Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share

Elon Musk doesn’t just want a Twitter account; he wants all of Twitter.

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The Tesla CEO currently owns more than 9% of the social media platform’s stock but wants to buy all of it, offering $54.20 a share, The Associated Press reported.

It would cost Musk about $43.39 billion when taking the more than 800 million shares outstanding, according to Barron’s and multiplying that number by the $54.20 offer.

Twitter confirmed receipt of the offer, according to PR Newswire.

Musk said he wants to make Twitter a private company, CNBC reported.

He called the proposal his best and final offer, but he didn’t say how he would be paying for it.

Musk also said that if the offer wasn’t accepted he would “need to reconsider my position as a shareholder,” CNBC reported.

“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,” Musk said. “However, 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.”

Musk has been buying shares almost every day since Jan. 31, he said in recent regulatory filings, the AP reported.

He has recently spoken out about how he believes Twitter falls short on free speech when it bars users for violating content standards on violence, hate or harmful misinformation.

Musk calls himself a “free speech absolutist.”

“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,” Musk wrote to Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor, CNBC reported.

The proposal was submitted days after he said he would not be joining the company’s board of directors after he was invited.

When he announced his decision he tweeted, then later deleted, his stance on how Twitter is missing the mark, and how he would change the platform, for instance dropping ads and making the company’s San Francisco headquarters into a homeless shelter, the AP reported.

Musk has more than 81 million Twitter followers.

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