Elon Musk is considering whether to attempt to purchase Twitter in a tender offer after the social media giant’s board rejected his previous overture.
His intentions were detailed in an updated filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday. The filing said that Musk is exploring a tender offer to acquire all outstanding shares of the stock at $54.20 per share in cash.
Further, Musk claims to have secured $46.5 billion in financing for the massive deal.
A tender offer is when an interested party appeals directly to shareholders to purchase all or some of a company. Musk had previously gone to Twitter’s board to ask to buy the company for $43 billion and take it private, but the board never responded to the offer and instead adopted a “poison pill” to prevent the Tesla founder from wresting control of the company.
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A poison pill is a strategy that can help block companies from being acquired in hostile takeovers. It allows the market to be flooded with new shares should an investor decide to buy up more than a preset percentage of a company’s stock.
After the apparent rejection of Musk’s offer, he began hinting that he might make a tender offer via tweets.
Over the weekend, he tweeted, “Love me tender,” enclosed by musical note emojis, referring to the 1956 hit song by Elvis Presley. Musk also tweeted a blank space followed by the words, “is the night” — a possible reference to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1934 novel Tender Is the Night.
Musk’s original $43 billion offer to the board was a 38% premium over the closing price on the day before news broke that Musk had bought up 9.6% of the company and an 18% increase from the closing price before the purchase was announced.
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Musk, who is the world’s wealthiest man, has criticized how Twitter handles free speech, and many free speech activists were encouraged by his efforts to purchase the company and transform some of its policies.
