Lei Jianping reported on April 26
Twitter announced today that the company's board of directors has accepted a $44 billion acquisition and take-private proposal by billionaire Elon Musk.
Musk bought Twitter for $54.20 per share, the same price he made earlier this month in his initial offer. The deal is expected to close in 2022, and upon completion of the deal, Twitter will become a privately held company.
Under the terms of the agreement, upon completion of the proposed deal, Twitter shareholders would receive $54.20 in cash for each of their Twitter ordinary shares. The purchase price is a 38% premium to Twitter's closing price on April 1, 2022.
Bret Taylor, Chairman of Twitter's Independent Board, said: "Twitter's Board conducts a deliberate and comprehensive process to evaluate Elon's proposal, with a deliberate focus on value, certainty and financing. The proposed deal would result in a substantial cash premium, which we believe is the best path for Twitter shareholders. ”
"Free speech is the cornerstone of democratic operations, and Twitter is a digital city square where people discuss issues that are critical to the future of humanity," Musk said, "and I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making algorithms open source to increase trust, beating spam bots, and authenticating everyone." ”
Currently, Musk has secured $25.5 billion in full debt and margin loan financing and offers approximately $21 billion in equity commitments. There are no financing conditions for the completion of the transaction.
Twitter needs to transform into a private company
In April 2022, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosure documents, Musk already held 9.2% of Twitter's common stock.
Musk holds 9.2 percent of Twitter's common stock
On April 4, 2022, U.S. time, Twitter signed a letter agreement (the "Agreement") with Musk, which stipulated that as long as Musk serves on the Board of Directors and for 90 days thereafter, Musk will not become the beneficial owner of more than 14.9% of the Company's issued common shares, either alone or as a member of the group.
Twitter also invited Musk to join the company's board of directors, but musk has since refused.
"I invested in Twitter because I believe it has the potential to become a global platform for free speech, and I believe that freedom of speech is a social responsibility for a functioning democracy," Musk said.
However, since I made the investment, I now realize that in its current form, this company will neither prosper nor meet the needs of society. Twitter needs to transform into a private company.
So I offered to buy 100% of Twitter in cash for $54.20 per share, a 54% premium to the day before I started investing in Twitter and a 38% premium to the day before I publicly announced my investment. My offer is the best and final offer I can make. If it is not accepted, I will need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.
Twitter has extraordinary potential. I'm going to release it. ”
Control the position of public opinion
Forbes recently released the 2022 global billionaire list, Musk's wealth is as high as $219 billion, pushing Amazon founder Bezos to continue to become the world's richest man. Musk's wealth is mainly based on Tesla and SpaceX.
Musk's wealth has increased by $68 billion over the past year. Musk also concentrated on dumping a large number of volatile, more than $16 billion tesla shares in the two months of 2021, and thus may have created the largest amount of personal annual tax bills ever created.
If you look at financial returns, Twitter's return on investment over the past two years has not performed well, with a cumulative loss of nearly $1.5 billion. Institutional investors, unhappy that Dorse is also the CEO of both Twitter and Square, continues to pressure Dorse to resign and let Twitter go.
Twitter founder Dorsey
Eventually, Dorsey resigned as Twitter CEO in December 2021 and announced his retirement from the board, completely fading out of Twitter operations and focusing on Square's CEO role.
On another level, Musk is a heavy Twitter user, with more than 80 million followers, and Twitter is an extremely important voice window for Tesla, SpaceX, StarLink or himself.
In the past two years, Musk has frequently "brought goods" on Twitter, speculating on Bitcoin and Dogecoin. The stake in Twitter also led to a sharp rise in Twitter's stock price.
After having enough wealth, it is not difficult to understand how to increase the influence and even control of Twitter.
In the Western money society, Musk's motivation for investing in Twitter is not difficult to understand. After all, Bezos bought the Washington Post for hundreds of millions of dollars, and Microsoft also owns Microsoft NBC.
Compared with the supremacy of money society in the West, China is very different, in the past two years, the regulatory authorities have strengthened anti-monopoly and prevented the disorderly expansion of capital, which is typically characterized by the continuous withdrawal of Ali from the media in which it has invested.
Among them, in March 2022, Ant Group sold all its shares in 36Kr and completely withdrew from its shareholder sequence. In October 2021, Ant Group sold all its shares in Caixin Media and completely withdrew from the investment. Alibaba also withdrew from Mango Media.
Musk became an American superstar entrepreneur
Musk has become more and more of an American entrepreneurial star, not only tesla, but also space exploration technology company SpaceX.
SpaceX was founded in 2002 with the goal of developing a reusable rocket system that launches cargo or up to 100 people on missions to the moon and Mars.
On May 31, 2020, SpaceX also launched two NASA astronauts into space, and after more than 10 hours of flight, the SpaceX manned spacecraft successfully docked with the International Space Station. SpaceX's launch went smoothly, and after more than 2 minutes of launch, the first stage of the rocket separated, and the first stage of the thruster recovered successfully. The name of the recycling platform is: "Of course I still love you." ”
It was the first manned mission in SpaceX's history and the first manned space launch to be conducted on U.S. soil since the decommissioning of NASA's space shuttle.
SpaceX also launched the SpaceX Satellite Internet Program, which aims to build satellite Internet with 12,000 satellites to provide high-speed Internet services to consumers anywhere on Earth.
SpaceX's space program also includes assembling a fleet of Starships with the ability to colonize Mars and enable humans to survive permanently on the lunar surface.
Musk has many other great companies, such as Solar City, which was founded in October 2008 to develop residential photovoltaic power generation projects, located in Foster City, California. Its main research and development direction is photovoltaic power generation.
Musk's Neuralink is committed to biological and physical interaction research, and its product concept is "brain-computer interface". To put it simply, the human head has a "usb interface" that can copy memory knowledge information into and out. If successful, human eternal life will become a reality.
Musk also owns a rail transit company, and its research direction is closed vacuum maglev trains. Ideally, the maglev train would travel at the highest speed like a capsule running at high speed in a water pipe. To put it simply, the closed hyperloop.
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Lei Di was founded by veteran media person Lei Jianping, if reprinted, please indicate the source.