Elon Musk buys Twitter for $44 billion, after a week and a half of fighting between the billionaire and the company’s board of directors. I want to make Twitter better than ever, says Musk.
Twitter accepts Elon Musk’s bid to buy the company for about $44 billion. This is what the company confirms in press release.
This corresponds to about 402 billion Norwegian kroner at today’s exchange rate.
Freedom of expression is the cornerstone of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital city arena where the future of humanity is discussed, says Musk in the press release.
Acquisition means that Musk will buy the entire company and take it off the stock exchange.
The arrow is rising
Musk pays $54.2 per share, which is 38 percent more than the closing price the day before Musk first announced he had bought into the company.
Trading in Twitter stock was halted a few minutes before 9pm, pending news from the company. Twitter’s share was up on Monday afternoon due to rumors of an offer being accepted, and the stock rose more than 5 percent on the day trading was halted.
Trading resumed around 21.11, then the stock rose further. At the time of writing, it’s up more than 6 percent, and it’s trading at about $52 a share, less than Musk’s purchase price.
This isn’t surprising, says Robert Ness, chief investment officer at Nordea:
– The difference between two dollars is not that much. It always takes a while to get settled, and while there are many indications that this is going well, it’s not one hundred percent certain. The discount there is completely normal. Something could happen.
The company maintains that the offer must be approved by the company’s shareholders and approved by the US authorities.
Major shareholder in the Oil Fund
The Petroleum Fund owns about 0.89 percent of Twitter in the new year.
If the holding has not changed since then, it would mean that the oil fund could sell its shares for about $391 million. This corresponds to about 3.6 billion NOK
It will make Twitter better
The offer was unanimously approved by Twitter’s board of directors, and they say they expect the deal to be completed in 2022.
Twitter writes that Musk has secured funding for the acquisition through $25.5 billion in loans and $21 billion in stock.
Musk further says in the letter, which he also mentioned earlier, that the company has potential that hasn’t been fully utilized.
I want to make Twitter better than ever by improving the product with new functionality, allowing algorithms to own open source code to increase trust, suppress bots, and improve user identification.
Negotiations
This weekend I mentioned both of them CNBC And The Wall Street Journal That the board of Twitter and Musk were in negotiations to reach an agreement.
Twitter’s board previously opposed Musk’s bid to buy the company. After Musk’s presentation on Twitter, the board of directors launched a so-called “toxic pill” to halt the takeover. It is a strategy used to make the company less attractive for acquisitions.
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