Wedbush’s prolific analyst Dan Ives said he believes Twitter Inc. will ultimately accept Elon Musk’s unsolicited buyout bid, which values the social-media company at about $43.4 billion, but not without a lot of drama. “It would be hard for any other bidders/consortium to emerge and the Twitter board will be forced likely to accept this bid and/or run an active process to sell Twitter,” Ives wrote in a note to clients. “The next step will be Twitter’s Board officially reviewing the Musk filing/letter and then [comes] get out the popcorn time as we expect many twists and turns in the weeks ahead as Twitter and Musk walk down this marriage path.” He said Musk’s bid raises a lot of questions around financing, regulation and balancing Musk’s time as head of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, but Ives believes the “soap opera” will end with Musk owning Twitter. Twitter’s stock had run up as much as 17.5% before paring gains to be up 6.8% in premarket trading, while Tesla shares shed 2.1%. Meanwhile, futures on the S&P 500 were little changed ahead of the open.
Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news.
