Twitter Surges on Report It's Said to Be Closer to Sale

Twitter shares soared the most in more than two years Friday after CNBC said the company may soon receive a takeover offer. The beleaguered social media company is engaged in conversations with potential suitors that are said to include Salesforce.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc. unit Google, among others, CNBC said without citing its sources. Twitter may get a formal offer shortly, sources told CNBC. Speculation that Twitter is ripe for a sale has been swirling for months as the company has failed to lure new users, leading to several quarters of stagnant growth and a plummeting stock. The shares were down almost 20% this year before the surge Friday. The shares were up 18% to $21.99 at 9:38 a.m. in New York. Microsoft Corp.'s $26.2 billion purchase in June of LinkedIn sparked new conjecture on likely candidates for Twitter. Salesforce, which lost out to Microsoft in the bid for LinkedIn, has remained among those seen as candidates, as has Google. Vala Afshar, whose LinkedIn profile says he is the chief digital evangelist at Salesforce, put out a tweet after the CNBC report that hinted at the company's interest. "Why @Twitter? 1 Personal learning network; 2 the best realtime, context rich news; 3 democratize intelligence; 4 great place to promote others," the tweet said. -- Bloomberg News

Twitter Surges on Report It's Said to Be Closer to Sale

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