Elon Musk says Twitter deal is ‘on hold’

LONDON ( Associated Press) – Elon Musk said Friday that his plan to buy Twitter for $44 billion has been “temporarily halted” as he tries to pinpoint the exact number of spam and fake accounts on the social media platform , amid signs of internal turmoil, another turning point on the proposed acquisition

Musk, who has been vocal about his desire to clean up Twitter’s problem with “spam bots” that mimic real people, appeared to question whether the company was undercutting them.

In a tweet, the Tesla billionaire linked to a Reuters story about a quarterly report from Twitter from May 2, which estimated that false or spam accounts accounted for 5% of the company’s “monetable daily active users” in the first quarter. were less than

“The Twitter deal temporarily pending details supports the calculation that spam/fake accounts actually represent less than 5% of users,” Musk said, indicating that he suspects the number of unauthenticated accounts is so small. Is.

It was not clear whether the issue could affect the deal. Stocks in both Twitter and Tesla jumped sharply in opposite directions, with Twitter stock down 18%, and shares of Tesla, which Musk proposed to help fund the Twitter deal, jumped 5%. Was.

Musk has already sold more than $8 billion in his Tesla shares to finance the purchase.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, who follows both Tesla and Twitter, said Musk’s “bizarre” tweet is likely to make Wall Street either think the deal will break, with Musk attempting to negotiate a lower deal price. Has been, or is he just walking away deal with a fine of $1 billion.

“Many will see this as a way for Musk to get out of this deal by using his Twitter filing/spam accounts,” Ives wrote.

He added that Musk’s use of Twitter rather than financial filings to make the announcement was disturbing and “sends this whole deal into a circus show with many questions and no concrete answers as to how this deal will go forward.” “

Investors have weighed in on legal troubles for Musk, as well as the possibility that Twitter’s acquisition could be a distraction from driving the world’s most valuable automaker.

Musk’s tweet comes a day after the social media company sacked two of its top managers. Twitter said the company is halting most hiring except in critical roles, and is “pulling back on nonessential labor costs to ensure we are responsible and efficient.”