Just in the first paragraph, author mis-represents "considering" as "planning to".
No, he would not need to buy all the shares.
No, he was not suggesting a "firm offer to the board" was imminent.
No, he did not imply "having agreements".
No, he would not need to buy all the shares.
No, he was not suggesting a "firm offer to the board" was imminent.
No, he did not imply "having agreements".
The first half suggests that he might go through with the transaction of taking Tesla private, meaning, acquiring sufficient stock for cash that it falls below the SEC reporting thresholds and delisting it from stock exchanges.
The second half of the statement states that, whatever he decides, he has already lined up the funding necessary to carry out contemplated action in the first statement.
People don't interpret the "funding secured" to mean that he has a going-private deal locked up. They do interpret it to mean that he has locked up whatever financing he would need to go private, were he to choose to do so. And the problem is that his follow-up blog post, tweets, and Tesla statements indicate that neither the going-private transaction, or the funding for such a transaction, has been finalized--or even has progressed to the point of concrete terms being discussed.
If it was, then nothing happens (except a strongly worded letter from the SEC on proper disclosure methods). If it wasn't, however, then at the very least he's going to have to pay restitution to all the investors (both long and short) who lost money as a result of the tweet. At worst he's going to prison.
This certainly means that if you only need a shareholder vote then you have everything else in place. "Only reason" by definition means there is no other reason this couldn't be.
So again, just for clarity, he didn't say the only to be done is the vote, he said the only reason why he currently expects the deal might not happen is if rejected by share holders.
The only reasonable interpretation of the above tweet, is to qualify the second sentence with the first, i.e he personally is only considering a buy offer and that he is secure in the funding ability of the buyer.
Choosing your interpretation, what he said in the second sentence, clearly contradicts the first sentence in the same tweet. So why are you choosing the clearly inaccurate, as due diligence is now taking place, narrowly legal interpretation of two words, over all the other context that suggests your narrow legal reading of those 2 words are not what could possibly have been meant by him.