Tesla CEO Elon Musk says he has lined up $46.5 billion in financing to buy Twitter Inc. and is planning to start a tender offer for its shares, a filing with the US regulators showed on Thursday.
Last week, the Tesla CEO announced an offer to buy the social media company for $54.20 per share, or about $43 billion. At the time, he did say how he would finance the acquisition.
The Tesla CEO says Thursday in documents filed with US securities regulators that he’s exploring what’s known as a tender offer to buy all of the social media platform’s common stock for $54.20 per share in cash.
The documents say Twitter has not responded to Musk’s proposal.
Musk himself has committed to put up $33.5 billion, which will include $21 billion of equity and $12.5 billion of margin loans, to finance the transaction. Banks, including Morgan Stanley, have agreed to provide another $13 billion in debt secured against Twitter itself, according to the regulatory filing.
The filing states that “entities related to (Musk) have received commitment letters committing to provide an aggregate of approximately $46.5 billion.”
Under a tender offer Musk, who owns about 9% of Twitter shares, would take his offer directly to other shareholders, bypassing the board.
Last week Twitter’s board adopted a “poison pill” defense that could make a takeover attempt prohibitively expensive.
