Elon Musk offers to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share

Elon Musk has made an offer to buy twitter outrightly.

New filing to SEC shows that the South African billionaire offered to acquire all remaining shares in Twitter for $54.20 per share. Twitter shares as at press time is $45.85, soaring 18% in pre-market trading.

This comes after he rejected to be part of the board earlier this week.

“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 wrote in a letter sent to Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor and disclosed in a securities filing.

“However, since making my investment I now realise the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed into a private company,” Musk says.

According to the serial entrepreneur, the social media company needs to go private because it can “neither thrive nor serve” free speech in its current state, Musk wrote. 

“As a result, I am offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced,” he wrote.

My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder. Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.

Elon Musk

Musk added that his offer was not a ‘threat’, but “it’s simply not a good investment without the changes that need to be made. And those changes won’t happen without taking the company private.”

Musk, 50, signed the new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Monday indicating he had declined his board seat.

Twitter said that its board would review the proposal and any response would be in the best interests of “all Twitter stockholders.”

The numbers

The total deal value was calculated based on 763.58 million shares outstanding, according to Refinitiv data.

Elon Musk says his offer, valued at $43 billion, is a 54% premium over the company’s value the day before he began investing in it.

Elon Musk is currently worth about $260 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index, compared with Twitter’s market valuation of about $37 billion.