Elon Musk has made a deal to acquire Twitter for US$44 billion.
Twitter’s board accepted the offer from the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive officer to buy the company and take it private, Twitter announced Monday.
The deal is “a definitive agreement to be acquired by an entity wholly owned by Elon Musk, for $54.20 per share in cash in a transaction valued at approximately $44 billion,” Twitter said in the announcement.
After the transaction is completed, Twitter will become a privately held company.
The stock closed up 5.64 per cent for the day after it was halted for the news.
The social media company’s announcement revealed that under the terms of the agreement, Twitter stockholders will get US$54.20 in cash for each share of Twitter common stock that they own upon closing of the proposed transaction.
“The purchase price represents a 38 per cent premium to Twitter’s closing stock price on April 1, 2022, which was the last trading day before Mr. Musk disclosed his approximately 9 per cent stake in Twitter,” the announcement noted.
The sale to Musk was collectively approved by the Twitter board and is expected to close this year, subject to the approval of Twitter stockholders, the receipt of applicable regulatory approvals, and the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions.
In a statement in the press release, Musk said that he plans to make Twitter better, with new features and app enhancements. However, most importantly, Musk said he sees free speech on Twitter as a major priority.
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” he said. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”