(San Francisco) Already the main shareholder of Twitter with just over 9% of its capital, Elon Musk now wants to take over the entire company and withdraw it from Wall Street, a non-negotiable offer, said the whimsical boss of Tesla.
Posted at 6:46 a.m.
Updated at 8:30 a.m.
“I propose to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash,” Musk said in a letter to Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor and published in a filing. transmitted Wednesday to the American stock market policeman, the SEC.
The price proposed by the billionaire boss would value Twitter at 43.4 billion dollars, compared to around 37 billion at present.
According to Forbes, Mr. Musk’s personal fortune is nearly $274 billion, making him the richest man in the world.
This proposal, specifies the leader of South African origin, is “his best offer and his final offer”. In case of refusal, he threatens to “re-examine his position as a shareholder” within the microblogging site.
Twitter’s stock climbed nearly 7% to $49.00 in pre-opening electronic trading on Wall Street.
“Examine carefully”
Twitter confirmed in a statement that it had received “Elon Musk’s unsolicited, non-binding offer to acquire all of the company’s outstanding common shares for $54.20 in cash.”
“Twitter’s Board of Directors will carefully review the offer to determine the course of action that it believes best serves the interests of the company and all Twitter shareholders,” the group added.
Very active on the blue bird social network where he has nearly 82 million subscribers, Mr. Musk made a remarkable entry into the capital of the company at the beginning of last week by acquiring 73.5 million shares. ordinary of the Californian group, which placed it at the head of the largest shareholders of Twitter.
He then multiplied the tweets to suggest changes or additions he would like to see appear on the social network, including an “edit” button.
Another battleground of the leader: freedom of expression which he considers threatened by the excessively strict moderation of content.
In his letter to Mr. Taylor, Elon Musk claims to have invested in the platform because of the major role it plays in favor of “freedom of expression across the planet” which, according to him, is “a societal imperative for ‘a functional democracy’.
“However, since making my investment, I have realized that the business will not thrive and serve its societal imperative in its current form,” he said.
“hostile takeover”
The whimsical boss of Tesla and SpaceX was also to join the board of directors of Twitter, but the group’s chief executive Parag Agrawal announced on Monday that Mr. Musk had finally given up on it.
According to several analysts, this choice gave him greater leeway to implement his plans for Twitter.
“We believe this twisty soap opera will end with Mr. Musk acquiring Twitter after this hostile takeover of the company,” predict Dan Ives, Ygal Arounian and John Katsingris of Wedbush Securities in a note.
“It will be difficult for any other bidder or consortium to emerge and the board of directors will probably be forced to accept this offer or to launch active steps to sell Twitter”, add the analysts.