Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) chief executive Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) for $54.20 per share in cash, according to an amendment to a 13D filing with SEC early Thursday.
The offer represents an 18% premium over Twitter’s closing price on Wednesday and a 54% premium over the stock’s closing price on Jan. 28, the day before he began buying the stock.
Musk called the bid, which values the social media company at about $43 billion, as his “best and final offer.”
The tech billionaire was set to join Twitter’s board of directors after revealing a 9.2% stake in the company, but then refused the offer, sparking rumors he could launch a hostile takeover.
“Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it,” Musk in the filing.
Shares of Twitter soared 11.23% to $51 apiece in the premarket trading session.
Big bank earnings roll in
Meanwhile, U.S. stock markets are expected to open flat on Thursday as traders look to the first-quarter earnings season amid concerns that supply chain disruptions and surging consumer prices are weighing on profit margins.
Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC), and Citigroup (NYSE: C) are in focus today, after JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) kicked off the earnings season on Wednesday.
At around 5:20 a.m. ET, Dow futures fell 10 points to 34,472. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures rose 11.75 points to 14,233.25 while S&P 500 futures were unchanged.
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the Nasdaq stock market will be closed tomorrow in observance of Good Friday.
ECB rate decision eyed
The European Central Bank (ECB) will also be in the spotlight, as it prepares to announced its latest monetary policy statement later in the day.
Economists will be looking for any clues on whether the ECB will adopt a more hawkish tone and set the stage for policy tightening in the summer amid surging inflation and the war in Ukraine.
At their meeting in March, ECB policymakers appeared keen to withdraw their pandemic-era stimulus, with some urging for even more action, as conditions for hiking interest rates were about to be met or had either been met.
