Kingdom Holding pays $50m to raise Twitter stake

In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today, HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud revealed that he now owns 5.17 percent of Twitter’s stock or 34,948,975 shares.

Alwaleed is known for his high-profile investmentsand has used his billions to invest in other public and private companies, including Citigroup and Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts.

Prince Alwaleed personally owns 30,100,078 Twitter shares, or 4.45 per cent of the company, according to Reuters calculations, accounting for the bulk of the two parties’ combined stake.

It also makes him the second-biggest investor in thecompany behind co-founder Evan Williams, who owns 6.9%. Its market capitalisation is $18.7 billion, according to Reuters data. [KHC] have doubled their ownership of Twitter’s (TWTR) shares, Bloomberg reports, citing a disclosure made in the week the micro-blogging site named Jack Dorsey CEO.

The announcement comes a couple of months after Alwaleed was critical of Twitter’s management and spoke against Dorsey succeeding Dick Costolo when he stepped down as CEO. Looking over the past 52 weeks, the picture does not get any better, and shares are down 48%. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $38.23 and a 52-week trading range of $21.01 to $55.99.