At a conference held in Miami on May 16, Elon Musk suggested that renegotiating the acquisition of Twitter at a lower price was ” not excluded ” according to the New York Times. While waiting for the end of the transaction, the two parties are shooting each other in the leg.
Who loves well chatises as well
During the event, the Tesla executive suggested the idea of re-discussing the social network’s takeover price, which was set at $44 billion on April 26. He answered the question of one of the participants evoking this possibility after the announcement of the figures on the number of spam accounts and robots present on the platform.
Elon Musk said Twitter’s estimates that these accounts make up only 5% of profiles were hard to believe. According to him, they represent at least 20% of the 229 million Twitter accounts. ” At the moment I have been told that there is no way to know the number of bots “, he explained during the exchange.
During the same day, Parag Agrawal, managing director of the social network, detailed in a thread how the company calculated the number of bots and said ” sharing an overview of the estimation process with Elon last week “. Elon Musk replied to this thread with a poo emoji before asking “ how to know what advertisers are going to get for their money ».
Let’s talk about spam. And let’s do so with the benefit of data, facts, and context…
– Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022
However, the boss of SpaceX seems to know how this figure is estimated. Lately, he set out to calculate the number of robots himself of the social network through a random sample of 100 Twitter followers and invited his subscribers to do the same. He explicitly claimed in the same thread that this was Twitter’s method. What has, moreover, not pleased the legal department of Twitter. According to them, Elon Musk broke the non-disclosure agreement by revealing this methodology.
Despite their disagreements, the two parties have announced that they are still interested in the purchase proposal.
The deal is still pending
The takeover proposal is still frozen. Elon Musk demands that the social network communicate more details on the share of fake accounts among its active users. For him, this is essential, because the billionaire has promised to double Twitter’s revenue before 2028.
Following this announcement, Twitter’s share price fell significantly. The stock is trading today, May 17, at around 37 dollars. Far from the 54.20 dollars per share promised by Elon Musk.
Analysts predict a renegotiation of the price of the agreement by the principal concerned. Twitter also feels the tide is turning. The social network announced today that it has filed its preliminary proxy statement, a form required for all companies that conduct shareholder votes, with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. This in order to complete the transaction at the agreed price and conditions as quickly as possible. The deal could soon unfreeze.