NEW YORK
Shares of Twitter surged about 25 percent on Monday in pre-market trading after Elon Musk, co-founder and chief executive of electric vehicle maker Tesla, acquired a 9.2 percent passive stake in the social media company.
Musk owns more than 73.4 million shares of Twitter, worth nearly $2.89 billion, a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission showed. Twitter has a market value of $31.5bn and its shares are down about 8 per cent since the start of this year and 39 percent weaker than this time in 2021. The company’s shares, which settled at $39.3 at the close of trading on Friday, rose to $49.09 Monday morning.
Musk, the world’s richest person with a net worth of $273bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has recently complained about excessive censorship of content and lack of free speech on Twitter.
“Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be done,” Musk said on Twitter last month. In response to his poll, 70.4 percent of users said Twitter does not stick to free speech principles, while 29.6 percent supported the social media platform.
Musk said he was “giving serious thought to this” in response to a question on Twitter if he is considering building a new social media platform. Tesla, which dissolved its public relations department in October 2020, relies on social media — largely Twitter — to make new announcements.
Musk, who has more than 80 million followers on Twitter, has made a number of company announcements on the social media platform, including the company’s move to drop the usage of Bitcoin and new features of its cars. Tesla’s own account has over 13.6 million followers.
