Billionaire Elon Musk has proposed going ahead with his original offer to acquire Twitter for $54.20 a share, two sources familiar with the matter said, sending the social media company's shares soaring.
Twitter shares jumped 12.7 percent to $47.93 before trading was halted, while shares of Tesla Inc., the electric car company headed by Musk, rose about 1.5 percent.
This news comes before an expected confrontation between Musk and Twitter in a Delaware court on October 17.
Twitter was expected to ask the court to order Musk to complete the deal at $54.20 per share.
Musk had agreed in April to buy Twitter for $44 billion, but said weeks later that the number of fake accounts was much higher than Twitter's estimate of less than 5% of users.
Musk, one of Twitter's most prominent users, indicated last July that he might withdraw from the deal because Twitter misled him about the number of real users and the security of user data.
"This is a clear sign that Musk realized before he went to court that the chances of winning (the case) were highly unlikely, and that this $44 billion deal would somehow be completed," Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote in a note.