Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share

By Eshe Nelson

Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share, just weeks after he became the social media company’s largest shareholder.

Musk said this was a “best and final offer,” representing a 54% premium over the day before he began investing in the company in late January, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. It would value the company at about $43 billion.

If the offer is not accepted, Musk said he would “need to reconsider my position as a shareholder,” according to a letter sent to Bret Taylor, Twitter’s chair, on April 13 and enclosed in the filing. “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.”

Twitter shares were 11% higher in premarket trading. On Wednesday, the closing price was $45.85.

On April 4, a regulatory filing revealed that Musk, the billionaire chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX and the world’s richest man, had bought a 9.2% stake in Twitter. The next day, Twitter announced Musk would join its board but by the end of the week he rejected the offer.

“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 letter to Taylor sent on April 13.

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

Twitter’s share price has climbed 16% since April 1 and Musk’s investment became public.