Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk (50) shared on Twitter: “Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that fake accounts actually account for less than 5 percent of users.”
The online service published this estimate earlier in the week. Musk had previously stated that he wanted to ban accounts that are used to send spam messages from the platform.
Twitter stock quickly fell nearly a quarter in premarket trading after Musk’s tweet, to trade at around $34.50. That’s a far cry from the $54.20 a share Musk had promised shareholders.
The paper went out of business on Thursday at $45.08 – a sign of investor skepticism that Musk is actually going through with the deal.
Twitter and Musk plan to complete the acquisition by the end of the year. The boss of the electric car manufacturer Tesla agreed with the Twitter board of directors on a deal worth around 44 billion dollars, but is still dependent on enough shareholders wanting to cede their shares to him. (chs/uro/SDA)