- Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter outright in a deal that values the company at $43 billion.
- Musk proposed buying 100% of the company's stock at $54.20 per share, an SEC filing shows.
- "Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it," Musk told Twitter's chairman in a letter.
Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter outright in a deal that values the company at $43 billion, a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) showed Thursday.
"Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it," Musk said in a letter to Twitter chairman Bret Taylor, according to the filing.
Twitter's stock jumped 12% pre-market.
Musk has offered to buy 100% of Twitter's stock for $54.20 per share in cash. He's presently Twitter's largest shareholder, having disclosed in early April that he'd amassed a 9.2% stake in the company.
Per the SEC filing, in his letter to Taylor, Musk said: "I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy."
However, he added: "Since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company."
Soon after Musk disclosed his stake, Twitter announced he'd been appointed to the company's board, only to announce five days later that Musk had in fact turned down the position.
Declining to join the board freed Musk from a provision that would have capped his stock ownership at 14.9%, leaving the door open to a potential takeover.
This is a developing story...