Friday, May 13th 2022
Elon Musk Places Twitter Acquisition on Hold as Doubts Emerge Over its Userbase Data
Elon Musk in a late-Thursday tweet announced that he is placing his Twitter acquisition bid on "temporary hold" over doubts about the platform's spam-bot data. Twitter, in a recent SEC regulatory filing, disclosed that spam bots made up less than 5% of its userbase. The filing revealed that Twitter has 229 million users that viewed consistent ads, while fewer than 5% of the "monetizable daily active users" were fake or spam-bot accounts. Financial analysts predict the substantial fall in cryprocurrency values, as well as a $400 billion drop in market-capitalization of the Tesla stock since Musk announced plans to buy Twitter, may have made the world's richest man squeamish about buying Twitter, and that he is probably looking for a legally safe escape route from the deal. Twitter shares plummeted in value since the Musk tweet.
Source:
The Street
67 Comments on Elon Musk Places Twitter Acquisition on Hold as Doubts Emerge Over its Userbase Data
Safe bet is for twitter is to cease and desist, close for remodeling.
Perhaps less that 5% of the spam bots are using Twitter developer accounts, but what about the more serious botters that code their own, more effective bots?
There are probably scenario that would force it to get rid of too much tesla stock to buy twitter and he want a way out. he probably thought that the stock would just skyrise.
He's also waiting to buy the dip
If the Twitter deal doesn’t go down I expect there to either not be a Twitter when it’s done, or it to be a shell with a terrible reputation (not that it had a great one to begin with) where only the truly fringe stay active.
But its a private company that can do as it wishes, except when it was being publicly traded and they lied to their shareholders.
looks like these 1 liner deals to impress the world was too good to be true to go on smooth and trouble free..
Yeah bots 5% doing 66% of twitters activity :laugh:
Like buying followers
Good reason to leave the deal, since he can't afford it anymore. Or what, do you think Musk **didn't** do his research before announcing the deal two weeks ago?
Like, how dumb does he think we are? That two weeks of "research" was everything he needed to do to suddenly become disinterested in the deal? That's not what happened. 2-weeks worth of stock drops and Fed rate +50 BPS increases happened. That's the new news.
It looks pretty solid. Musk very well is on grounds to be sued to be forced to buy Twitter for $54.20, if Twitter's Board wants to go through that process. As one of the richest people in the world, he almost certainly can afford it.
But he's probably done some calculations here and is feeling like maybe its not as good of a buy as he thought. This is kinda late to be getting cold feet on this, He should have carefully thought about the buyout before signing the buyout contract.
In any case, this is popcorn moment. Musk is trolling the Twitter board with these tweets... but likely has no legal recourse should the Board "force" him into finishing the contract. (EDIT: Forcing Elon Musk to own Twitter, when he doesn't want to own Twitter, is a bad idea. I think the Twitter Board will use that as a threat and push for an alternative plea-bargain instead)
The contract is public after all, we all know what he agreed to two weeks ago:
d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001418091/e61e4376-e2c5-4d54-8782-d63fc5e096e9.pdf
It's worth trying to find a reason to get out of the deal but like many said, Twitter was not really profitable and the bot was really well know. he just want to get out now that it might cost him a much larger portion of his fortune. Normally, acquisition deal are set to be done at a specific price. he can't renegotiate that because the market crashed. he would have to find a way to get out of the deal and get a new deal. i doubt they will deal with him a second time if he cancel.
Except it turns out he can't just take the $1 Billion penalty. Only in certain situations is Musk allowed to take the $1 Billion penalty and leave (!!!). Meaning Twitter's Board can sue him to finish the deal / buyout at $54.20.
Matt Levine, a columnist at Bloomberg puts it like this: EDIT: Copy/pasted wrong section at first
TL;DR: Musk can't just leave this deal, even with the $1 Billion fee. He's in too deep.