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Tesla CEO Elon Musk is infamous for using Twitter to tease and tease out various ideas he has about his business interests, cryptocurrency, politics and life in general, but today it looks like he’s making good one of the biggest of his musings. Twitter has announced that it has accepted Musk’s offer to acquire the publicly-traded company at $54.20/share, valuing the social media platform at $44 billion.
Moments after the news broke that Twitter trading was halted, the company issued a press release confirming that it was accepting Musk’s offer to take the social network private.
“The Twitter Board conducted a thoughtful and comprehensive process to assess Elon’s proposal with a deliberate focus on value, certainty, and financing,” Twitter’s Independent Board Chair Bret Taylor said of the deal. “The proposed transaction will deliver a substantial cash premium, and we believe it is the best path forward for Twitter’s stockholders.”
In the press release, Musk repeated his refrain that “free speech” is key to Twitter’s future, though most of his ideas for how to optimize the social network are things the company was already in the process of doing prior to his dramatic intervention.
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said.
“I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
Twitter says the transaction will likely close this year, “subject to the approval of Twitter stockholders, the receipt of applicable regulatory approvals and the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions.” Until those matters are resolved, it’s not a done deal.
The news comes after strategically placed reports from overnight that Twitter — contrary to earlier statements about the poison pill it would prefer over Musk acquiring it — was entertaining the offer.
The Twitter/Musk acquisition dance has been a pretty short one, especially considering the size of the deal: it started less than a month ago, when Musk first took to Twitter to make lots of pointed comments about social networks and Twitter itself and what it’s not doing well, only for Twitter to disclose on April 4 that Musk had in fact taken a significant, $3 billion stake, some 9.2% of shares, in the company.
A seat on the board swiftly followed before being pulled away. Shareholders were annoyed with Musk and sued him over what they believed was obvious share price manipulation.
And Musk? Musk doubled down and said that actually he’d just prefer to buy the whole damn platform. That was on April 14.
The board baulked and the poison pill made a viral interlude in the world of corporate tech news.
But Musk, currently the world’s richest individual on paper, simply pressed on, spelled out how he would finance such a deal, and suddenly everyone started to take him seriously. Money always talks.
Source: TechCrunch
