New twist in the case of the takeover of Twitter. Elon Musk announced today, May 13, to put his buyout offer on hold. Pending more details on the volume of fake accounts and spam present on the social network.
Twitter takeover put on hold
The Tesla director seeks to verify that Twitter does not contain more than 5% of fake accounts among its monetizable users. At its last quarterly report, the company had 229 million monthly active users on its platform. In this same report, the social network admitted to having overcounted its users in its previous quarterly results. However, this error does not concern the clarifications requested by Musk.
Apple has lost its place as the most valuable company in the world
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
” The deal to buy Twitter has been put on hold “wrote Elon Musk on Twitter before adding to be” still interested in acquiring from the social network. Following this announcement, the action of Twitter fell by 25%.
If the SpaceX boss wants to know the real percentage of fake accounts on the platform so much, it’s to know the potential number of users targeted by advertising and Twitter Blue, Twitter’s freemium service. Susannah Streeter, market analyst for Hargreaves Lansdown, told Reuters that ” calculating the precise number of people who actually tweet is considered crucial for future revenue streams through advertising or paid subscriptions on the site “.
Elon Musk intends to double Twitter’s advertising revenue much more before 2028, and more. He hopes that they will represent 45% of the total turnover.
Wall Street under tension
As a reminder, Elon Musk had proposed a takeover bid amounting to 44 billion dollars to become the owner of Twitter. This same offer was unanimously accepted on April 26 by the network’s board of directors.
The temporary suspension of this agreement may be linked to a desire of the billionaire to renegotiate this sum following the fall in Twitter shares. Indeed, after the melting of the market value of the platform, the title traded at 38 dollars on Friday after he participated, by his tweet, in plunging its course. This is much less than the $54.20 per share promised by Elon Musk.
Wall Street fears the deal won’t go through. If such a scenario were to be confirmed according to the agreement concluded between Twitter and Elon Musk, the latter will have to pay 1 billion dollars in termination fees.