If yesterday we told that Elon Musk would no longer be part of Twitter as a manager, but as a mere shareholder (with up to 9% of the shares), today he has made an offer, as he has just shared on the social network that he wants to buy. 43 billion dollars for Twitter.
The billionaire Elon Musk has launched an offer to buy Twitter for around 41,000 million dollars, about 43,000 million euros, just five after rejecting a position to be a director of the social media company.
At the close of trading yesterday, Twitter stock was at $45.85. Musk, considered the richest man in the world, is offering a price per share of $54.20, as he revealed in a regulatory filing this Thursday made public, what represents a 38% premium over Twitter’s April 1 shutdownthe last trading day before the participation of more than 9% owned by Tesla. Since then, Twitter shares are up 12% in premarket trading.
“Twitter should be a private company”
“Since making my investment, I now realize that the company will not prosper or meet this social imperative in its current form. Twitter must be transformed into a private company,” Elon Musk said in a letter to Twitter’s chairman, Brett Taylor.
In addition, he has added a threat: “My offer is my best and last offer and, if it is not accepted, I would have to reconsider my position as a shareholder,” Musk said. Although he denies it, “this is not a threat, it is simply not a good investment without the changes that must be made”, without specifying which ones, we will have to wait for what he says tomorrow.
The value of the offer, $54.20 per share, includes a 420 in the proposed figure, referencing to code in cannabis culture, referring to its legal consumption. In the past, Elon Musk posted a tweet offering to buy all of Tesla’s shares for $420, which has already caused him to be sued by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
It was last February 2019 when the SEC asked a judge to arrest Elon Musk for the fraud allegations that ended in his forced resignation as president of Tesla and a fine of 20 million dollars. Musk and the SEC reached a new agreement, which allows the Tesla executive to use Twitter with certain limitations when it comes to information that could affect the valuation of Tesla and the stock market.
What Twitter is worth now
If the price was maintained, the entire company would have been about $31.4 billion, but Musk has decided to buy all the shares at a value higher than what it would have cost him a few weeks ago. The acquisition of Twitter shares would be in cash and Musk has Morgan Stanley as financial advisor for this operation.