Elon Musk says he has lined up $46.5 billion in financing to buy Twitter, and he’s trying to negotiate an agreement with the company.
Last week, Musk announced an offer to buy the social media company for $54.20 per share, or about $43 billion. At the time, he did not say how he would finance the acquisition.
The Tesla CEO said Thursday in documents filed with U.S. securities regulators that he’s exploring what’s known as a tender offer to buy all of the social media platform’s common stock for $54.20 per share in cash. Under a tender offer, Musk, who owns about 9% of Twitter shares, would take his offer directly to other shareholders, bypassing the board.
But Musk hasn’t decided yet whether to do that.
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The documents say San Francisco-based Twitter Inc. has not responded to Musk’s proposal.
Last week Twitter’s board adopted a “poison pill” defense that could make a takeover attempt prohibitively expensive.
The filing states that “entities related to (Musk) have received commitment letters committing to provide an aggregate of approximately $46.5 billion.”
The financing would come from Morgan Stanley and other financial institutions. Some would be secured by stock that Musk owns in Tesla, the electric car and solar panel maker.
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Musk “is seeking to negotiate a definitive agreement for the acquisition of Twitter … and is prepared to begin such negotiations immediately,” the documents say.
With a tender offer, Musk would try to get other shareholders to pledge their stock to him at a certain price on a certain date. If enough shareholders agree, Musk could use that as leverage to get the board to drop the poison pill defense.
Musk signaled the possibility of a tender offer several times this week in tweets using the word “tender.”
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