• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, April 25, 2022

Twitter is in talks with Elon Musk and if negotiations pan out, the company could announce a sale deal as soon as this week, according to Wall Street Journal sources. 

Twitter adopted a poison pill strategy to fend off Musk’s $43-billion offer, made 10 days ago. 

But the company decided to negotiate after Musk announced that he had raised $46.5 billion in financing to pay for the acquisition, including $25 billion from global blue-chip investment banks. Musk also upped the pressure by holding private meetings with several key investors on Friday. 

Musk, who has said he will not increase his bid, would put up the other $21 billion in financing himself, possibly by selling stakes in Tesla or his other businesses. 

Some of Twitter’s largest investors have expressed support for Musk, citing Twitter’s long-stagnating stock price. 

Twitter's stock has "gone nowhere" since the company went public eight years ago, and its board must either accept Musk's offer or provide an alternative with real value for stockholders -- which would likely require finding a higher bid, Jeff Gramm, a portfolio manager at Bandera Partners, which has a stake of about 11% in Twitter, told the Journal.

Musk, claiming free-speech principles, has said he would scale back Twitter’s content moderation, introduce longer tweets and an edit button, reduce its reliance on advertising revenue by shifting to a subscriptions focus, and seek to take the company private. 

Twitter is under timing pressure: The company is set to report first-quarter earnings on Thursday. 

Its stock has been trading below Musk’s offer price, but rose about 4% on Friday, after he announced the financing. 

The current negotiations include efforts to hammer out what Musk would pay “should an agreed deal fall apart before being consummated,” reports the Journal. 

Musk has threatened to sell his 9% stake in Twitter if his acquisition attempt fails.