Elon Musk today tweeted he is putting his US$44 billion Twitter offer on temporary hold, pending details supporting calculations that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than five per cent of users.
Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of usershttps://t.co/Y2t0QMuuyn
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022
He included a link to a May 2 Reuters article reporting on Twitter’s estimated fake and spam accounts in the first quarter of the year that said that, of the 229 million Twitter users who saw advertising in the first quarter of 2022, less than five per cent were fake accounts. Musk now says he wants to see more details about the number of fake accounts on Twitter before his deal to buy the social media platform goes through.
The chief executive officer of Tesla and SpaceX has been well aware of the existence of spam accounts on Twitter since the initiation of the deal. In a press release announcing the deal on April 25, Musk had noted that he wants to make Twitter better than ever by prioritizing defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.
Musk’s tweet sent the shares of the social media company into a tailspin, bringing them down by about 8.8 per cent the same day. But, he followed up himself in a tweet thread to say “he is still committed to acquisition”.
The transaction, which was unanimously approved by the Twitter Board of Directors, is expected to close in 2022 as per the initial announcement, subject to the approval of Twitter stockholders, the receipt of applicable regulatory approvals, and the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions.
Musk has secured US$25.5 billion of fully committed debt and margin loan financing and is providing an approximately US$21.0 billion equity commitment. There are no financing conditions to the closing of the transaction, according to the initial announcement made by Twitter.