By PYMNTS
Twitter is still in talks to sell itself to billionaire Elon Musk with a deal possibly coming this week, The Wall Street Journal wrote.
This comes just ten days after the billionaire initially proposed to buy the social media giant for $43 billion.
The two sides met on Sunday, April 25 to talk things over, and have reportedly been making some progress in spite of several issues to work out. There’s no word yet on whether a deal will be reached.
It’s been expected that Twitter won’t go for the deal. Musk originally made the offer April 14, though he didn’t have a specific method to pay for it at the time. Twitter didn’t seem interested at the time, and put in place a “poison pill” to block him from increasing the amount he already owned in the company.
However, Musk disclosed he had $46.5 billion in financing – which caused the stock market to change its tone.
Twitter then changed its mind, too, and became more open to negotiations.
Musk has said the whole time that his offer, for $54.20 a share, is “his best and final.” He’s said as much to Twitter chair Bret Taylor in the last days, insisting he won’t budge on the price.
WSJ writes that the possible turnaround on Twitter’s part comes after Musk had met privately with several company shareholders to talk about his proposal. He reportedly said the board has a “yes or no” decision to make, and said he wanted to solve the “free-speech” issues that the company and the US as a whole is purportedly facing, according to him.
PYMNTS wrote that Musk had said recently that he was considering taking his bid directly to shareholders instead of to the board members. That’s because the board members didn’t seem to be on board with his proposed hostile takeover.
See more: Elon Musk Secures $46.5B to Bid on Twitter, Eyes Tender Offer
The $46.5 billion total comes with around $25 billion in bank debt from Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Barclays, and half in cash from Musk, who is the richest man in the world.