Elon Musk Offers to Buy Twitter for $43 Billion in Cash

From a story on axios.com by Jacob Knutson and Dan Primack headlined “Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for $43 billion in cash”:

Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share in cash, or about $43 billion, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday.

Why it matters: The move, which Musk called his “best and final offer,” comes after the billionaire has repeatedly criticized Twitter, disclosed a 9.2% stake in the social media company and backed out of joining its board of directors.

What they’re saying: “I am not playing the back-and-forth game. I have moved straight to the end. It’s a high price and your shareholders will love it,” Musk told Twitter, per the filing.

• “If the deal doesn’t work, given that I don’t have confidence in management nor do I believe I can drive the necessary change in the public market, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.”

Twitter confirmed receiving an “unsolicited” offer from Musk, saying in a statement that its “Board of Directors will carefully review the proposal to determine the course of action that it believes is in the best interest of the Company and all Twitter stockholders.”

Pricing: Musk is offering an 18.2% premium to where Twitter shares ended trading on Wednesday, and a 38% premium to where they traded before his ownership stake was disclosed. However, Twitter shares traded above $60 as recently as last October.

• Musk does not disclose how he plans to pay for Twitter, as the total price would be north of $43 billion.
• One possibility is that he has investment partners, although he does not say that in his letter. Another is that he plans to leverage his stock in Tesla, whose shares are down slightly in premarket trading on the Twitter news.
• Musk famously got in trouble with securities regulators for writing that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private for $420 per share in 2018, when he did not. His offer to buy Twitter also includes the number 420.
• He later settled with the SEC, though he recently tried to back out of that deal.