Microsoft $MSFT’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn has pushed Twitter $TWTR’s hopes—and stock—up.
Shares in Twitter jumped another 4% on Wednesday (June 14) and are up about 14% since closing on Friday. The stock price lift has little to do with the social platform’s performance. Instead, it’s rallying on the hope that Microsoft just opened the door to more mega-acquisitions and Twitter’s own savior is out there getting ready to swoop in. A potential buyer like Google $GOOGL, the thinking goes, could stand to gain from the platform’s 300 million users.
Piggybacking off someone else’s deal isn’t a real strategy, of course. But Twitter made another move to boost its own prospects today. Twitter invested $70 million in SoundCloud, the same music streaming company it shelved the idea of acquiring two years ago. With fierce competitors like Spotify $SPOT and Apple $AAPL Music in the space, and a botched attempt at Twitter Music, the investment in SoundCloud may be about more than music for the company. Rather, it’s likely an attempt to give its stagnant user stats a bump.
“Earlier this year we made an investment in SoundCloud through Twitter Ventures to help support some of our efforts with creators,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told Recode. “They’ve been great partners of ours over the years and their community-supported approach mirrors ours in many ways.”
This week’s stock run-up is definitely a relief, but shares still trade far from their all-time high of $74 in December 2013 and IPO price of $26. In fact, the stock has been sliding since June 2015, when ex-CEO Dick Costolo stepped down. A year after his resignation, Twitter has seen its market value drop by about 60%.
