Twitter has accepted Elon Musk's offer to buy the company, it announced Monday — a dramatic coup for the billionaire as he seeks to unlock the social network's "extraordinary potential."
Musk will pay $54.20 per share for Twitter, matching his original offer, totaling $44 billion. When the deal is complete, Twitter will become a privately held company once again.
Twitter's board initially resisted Musk's attempt to buy the company.
It put up a "poison pill" defense to block attempts at a hostile takeover after Musk rejected its offer for a board seat in exchange for limiting his maximum investment. Undeterred, Musk secured up to $46 billion in financing and threatened to take his offer directly to shareholders, cutting out the board entirely.
In announcing his acquisition plans, Musk said he wants to, "make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spambots, and authenticating all humans."
At $54.20 per share, Musk will pay a "38% premium over Twitter's closing stock price on April 1, 2022," according to the terms of the deal. Twitter hasn't traded above that price since November 2021.
After Musk disclosed a 9% stake in Twitter in early April, Twitter's stock price leapt from around $40 per share to as high as over $50 per share. Shares surged another 6% Monday, to above $52.
The deal is expected to close in 2022, pending approval by shareholders and other regulatory hurdles, Twitter said.
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