Elon Musk has finally played his Twitter hand and revealed his big plan. Today, 14 April 2022, he tweeted “I made an offer” together with a link. That link turned out to be an SEC filing with his offer to outright buy Twitter.
I made an offer https://t.co/VvreuPMeLu
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 14, 2022
This whole episode, unbeknown to most folks, started in January 2022 when Musk started buying Twitter shares a few times a day. He did that until he owned 9.2% of the company. When this knowledge was eventually made public Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal shared that he and the rest of the board of directors at Twitter HQ were appointing Musk to the board.
Earlier this week, Agrawal shared an internal memo saying that Musk had decided not to join Twitter’s board. We speculated that this might have something to do with some dodgy search history coming up in his background check or because he didn’t want to have to “…act in the best interest of the company and all [its] shareholders”.
How could we miss what was really going on? We were clearly thinking like the poors.
I’ll have one Twitter, to go please
Not one to miss out on a 420 joke, Musk has offered $54.20 (R795) per Twitter share, in cash, to make a total of around $43 billion (R630 billion). He also noted in his SEC filing that he isn’t here to negotiate. “My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.”
The US Stock Exchange has just opened for the day’s trading to begin. The closing price of a single share of Twitter was $45.85 (R673), which is a fair bit lower than Musk is offering. If Twitter’s board decides to go for it, Twitter will have a new owner. Musk will probably waste little time in taking the company private. He says as much in the filing,
“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. However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”
What all this means for the average Twitter user in the long term is tough to say. It’s not like Twitter is going to suddenly change overnight and become a decent place to hold well-thought-out conversations among people with differing opinions. One can hope, though.