Status: 05/17/2022 08:26 a.m
The purchase of the short message service Twitter by Tesla boss Elon Musk is on the brink. Musk has now publicly put a lower bid into play and criticized the Twitter leadership.
The takeover of Twitter seems to be becoming more and more problematic for multi-billionaire and Tesla boss Elon Musk. After Musk temporarily put the takeover deal on hold at the weekend, he now apparently wants to renegotiate the price.
Musk has ‘bigger concerns’
A deal at a lower bid is “not out of the question,” Musk said in a video interview at a conference last night. “The more questions I ask, the more concerned I become,” Musk said. He estimated that fake profiles accounted for at least a fifth of all Twitter accounts – but gave no basis for this. Musk had declined an in-depth review of the Twitter books prior to the takeover deal.
The relationship with Twitter boss Parag Agrawal also seems to be clouding over. He had tried to explain the service’s methodology in estimating the number of spam and bot accounts in a series of tweets. He also wrote that such estimates are difficult to make from outside the company. Musk responded to Agrawal’s statements with a poo emoji on Twitter and asked, among other things, whether Twitter had tried to simply call users with suspicious-looking accounts.
Can Musk crash the takeover?
Musk had already sent the first signal over the weekend that the Twitter takeover should not go ahead as he had initially planned. He had declared the deal to buy Twitter “temporarily suspended”. As a reason, he already mentioned the high number of accounts behind which there were no real users.
It is unclear whether the Tesla boss can even stop his agreement with the Twitter board of directors from a legal point of view. Musk said at yesterday’s conference that he believes a significantly higher proportion of bot accounts than reported is serious misinformation. The agreement with Twitter provides that both sides can withdraw from the deal in the event of massive deviations.
Funding could wobble
In his bid for the acquisition of Twitter, Musk had earmarked $54.20 per Twitter share. The purchase would have a volume of around 44 billion dollars. Musk should also be interested in a cheaper entry into Twitter because of the recent significant drop in the Tesla share price.
The paper of the electric car manufacturer, of which Musk is one of the largest shareholders, had – like the entire tech sector – lost significantly in value. Musk will therefore probably have to sell further shares in order to be able to finance the Twitter deal. At the end of April, he had already sold Tesla shares worth around four billion dollars.
On the stock exchange, the Twitter takeover, at least at the original price, is considered increasingly unlikely. This is shown by the current price of the Twitter share. It fell another eight percent last night to $37.38. This means that it is already almost 30 percent away from the original takeover bid.