Elon Musk takes 9.2% stake in Twitter with shares surging 20% in pre-market trading

Elon Musk buys 73,486,938 shares of Common Stock of Twitter to become the platform’s biggest shareholder. From a regulatory filing with SEC, it can be seen that Elon Musk now owns 9.2% stake in Twitter Inc. out of 800,641,166 shares of Common Stock outstanding of Twitter Inc. as of February 10, 2022 as reported in the Issuer’s ( Twitter Inc.) Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021. The deal is valued at over $3 billion.

On Monday, in the premarket trading, Twitter shares were up by almost 20 per cent while the performance during the trading hours remains to be seen. The Twitter stock price is currently at around $48, down by almost 9 per cent year-to-date (YTD) while it lower by nearly 38 per cent over the last 1-year. The market capitalization of Twitter is nearly $31.47B.

Musk reportedly polled his more than 80 million followers on Twitter last month, asking them whether the company adheres to the principles of free speech. After more than 70% said no, he asked whether a new platform was needed and said he was giving serious thought to starting his own.

In the first quarter, Tesla produced over 305,000 vehicles and delivered over 310,000 vehicles, despite ongoing supply chain challenges and factory shutdowns. Tesla will post its financial results for the first quarter of 2022 after market close on Wednesday, April 20, 2022.

Twitter had recorded an Annual Revenue Growth of 37% to $5.08 Billion and Average Monetizable Daily Active Usage (mDAU) Growth of 13% to 217 Million in Q4.

Twitter’s Board of Directors have already approved a new $4 billion share repurchase authorization in which they intend to enter into a $2 billion accelerated share repurchase (ASR) and repurchase the remaining $2 billion over time.