Elon Musk Offers To Buy Twitter For $43B In Cash
Socialites, get into this! Elon Musk has made an offer to buy Twitter outright, valuing the company at $43.4 billion, according to an SEC filing. The Tesla CEO and billionaire took his aim at Twitter (TWTR.N) with a cash offer this Thursday, saying the social media giant needs to be taken private to grow and become a platform for free speech.
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Musk, who is already the company’s second-largest shareholder after he recently acquired Twitter stocks for up to 9.2%, said in a letter to Twitter’s board on Wednesday: “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.”
In the Wednesday letter, Musk offered $54.20 per share of Twitter’s stock, which comes out to $41.3 billion — a slightly higher than Twitter’s current market cap value of $36.7 billion.
“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,” Musk said in the proposal. “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 CNN notes, the offer was made public in a regulatory filing this Thursday.
The news site notes that Twitter has said it received Musk’s offer and will decide whether it is in the best interests of shareholders to accept or continue to operate as a publicly traded company.
Elon Musk’s net worth currently sits at $278 billion. As we previously reported, he has become the richest person in the world with his assets coming mainly from the electric vehicle company Tesla and company, SpaceX.
Twitter’s former CEO and founder Jack Dorsey, and current CEO Prag Agarwal has not publicly reacted to his latest offer just yet. In the meantime, let us know your thoughts on this in the comment box below.
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