Twitter Falls in Premarket as Musk Refuses Board Seat
2022.04.11 13:16
By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com — Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) stock fell in premarket trading on Monday after Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal said at the weekend that Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk won’t join the board of the social media company after all.
Twitter had offered Musk – the world’s richest man and one of the most-followed people on the micro-blogging site – a board seat last week after Musk had disclosed a 9.2% stake in the company.
Twitter stock had risen some 25% in response to the announcement, with many hoping that Musk would help reverse the stock’s recent underperformance. Prior to the initial announcement, it had lost over half its value since peaking in February 2021.
Agrawal said that Musk had told the board on Saturday he wouldn’t take up the offer of a board seat. In a statement on the platform, Agrawal said: “I believe this is for the best. We have and will always value input from our shareholders whether they are on our Board or not. Elon is our biggest shareholder and we will remain open to his input.”
Musk, for his part, issued a series of tweets about Twitter – some serious, some joking – over the course of the weekend, including a suggestion that the company accept payments to its premium Blue service in the form of Dogecoin, the cryptocurrency that he has touted in the past.
Agrawal’s statement hinted that the board had been anxious to limit Musk’s ability to disrupt its current strategy.
“We also believed that having Elon as a fiduciary of the company where he, like all board members, has to act in the best interests of the company and all our shareholders, was the best path forward,” Agrawal said.
Musk’s activity on the site since disclosing his stake had indicated that he would seek to change various elements of the company’s operations, despite styling his investment as “passive”. Investors considering a more ‘activist’ engagement are required to disclose more to the Securities and Exchanges Commission about their intentions – something which Musk has not yet done.
