Elon Musk has fanned rumours that he may seek to renegotiate his buyout of Twitter Inc., stating that a feasible agreement at a lower price is not “out of the question.”
In afternoon trade, Twitter shares momentarily recovered some of their losses. However, concerns that Musk may abandon the $44 billion transaction have caused the stock to fall. This apprehension has risen in the last week as Musk has questioned Twitter’s publicly provided data on the number of spam and fraudulent accounts on the social media platform.
Musk also said that fake users make up at least 20% of all Twitter Inc. accounts.
Last week, the Tesla CEO said that his offer to buy Twitter was “temporarily on hold”, awaiting information regarding the platform’s spam and fake accounts.
Moreover, he tweeted over the weekend that Twitter’s legal team had called to complain about him violating their NDA.
Musk began buying Twitter stock in January and disclosed a 9.2% stake in the company on April 4. On April 25, Twitter’s board of directors approved Musk’s $44 billion offer to buy the company and take it private, but the deal has yet to be finalised, and Twitter’s stock is trading far below Musk’s proposal. Musk could be seeking to lower the price of Twitter by bringing up the issue of fake accounts, according to one school of thought.
Twitter shares dropped 6.9 percent to $37.93. The gap between Musk’s $54.20-per-share offer price and Twitter’s share price grew more, wiping out all of the stock’s gains since Elon Musk revealed his investment in the social media network.