Twitter’s biggest shareholder, Elon Musk, has offered to buy Twitter in a deal worth around $43.4 billion at $54.20 per share.
The Tesla CEO has offered to buy 100% of Twitter and take the company private in the 13D SEC filing — updated on Thursday — which revealed his acquisition of 9.1% of Twitter shares. As a result of the filing, Twitter shares are up by 13%.
“I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe. However, since making my investment, I now realise the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company,” Musk said in the filing.
“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’s not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder,” Musk added. “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.”
In the filing, Musk further added that this isn’t “a threat”, and his investment in Twitter isn’t worthwhile until some changes are made, for which the company needs to be taken private.
Earlier this week, Musk declined the offer to join Twitter’s board of directors, which would’ve limited his potential stake to 14.9%. However, after the initial filing and announcement, Musk ran quite a few polls on the platform related to how it should function.
Musk boasts over 80 million followers on Twitter, to whom he posted polls asking questions like whether or not there should be an edit button — endorsed by Twitter CEO Parag Agarwal.
Musk currently holds 73,115,038 shares out of a total of 800,641,166 Twitter shares.
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