Billionaire investor, Elon Musk said he has put his $44 billion deal for Twitter Inc temporarily on hold, citing pending details in support of the calculation that spam and fake accounts indeed represent less than 5% of users.
Elon Musk who revealed this in a tweet via his Twitter handle said “Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” Musk tweeted.
Musk, the world’s richest man, had said that one of his priorities would be to remove “spam bots” from Twitter.
Shares of the social media company fell 17.7% to $37.10 in premarket trading, their lowest level since Musk disclosed his stake in the company in early April and subsequently made a “best and final” offer to take it private for $54.20 per share, according to NDTV.
The implied probability of the deal closing in the agreed price fell below 50% for the first time on Tuesday, when Twitter shares dropped below $46.75.
Twitter had earlier this month estimated that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5% of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter, when it recorded 229 million users who were served advertising.
“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” Musk tweeted on Friday.
The billionaire had earlier said he would reverse Twitter’s ban on former US President Donald Trump when he buys the social media platform, signaling his intention to cut moderation of the site.
