Billionaire Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter for US$41.39 billion, a regulatory filing showed on Thursday.
Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for $41.39 billion. The offer price is a 38% premium. One of the world’s richest men delivered a letter to the company with a proposal to acquire all outstanding shares of Twitter for $54.20 each, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission published Thursday.
The letter, delivered on Wednesday, amounts to an offer to take Twitter private, a move that would give Musk great
Musk’s offer price of $54.20 per share represents a 38 percent premium to the closing price of Twitter’s stock on April 1, the last trading day before the Tesla CEO’s over 9 percent investment in the company was publicly announced.
According to an SEC filing, Musk has offered to acquire all the shares in Twitter he does not own for $54.20 per share in cash. That represents a 38% premium over the closing price on April 1, 2022, the last trading day before Musk disclosed that he had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder.
Here is what Musk wrote in a letter to Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor, as disclosed in a new SEC filing.
I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy. However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company. As a result, I am offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced. My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder. Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it. ~ said Elon Musk in his SEC filing.
Twitter shares (TWTR) surged 13% in pre-market trading.
Unsatisfied with the influence that comes with being Twitter’s largest investor, he has now launched a full takeover, one of the few individuals who can afford it outright. He’s currently worth about $260 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index, compared with Twitter’s market valuation of about $37 billion.
The takeover is unlikely to be a drawn-out process. “If the deal doesn’t work, given that I don’t have confidence in management nor do I believe I can drive the necessary change in the public market, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder,” said Musk.
