Twitter has confirmed the company has entered into an agreement to be sold to Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, at $54.20 per share, a transaction valued at $44 billion. Once complete, the deal means Twitter will become a private company.
“Under the terms of the agreement, Twitter stockholders will receive $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% premium to Twitter’s closing stock price on April 1, 2022, which was the last trading day before Mr. Musk disclosed his approximately 9% stake in Twitter,” said the company in a press release.
“The Twitter Board conducted a thoughtful and comprehensive process to assess Elon’s proposal with a deliberate focus on value, certainty, and financing. The proposed transaction will deliver a substantial cash premium, and we believe it is the best path forward for Twitter’s stockholders,” said Bret Taylor, Twitter’s Independent Board Chair.
“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,” said Musk in a statement. “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.”
“Twitter has a purpose and relevance that impacts the entire world. Deeply proud of our teams and inspired by the work that has never been more important,” added Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s CEO.
The deal is expected to close in 2022, subject to the approval of Twitter shareholders. Musk has secured $25.5 billion “of fully committed debt and margin loan financing and is providing an approximately $21.0 billion equity commitment,” while no financing conditions exist for the deal to happen.
Twitter will announce Q1 2022 earnings before market open on April 28, 2022. No conference call will be held due to the pending deal announced today.
Earlier on Monday, it was said Twitter was ready to accept a deal from Musk to buy the company. Shares of Twitter were halted from trading just moments before the deal was announced, and many suspected a transaction was imminent.
“I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means,” said Musk earlier on Monday morning.
I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2022
…developing, refresh for updates
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I laughed so loud reading this it’s so awesome! Too bad the deal wasn’t accepted at $42.0bn. lololol
Already seeing some faces back on the platform I’ve not seen in quite some time, gonna be an interesting week!
Going to be a lot of snowflake having meltdowns and throwing tantrums.
“This will be the death of twitter!”
“Where else can we go that will dictate what we are allowed to say?”
“Free speech is bad. Speech must be controlled or we aren’t free!”
Previous generations fought and died for freedoms. Today’s snowflakes are actually upset someone is willing spend billions to try to allow more free conversations. They actually want more restrictions on themselves, ignorantly thinking restrictions will only ever affect those they disagree with.
This is another reason to never open an account on Twitter. I never liked this social network and this news won’t help.
Why do you think that a focus on freedom of speech and new features to enhance openness, limit spam, and enhance security will make you less interested in using Twitter?
The media said so.
Free speech is an exclusive privilege of a private citizen, an individual; a private or public company championing free speech is an illusion – there always will be some moderation behind the scenes. Otherwise, it’s just a matter of time before it becomes a cesspool of spam and hate
You’re conflating a bunch of issues there.
– freedom of speech is not a privilege, which implies something we are given by the state. It is a fundamental human right.
– at least in the US, it is a right the courts have said applies to corporations and not just citizens.
– corporations can certainly champion free speech, as they can champion any other cause.
– moderation, for the sake of civility, can be abused. Twitter has shown it will be abused and used to enforce political correctness, right-think, and specific political views.
– labeling everything one disagrees with as hate is the easiest way to justify censoring it. Calling it misinformation works too. Silencing others with labels is a key part of every tyrant’s toolkit.
Privilege as an inherent and unalienable right of an individual, just the opposite of a fiat, an arbitrary order from the power that rules over individual. So we agree on that, you just interpreted the term according to current climate created by some who attempt to ursurp the meaning of certain terms and give them different (mostly negative) connotation. One has to find a way to resist that psycholinguistic programming.
As to US laws blatantly granting corporations right of a person (like free speech – meaning money means free speech), just like with any other arbitrary laws designed to protect the interest of big corporations and big politics but not individual rights, that argument is irrelevant. There were laws in that same country not that long ago granting some people ownership rights over other human beings. A government can grant any ridiculous legal right to some, that doesn’t mean it is just or right.
I didn’t say the corporations cannot champion free speech. They can but it is hollow.
Moderation, be it benevolent and rational or abusive and stifling still imposes limits to free speech, especially the way you see it, so it is just a question who is going to decide what is allowed and what not and which way they lean. That was my whole point, only individual has the inner freedom to completely freely express one’s opinions – even though that is often sanctioned. Any company doesn’t have that freedom because inevitably has to resort so some form of moderation. If they don’t, inevitably the hate and spam and the worst in human nature will stifle whatever valuable and decent voices may be there. I never argued for the moderation, I’ve pointed out its inevitability when a company is concerned as opposed to an individual who has the freedom to reject all and any moderation or censorship when they decide to speak out. Whether they will abuse that freedom, that is up to them. And that decision is also freedom that company cannot have, at least not in the long run.
Disqualifying different opinions just by labeling them instead of offering solid counter arguments would never be something I would stand behind, so I’m not sure what were you aiming at there.
As far as I am concerned there was no conflation, just the willful misunderstanding on your part that serves your point.