At the end of April, Tesla CEO Elon Musk finalized the deal to take over Twitter. But the agreed 44 billion U.S. dollars could probably be renegotiated – that is “not out of the question” at least for Musk.
Elon Musk has kept the tech industry pretty busy in recent weeks with his takeover plans for Twitter. Less than a month ago, it was announced that the Tesla CEO wanted to take over the short message service for 44 billion US dollars.
But now Musk apparently wants to push the price down. This is “not out of the question” for him, as the news agency Bloomberg reports.
Twitter: Why does Elon Musk want to renegotiate?
Back on May 13, Elon Musk announced on Twitter that he was temporarily putting the deal to take over Twitter on hold. According to Musk, the reason was the number of spam and fake accounts on the short message service.
He said he would not resume the deal until it was clear that the number was indeed below five percent – as announced by Twitter in its quarterly reports. The stock market immediately thanked Musk for this tweet with a plunge in Twitter’s share price. In the meantime, it plummeted by up to 17 percent.
At a tech conference in Miami on Monday, Musk spoke out on precisely this topic. He estimated that at least 20 percent of all Twitter accounts are fake.
“Right now, I’m told there is simply no way to know the number of bots,” Musk shared at the conference.
It is as unknown as the human soul.
Is Musk trying to drive down the price of Twitter?
Now Musk has again fueled speculation about his Twitter acquisition. A feasible deal at a lower price would be “not out of the question” for him. Twitter shares reacted promptly to this as well. It stood at the close of trading in New York with a minus of 8.2 percent.
At the end of April, Musk offered $54.20 per share in his 44 billion deal. But the spread to the actual value is increasingly widening due to such price slides.
All the profits that have been made since Elon Musk announced his takeover of Twitter have already evaporated. This suggests that Musk now wants to subsequently push down the price for his purchase.
However, Musk could also withdraw from the deal completely. According to the agreement with Twitter, both sides can cancel the deal if massive deviations occur. And it seems that Musk is currently looking for precisely this deviation in the number of fake accounts.
