Entrepreneur Elon Musk, the world’s richest man who is worth more than a quarter of a trillion dollars, appears to have slightly shifted his strategy in his attempt to buyout Twitter and take the company private, according to a new report.
The New York Post reports that Musk, who offered to buy Twitter earlier this month for $43 billion, is now seeking to finance the bid “in a complex deal that raises debt against both the company and possibly his own stock, as well as a giant cash equity infusion from co-investors.”
This appears to be a slight change in Musk’s plans as he stated in an SEC filing that he was “offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced.”
Sources told the New York Post that Musk was now willing to put up between $10-$15 billion of his own money to take the company private, a substantial increase from the $3.4 billion in Twitter stock that he already owns.
The report said that $20 billion of the financing will come from outside investors, who combined will own more stock than Musk while Musk would remain as the single largest shareholder. The report says that Musk hired Morgan Stanley to raise $10 billion in debt against Twitter “in the manner of a traditional leveraged buyout.”
The co-investors “will finance a hostile tender offer directly to Twitter shareholders,” the report said. “Musk is planning to launch the tender offer for Twitter in 10 days or so.”
Musk hinted at the tender offer in a cryptic tweet that he posted over the weekend when he tweeted “Love Me Tender” along with musical note emojis on Saturday, leading to speculation that the word “tender” could be “a likely wink-and-nod reference to a potential tender offer to Twitter Inc. shareholders for control of the company,” Bloomberg News reported. “If Twitter directors ultimately reject him, the world could learn whether Musk was truly threatening a direct appeal to shareholders or had just added the 1956 Elvis Presley hit ‘Love Me Tender’ to his playlist.”
🎶 Love Me Tender 🎶
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 16, 2022
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) notes that a “tender offer” “is typically an active and widespread solicitation by a company or third party (often called the ‘bidder’ or ‘offeror’) to purchase a substantial percentage of the company’s securities.”
A tender offer is only available for a short period of time and is made to everyone who owns stock in the company. The price offered to purchase the shares is fixed and usually comes at a premium rate compared to the current market value of the stock.