Elon Musk bought 73.5 million Twitter shares on March 14 — a 9.2% stake — according to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) 13G filing released April 4.
By Yaёl Bizouati-Kennedy
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Twitter shares skyrocketed 25.9% in pre-market trading April 4.
“Given Musk’s long-standing critical view of Twitter and social media platforms, it was viewed that Musk could look to build a new social media platform to compete with Twitter and others,” Ives wrote.
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Indeed, on March 26, Musk tweeted, “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?”
He subsequently tweeted “Is a new platform needed?”
According to Ives, “it looks like Elon has his eyes laser set on Twitter and we would expect this passive stake as just the start of broader conversations with the Twitter board/management that could ultimately lead to an active stake and a potential more aggressive ownership role of Twitter.”
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“We will be following Musk’s comments/future regulatory filings closely to see if Musk ultimately pursues further conversations with the Twitter board and/or goes to an active stake and above the key 10% threshold. For Tesla purposes, we view this move as Musk just further building out his tentacles and we are not worried in any way around Musk “taking his eye off the ball” with Tesla/SpaceX.”
Wedbush said it maintained its Outperform opinion on Tesla.
