Elon Musk Offers $41 Billion To Buy Twitter To "Transform" It
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
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