LONDON (Reuters) – Billionaire Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter for about $41 billion, just days after rejecting a seat on the social media company’s board.
Musk’s offer price of $54.20 per share, which was disclosed in a regulatory filing on Thursday, represents a 38% premium to Twitter’s April 1 close, the last trading day before the Tesla CEO’s more than 9% stake in the company was made public.
Twitter’s shares jumped 12% in premarket trading.
Here is a summary of analyst comments:
MICHAEL HEWSON, CHIEF MARKET ANALYST AT CMC MARKETS:
“The big question for the Twitter board now is whether to accept a very generous offer for a business that has been a serial underperformer and tends to treat its users with indifference.
“Twitter has also come under increasing criticism for its arbitrary censoring of accounts that don’t adopt a particular political narrative, as well as the arbitrary nature of how it verifies users, and deals with fake accounts, over genuine users.
“From customer service to the monetisation of its user base, Twitter has been a serial underperformer for some time. Maybe a shaking up of the status quo wouldn’t be a bad thing!
“Whatever your feelings on Musk, he would certainly shake things up, with the only question as to whether he would make things worse or improve them.”
(Reporting by Samuel Indyk; Compiled by Saikat Chatterjee)
