As Elon Musk tries to buy Twitter, each one of his tweets is getting tons of extra scrutiny. And we’ve got all of them from Thursday (4/14), the day the world’s richest human announced his intentions to become a social media titan.
The first of the day came before sunrise. Musk, in his “I made an offer” tweet, shared what he filed the day before with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. If you click on the attached document, it’s dated April 13. So Musk had to wait hours before he could reveal the news to his almost 82 million followers. He wants to buy Twitter and take it private.
Elon Musk Used a Tweet to Poll His Twitter Followers About the Buy
If you’re curious, Musk is one of the most popular people on Twitter. He ranks ninth on the platform for most followers. Former President Barack Obama leads all users with more than 131 million followers. Obama, Musk, and soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo are the only users in the top 10 who aren’t singers.
Then Musk did one of his patented Twitter polls. This is his go-to kind of Tweet. Musk asked:
“Taking Twitter private at $54.20 should be up to shareholders, not the board.” You could answer yes or no.” The preliminary results suggested that more than 84 percent said yes. More than 1.6 million people had voted.
Musk Would Need to Cash Out His Own Stock to Pay for the Deal
In Musk’s offer to buy Twitter, he promised $54.20 per share, making the valuation roughly $43 billion. He already owns 9.2 percent of the social media company. Vanguard is the largest shareholder of Twitter. The asset-management company owns 82.4 million shares that are worth about $3.78 billion.
During a TED Talk Thursday afternoon, Musk conceded that he wasn’t sure he’d be successful in buying Twitter. He said he had the assets to buy the company. Musk is worth about $274 billion. But most of his assets are the stocks he owns in his Tesla and SpaceX.
By mid-afternoon, Musk also elaborated on his first tweet of the morning. He wrote that he “will endeavor to keep as many shareholders in privatized Twitter as allowed by law.”
Musk took note of reports that the Twitter board was thinking about using a so-called poison pill to keep him from buying the company. Poison pill is a strategy employed to thwart a hostile takeover.
Cameron Winklevoss, a crypto billionaire and social media pioneer, tweeted about the possibility of a poison pill. He tweeted: “Twitter is considering a poison pill to thwart @elonmusk‘s offer. They would rather self-immolate than give up their censorship programs. This shows you how deeply committed they are to Orwellian control of the narratives and global discourse. Scary.”
Musk hit reply. He wrote: “If the current Twitter board takes actions contrary to shareholder interests, they would be breaching their fiduciary duty. The liability they would thereby assume would be titanic in scale.”
Then Musk blew a social media kiss to his followers. He posted “i (heart) you.” One follower wrote: “I speak for everyone when I say we are going to Facebook if you buy Twitter.” And that got a classic retort from another Musk follower: “I joined solely because of Elon …. This everyone Is staying right here.”
And Musk then closed the business day by sharing a screenshot of a recommendation from Goldman Sachs. Oddly enough, the rec is from February. Musk used the hmmm emoji.
Stay tuned for updates…
