Meet Twitter’s new owner: Elon Musk

After weeks of back and forth, Twitter has accepted Elon Musk’s buyout offer for $52.40 per share ($44B total) — over 30% below $TWTR’s 52-week high.

• Elon Musk is funding the deal with $25.5B in loans and $21B in personal equity.
• The loans could burden Twitter with ~$1B in annual interest payments (~20% of annual sales).

How it started: In March, Musk began buying Twitter’s shares — and formally made an offer to acquire the company on April 14th.

• Twitter tried to prevent the deal, and other private equity funds had expressed interest.
• Twitter employees have been divided over the news — worried about their compensation and work towards moderating the platform’s content.

This isn’t just any ordinary deal. It’s one of the largest leveraged buyout deals in history from the wealthiest person in the world.

It also centers around one of social media’s most controversial topics: Should social media platforms be allowed to censor speech?

According to Bloomberg, Musk wants to turn Twitter into a platform for free speech with few restrictions.

Meet the new Twitter: First — Twitter will no longer be publicly traded after the deal closes. But the company’s internal changes are uncertain.

• Musk plans to add new product features and open-source Twitter’s algorithms to increase trust and defeat spambots.
• Musk also previously dropped hints of product changes, including adding an “edit” button and removing ads from its premium subscription, Twitter Blue.

Twitter closes its eight-year public chapter with an unimpressive 24% return. Now the platform is Musk’s problem.