Twitter’s share price spiked by almost 6% on Wednesday after co-founder and former CEO Evan Williams said the company should consider selling itself if an acquisition offer is made.
Williams, who left the company in 2010 and now runs a blog-hosting service called Medium, remains a board member at Twitter. In an interview with Bloomberg about the future of the company, Williams said that the board would have to “consider the right options” if an offer was received.
This is not the first time Williams has responded in such a way to acquisition rumors about Twitter (TWTR).
In effect, the former CEO is simply saying that it would be the board’s fiduciary duty to consider a reasonable acquisition offer if it gets one. But Williams added that he believes the company “is in a strong position now,” and that he has faith in CEO Jack Dorsey.
Regardless of whether his comments were routine boilerplate about fiduciary duty, they were apparently enough to boost some investors’ hopes about a potential acquisition of the company. The stock (TWTR) climbed by more than 6% at one point, adding almost a billion dollars to the company’s market value.
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Twitter’s share price, which has fallen by more than 70% from its peak after the IPO, has seen a series of spikes over the past few months based primarily on takeover rumors.
In August, the shared jumped by almost 10% after a report that Saudi investor Prince Al Waleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al Saud (who owns 5% of the stock) was considering an acquisition of the company along with former Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer, who owns 4%.
Twitter shares have been under pressure because the company hasn’t been able to grow its user base as quickly as some investors would like, and a number of analysts believe it is losing ground to larger competitors such as Facebook (FB) when it comes to advertising.