Elon Musk has agreed to buy Twitter at his original proposed price of $54.20 per share, or about $44 billion total, Bloomberg reports and the New York Times confirms.
Musk expressed his renewed interest in a letter to the social media giant on the evening of October 3rd. “We write to notify you that the Musk Parties intend to proceed to closing of the transaction contemplated by the April 25, 2022 Merger Agreement,” it read. He also met in court with Twitter representatives the morning of October 4th.
Musk began trying to back out of the purchase agreement almost as soon as Twitter accepted it his original offer in April. He accused the platform of misleading or lying to investors about its number of daily active users, saying in May that the deal “cannot move forward” until Twitter proved that less than 5% of users are bots or spam accounts.
The Tesla founder formally attempted to pull out of the deal in July, writing in a letter to the SEC, “Mr. Musk is terminating the Merger Agreement because Twitter… appears to have made false and misleading representations upon which Mr. Musk relied when entering into the Merger Agreement.”
Four days later, Twitter responded with a lawsuit, writing, “Musk apparently believes that he — unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law — is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away.”
Legal observers had cast doubt on Musk’s ability to break the purchase agreement. He waived his rights to due diligence in order to speed up the sale, and the contract included a $1 billion penalty for pulling out of the deal, which Musk seemed to be trying to get around by focusing on Twitter’s daily active users. Musk is scheduled to be deposed in Austin, Texas on October 6th and 7th, and both parties were set to go to trial October 17th in Delaware Chancery Court.
Twitter intends to accept the offer. “We received the letter from the Musk parties which they have filed with the SEC. The intention of the Company is to close the transaction at $54.20 per share,” the company’s statement read.
According to CNBC, Musk could finalize the purchase by the end of the week, bringing all litigation to an end.
Twitter issues a statement:
"We received the letter from the Musk parties which they have filed with the SEC. The intention of the Company is to close the transaction at $54.20 per share."
— David Gura (@davidgura) October 4, 2022
