So... What's Next?

🐦📈 Twitter’s stock rose 27% yesterday after news broke that billionaire Elon Musk is now the company’s largest single shareholder.

• According to SEC filings, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO purchased a 9.2% stake in Twitter on March 14 for around $2.5 billion, based on that day’s closing price. It’s now worth $3.7 billion.
• For context, co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey owns 2.25% of Twitter (with no special super-voting shares).
• Musk's ownership of Twitter is classified as a passive stake, meaning the shareholder isn’t involved in the day-to-day operations of the company.
• Musk recently told his 80 million followers that he’s giving “serious thought” to creating a social media platform to rival Twitter, which he’s criticized for “failing to adhere to free speech principles.”
• He’s also taken aim at the software algorithms Twitter uses to serve up content to users, which are commonly optimized to drive engagement. In addition to the above poll, Musk asked his followers on March 24 if the Twitter algorithm should be open source (83% said ‘Yes’).

🥊 One interesting thing: Musk vs. the SEC... The billionaire famously tweeted himself into hot water in August 2018 by claiming he had “funding secured” for Tesla to go private at $420 per share; in this instance, Musk was supposed to report his Twitter purchase no more than ten days after the fact, but waited over 20 days to do so.