If a key part of your organizational strategy is to tax companies more than your peers and get sad when they leave, you're probably the United States government.
TL;DR: CNBC either doesn't know how to value companies, or is using a 50% discount rate. Either of these is concerning.
Disclosure: I'm using data from their 2015 Annual reports[0]
Valuing the stock requires at least 2 subjective metrics to be defined by the investor: The discount rate (similar to what return you could get on the next-best-investment) and the duration you think the firm will operate. This is because the value of the stock represents the present value of all future cash flows the entity will earn over its life.
On their balance sheet [1] they have about 6 bn worth of assets, 2 bn worth of liability and 4 bn worth of equity. They have enough cash and short term investments that if they wanted to, they could pay off all of their liabilities, and be left with property, intellectual assets and other tangible items of value, worth about $4bn. With about 715 million shares outstanding, the value of their company as a whole right now would be about $5.6 per share.[2] But, that's not the whole story - we need to figure out the discounted cash flows.
So first, how long do we expect twitter to last? Well, in their 2015 annual report they had a 143% increase in ad-engagement and a 41% decrease in the cost-per-ad. This tells us that they're getting more and more efficient, and at the very least, still in demand.[3] With about $2bn cash on hand, we can figure that they're in a position to buy out any early-stage competitors in the near future, so can we agree that they can last at least 5 years? Awesome, now which discount value should we use? Well if you're not investing in twitter, perhaps you could get 10% investing in other tech companies. But for the purposes of this example, let's say you're REALLY good, and can grab a 20% return on your investments.
So now we do a net present value calculation. Twitter has had ~2 bn worth of revenue per year. A 20% discount on $2bn every year for the next 5 years is about $6 bn. $6bn divided by 715 million shares = $8.37 per share, plus the $5.6 it's worth today gives us about $14 a share - still 40% more than what CNBC suggests, but a little less than what it's valued at today, although remember that this assumes an outrageous 20% discount rate. A more realistic return would be 10%, which would put us in that $16/share range.
So if anything, I would say Twitter is slightly undervalued. They're operating more efficiently than ever, and have taken huge steps towards making the necessary changes to bring about transformation change. They may fail, of course, but to say that the stock isn't even worth $10 is completely absurd (since to get $10 per share they'd have to use a 50% discount rate and only discount 3 years). At least if you invest in Twitter you can have a reasonable chance at getting your money back within the next few years. Their incredible liquidity and fair valuation is attractive, and the potential upside is not encapsulated in the share price as of now.
Schedule a private 1-on-1, and tell her point blank, "I've noticed that you do <X/Y/Z> to me and it makes me uncomfortable. Why do you do <X/Y/Z> to me?"
Either she'll explain why she's a jerk, in which case you can ask her not to do that anymore, or she'll realize she'd been doing something she wasn't aware of and stop. If she feigns ignorance, then you switch from inquisitive to commanding: "Treating me like <X/Y/Z> is negatively impacting my ability to deliver work to the company/team. I need you to stop treating me like <X/Y/Z> in order to achieve our team's objectives. If you don't stop treating me like <X/Y/Z>, I will have to involve [her boss]." She may deny some or all of this, but it doesn't matter. You're not trying to argue, you're trying to make her aware so she can't feign ignorance to her superiors.
Make sure you record the conversation on your smartphone. I've gotten to the point where I record all of my time I spend in the office in order to protect me against claims of sexism because of how detrimental it can be to my career.
By structuring the conversation in terms of your work performance, you can help convince her, her superiors, and the court (if it comes to that) that she is in the wrong and that you're a victim. If you don't record it though, none of it matters.
The true value of the employee to an organization in a non-monopoly industry is 300k, in this example, because of the opportunity cost of the employee (assuming they could provide the same value at other firms).
The true value of the employee ==/== the total compensation of the employee. As I said above, the total compensation would be as close to $150k as possible - because at $149,999.99 the firm still makes a profit (of $.01) and gets product features shipped.
It does assume these things - but they're relatively reasonable. If your next closest competitor is doing worse than you, then your best employees, on average, must be better than their average employee. If an employee leaves your company for your competitor, they're adding value Day 1, whereas you have to go through the process of hiring a replacement, and hoping that they're just as good.
It also assumes that you don't pay your employees well enough to retire immediately after leaving ;)
I think it's more of anticipation for the future. If a company cuts overhead for something big, say, a corporate holiday party from $100k to $80k, some may be frustrated, but it's probably because they recognize the waste in hosting at the Ritz instead of the Hilton. It doens't necessarily mean salaries, benefits, or other, smaller, things will be cut, but it's sending a message that the firm cares about fiscally sustainable operations.
If a company cuts costs of the little things, all of a sudden everything is put on the table. Stock options, salary, benefits, perks, headcount. It sends the message that the company cares about operating today more efficiently than it cares about growing (because no company would stop investing in employees if it could still grow, because good employees make good products).
Companies cut small costs because they believe that their product/market fit has reached the final destination and the only way to grow profits is by cutting. The best firms (and by extension, employees) realize that the best way to grow is always up.
As an accountant, I feel like employees are severely underpaid in highly-skilled markets (like tech, not accounting), and I think that companies don't actually capture the true cost of a single full time employee.
Most see a salary, benefits, fringe costs (like hiring HR and finance teams), lunches, etc. Some of the better firms add in the cost of hiring employees with intangibles, like communication, poise, and professionalism, but the truly great see the largest potential cost - that they do better work at a competitor.
If you're paying an engineer $100k to add 150k worth of value to your product, the true value of their work is $300k: $150k worth of value to you, and $150k worth of value that isn't added to your next closest competitor.
It's the same reason football teams say "defense wins championships" - because Defense is the only position where you can simultaneously score points and stop your opponent from scoring. Offenses can only score.
Now, that employee shouldn't be paid $300k because that's the true value for the organization, rather, they should be paid as close to the marginal benefit they directly apply to the organization - in this case, $150k. Doing so may be a breakeven point from a cash perspective, but a billion dollar company that breaks even is worth more than a lemonade stand making $10 profit.
From an accounting perspective, this can be observed as employee expenses (temporary equity accounts) providing value to products (permanent asset). When the employee is terminated, the assets still remain, so for anyone with any equity stake in the firm, it is beneficial to pay as much as possible up to the point that the company a) doesn't run out of runway, b) retains talent to further grow the assets and c) doesn't grow competitor assets.
The CFO that cut soda costs by $10k also boosted the equity of all the competitors that hired the disgruntled employees - and most likely by a value greater than $10k, and multiplied by each employee that left.
Just my $.02
Edit: Cut soda costs by $10k total, not per employee
The fallacy is when people use the size of a market as support of why they should enter it, sort of like this:
Founder: "We should enter X market! It has $1 Trillion worth of annual business."
VC: "It must be heavily saturated, with mature, efficient companies. Why should we fund you?"
And now is the fallacy - instead of replying with something like "we have better A, we do B differently and we're priced at C," they say "well we don't have to take over the entire market, we ONLY need .001% and we'll be billionaires!"
And the fallacy, more specifically, is similar to an appeal to probability, because using such broad metrics aim to give the VC a false sense of confidence - that even if the founders aren't 100% successful, they only need to be .00001% successful for them to make a killing.
But it still doesn't answer the original question: How does a founder go from 0% to .000001%.
But when you're evaluating the marketplace, it's perfectly reasonable to say "I need x% of the market to break even, y% to earn a profit" and extrapolate from there. The idea itself isn't bad, it's when it's used improperly.