuse to basically talk down the deal price or walk,” Ives said.
If the deal doesn’t go through, Musk could have to pay a $1 billion breakup fee.