Thursday morning Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, proposed to buy Twitter’s outstanding shares for $54.20 apiece. This would take the company private in a deal valued at $40 billion.
Musk is already Twitter’s largest shareholder, owning 9.1 percent of the company, though not a member of the company’s board.
While Twitter has acknowledged Musk’s “unsolicited, non-binding proposal,” the company has yet to make a decision, saying its board of directors will carefully review the proposal and determine whether the buy-out is in Twitter’s best interest.
Details of the proposal’s financing were not disclosed. If Twitter does accept the proposal, Morgan Stanley will serve as the financial advisor.
Musk says this proposal is his “best and final offer,” according to the financial filing, and nearly 40 percent higher than Twitter’s stock price before his share purchases became public.
According to The New York Times, Musk’s decision to buy Twitter is motivated by his lack of confidence in the company’s management to fulfill its “societal imperative” to be a platform for free speech.
This news comes shortly after Musk’s recent decision not to join Twitter’s board following his large share purchase, something Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal said was “for the best” in a tweeted statement. Musk gave no official reason for declining the board’s invitation. He has since, however, suggested in now-deleted tweets that the company remove ads from its platform — which is Twitter’s main source of revenue — change its name and convert its San Francisco headquarters into a homeless shelter, according to The New York Times.
Musk also recently proposed that Twitter add an edit feature, a suggestion hotly debated online. Twitter later confirmed the company has been working on an edit feature since last year. Testing for the new feature will kick off within Twitter Blue Labs in the coming months, according to a tweet by Twitter’s Comms account.
