Elon Musk says deal to buy Twitter 'temporarily on hold'
13 May 2022, 08:45 pm | Updated: 30 November 2024, 04:36 am
Elon Musk on Friday put his $44-billion deal for Twitter Inc temporarily on hold, citing pending details in support of calculation that spam and fake accounts indeed represent less than 5% of users.
Shares of the social media company fell 17.7% to $37.10 in premarket trading, their lowest level since Musk disclosed his stake in the company in early April and subsequently made a "best and final" offer to take it private for $54.20 per share, reports Reuters.
The implied probability of the deal closing at the agreed price fell below 50% for the first time on Tuesday, when Twitter shares dropped below $46.75.
Twitter had earlier this month estimated that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5% of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter, when it recorded 229 million users who were served to advertise.
"Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users," Musk tweeted on Friday.
Musk, the world's richest man and a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist, had said that one of his priorities would be to remove "spam bots" from the platform.
