Yes that's the approximate amount they have to pay due to the way he's done the financing of the deal. Keep in mind that the current interest is at a similar amount to there revenues from last year.
That's the reason to deeply cut expenses and to try and make more money. He could probably have serviced that debt if everything just kept going as normal (no big ad spend cut) and he had fired everyone but that's an impossible scenario.
It’s going to be something like that. He bought it for 44 billion. That was mostly loans. Those loans are transferred to the company and the company pays interest on them.
The banks committed to the loans at the point of the takeover proposal (end of April). The macroeconomic lookout was better. Since then, just about every tech stock is down >20% and Musk has helpfully made unfounded accusations of bots and spam and whatnot in a pointless attempt to delay the acquisition, meaning the banks now have to try and unload these loans in a recession. I think last I heard they are giving a 40% discount or just keeping them on their books, hoping for a recovery as Musk trashes the company value further with every week that passes.
