The Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Twitter’s largest shareholder now is offering to buy the company for $43 billion in cash.
Just weeks after he bought shares in the company has launched a leveraged buyout for Twitter. The takeover bid is the latest twist in a wild two weeks for the billionaire and the social media platform Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives described Musk’s offer to buy Twitter as an aggressive hostile purchase and said he expects the bid to succeed.
Twitter’s board will likely either have to accept his offer or solicit other bids, he predicted If the offer is not accepted, Mr. Musk said, he would “need to reconsider my position as a shareholder,” according to a letter sent to Bret Taylor, Twitter’s chair, on April 13 and enclosed in the filing. “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.”
Morgan Stanley is Mr. Musk’s financial adviser for the bid, according to the filing. On April 4, a regulatory filing revealed that Mr. Musk had bought a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter, while not clear why he changed his mind about joining the board. In his filing on Thursday, he doubled down on his vision of Twitter’s role in society and what is needed to realize it.
He says that he believes Twitter has the potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe. Musk has been a vocal critic of Twitter, suggesting that the platform stifles free speech. Shares of Twitter swung between positive and negative in volatile afternoon trading, but remained well below Musk’s offer price of $54.20 per share, suggesting that markets are skeptical that the deal will go through. Twitter’s board of directors was meeting on Thursday afternoon to discuss Musk’s historic takeover bid, and the company planned to hold an all-hands meeting later in the day to update employees.
It’s also unclear how Musk will finance his cash offer. Most of his $266 billion net worth is held in Tesla shares. Selling part of his stake could affect Tesla’s valuation. Earlier this week, a Twitter shareholder filed a securities fraud lawsuit against Musk, alleging his late disclosure of his stake cost investors’ money and saved Musk around $143 million.
Earlier this week musk have been more popular for he had spent much of the weekend tweeting suggestions, criticisms, and jokes about Twitter, considering that many of its most-followed users, such as Barack Obama and Katy Perry, rarely tweet.
He also said the company should shift away from its ad-supported business model, suggested it turn its San Francisco headquarters into a homeless shelter, and polled his followers about removing the “w” from Twitter’s name. He later deleted many of those tweets. Other major public shareholders in Twitter include financial giants BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, State Street Global Advisors, and Vanguard Group.
According to Wall Street Journal he’s no longer the company’s largest shareholder.
Funds held by Vanguard Group recently upped their stake in the social-media platform, making the asset manager Twitter’s largest shareholder and bumping Mr. Musk out of the top spot.
Vanguard disclosed on April 8 that it now owns 82.4 million shares of Twitter, or 10.3% of the company, according to the most recent publicly available filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.