Elon Musk suspends deal, Twitter down 10% on the NYSE
Musk said he is still committed to acquiring the company despite putting his bid on hold
Elon Musk has put his $44bn bid to buy Twitter on hold, after the social network said in a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing that the number of monetisable daily active users may be not accurate because of spam accounts.
“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” tweeted Musk. However, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO said in the same Twitter thread that he is “still committed to the acquisition”.
Recently, Musk’s bid received support from crypto and tech firms including Binance, which offered $500m to help him complete his deal and acquire the social network.
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Why does spam matter?
In a recent SEC filing, Twitter said that one of the metrics used to estimate its profits, called monetisable daily active usage or users (mDAU), “may not accurately reflect the actual number of people or organisations using our platform”.
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The company said that in the first quarter of 2022, its mDAU amounted to an average of 229 million, a 15.9% increase compared with the same quarter in 2021. However, Twitter has estimated that the number of spam accounts represents fewer than 5% of its mDAU, which would affect the mDAU estimate.
Earlier in April Musk tweeted: “If our Twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!”
As of 14:45 BST (UTC +1) today, Twitter stock is changing hands on the New York Stock Exchange at $40.53, down 10% over the past 24 hours.
