Elon Musk Twitter takeover stock price details and deal timing: How much are TWTR shares worth?
By Jenal Mehta
10:45, 5 October 2022
Elon Musk agrees to buy Twitter (TWTR) at the originally agreed price of $44bn (£38.6bn), less than two weeks before both parties were due to go on trial. Bringing what would have been one of the most expensive tech court battles, to an end.
Musk’s lawyers sent a letter to Twitter on October 3 offering to go ahead with the deal, which was originally put forward by the Tesla (TSLA) chief back in early April 2022.
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The Musk/Twitter (TWTR) saga
The saga began with Musk buying 9.2% of Twitter (TWTR), making him the largest shareholder at the time. This would have given him a seat on the board, which he ultimately declined.
Instead Musk declared an outrageous idea – that he plans to buy out Twitter, taking it private. Musk made his offer on April 13
The offer was initially rejected by Twitter, the board even planned to initiate a “poison pill” to block the buyout. However, the $44bn deal was too good to pass for a company generating only $5bn in revenues per year. By April 25 the deal had been accepted.
The share price of Twitter rallied from a low of $33 in March to a peak of $49 by the end of April.
Cold feet
Soon after, Musk appeared to have cold feet. He said Twitter had misguided him in relation to the number of spam users on the site and other security issues. He tried to pull out of the deal at the start of July.
However, Twitter (TWTR) was ready to fight. On July 12th Twitter filed a lawsuit against Musk to force him to make good on his promise. Musk countersued accusing Twitter of fraud.
This brings us to the first week of October, when Musk reversed on his countersuit, and agreed to purchase Twitter (TWTR) for the original offer of $44 bn.
He has not publicly stated the reasons he changed his mind, but the most likely speculation is that he realised he was in a losing battle.
Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell told capital.com “There is a temptation to overthink things here, but it seems logical to assume that Mr Musk feared the court case would lead to a defeat, and thus enforcement of the original deal, with the possibility of other potentially embarrassing revelations along the way”
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Twitter (TWTR) is likely to seek confirmation on funding details and dates for when it can expect the deal to complete.
The $44bn that will make one of the world’s most influential social media platforms does not seem enough on the face of it, but Twitter has long been unable to grow its revenue, and is expected to remain stagnant for a number of years to come.
According to Mould this deal is “very, very generous”
He adds “Employees may be concerned by how the deal, assuming it goes through, will saddle Twitter (TWTR) with an awful amount of debt, especially given its poor profitability record, even if Mr Musk will doubtless have plans to improve that.”
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