Billionaire Elon Musk, owner of SpaceX and Tesla, has put forth an offer to buy Twitter. This comes just days after he changed course and decided to not join Twitter’s board of directors after buying a substantial stake in the company. Musk said in a regulatory filing on Thursday that he is offering $54.20 per share, which would amount to about $41 billion. This is a 54% premium over Twitter’s stock price at the end of January and a 38% premium over Twitter’s share value on April 1.
In a note to Twitter’s chairman, Bret Taylor, Musk said he is seeking to buy Twitter outright because Twitter has “extraordinary potential” as a free speech platform. He is seeking to buy Twitter to make it a private company to unlock its full potential, he said.
“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,” he said. “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.”
“My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder,” he added. “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.”
Musk recently purchased 73,115,038 shares of Twitter, or about 9.2% of the company, making him the largest single shareholder of the company.
Musk has been openly critical of Twitter over the years. Just recently, he posted to his 80 million followers about whether or not Twitter is dying.
Twitter went public in 2013 with an IPO. When Musk bought his 9.2% stake in Twitter this month, the company’s share price had its best day in nearly a decade, jumping by more than 27%. Musk backing out of his plan to join Twitter’s board might have signaled his intent to try to buy the company, which he is doing now. That’s because as a board member, Musk would have been capped on how much stock he could own. Musk was recently sued about his move to buy Twitter stock, with claims that he saved himself more than $140 million by waiting more than 10 days to disclose his stake in the company.
Musk only just made his offer to buy Twitter today, April 14, and the social media site already responded by confirming it has received Musk’s offer and will “carefully review” the proposal. Twitter’s board will look into whether or not accepting the offer is in the best interest of Twitter and its shareholders.
As Musk said, he might dump his Twitter shares if the board doesn’t approve his buyout proposal. Musk said he is “not playing the back-and-forth game” as it relates to his bid to buy Twitter. Still, some might believe his plan is to buy stock, drive up the price, and sell for a profit. Keep checking back with GameSpot for the latest.
