Elon Musk on Friday had said that his plan to buy micro-blogging site Twitter for $44 billion is “temporarily on hold” as he tries to pinpoint the exact number of spam and fake accounts on the social media platform, another twist amid signs of internal turmoil over the proposed acquisition.
The cryptic messages from Elon Musk gave analysts a run for their money. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO quoted a news agency Reuters story from 2 May about a quarterly report from Twitter that estimated false or spam accounts made up fewer than 5% of the company’s “monetizable daily active users” in the first quarter.
Twitter Inc has fired two of its top managers on Thursday amid Elon Musk’s planned buyout of the company. The two fired employees include Twitter general manager, Kayvon Beykpour and the company’s revenue and product lead Bruce Falck.
Here are ten big takeaways from this story
• Musk’s tweet comes a day after the social media company fired two of its top managers. Twitter said the company is pausing most hiring, except for critical roles, and is “pulling back on non-labour costs to ensure we are being responsible and efficient.”
• Tesla CEO Elon Musk $44 billion takeover deal was accepted by Twitter on 25 April
• Musk currently owns 9.1% stake in Twitter and is the social media company’s second-biggest shareholder. Twitter had previously invited Elon Musk to join its board of directors, but the SpaceX head declined
• 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
• It wasn’t clear whether the issue could scuttle the deal. Stock in both Twitter and Tesla swung sharply in opposite directions, with Twitter’s stock tumbling 14%, and shares of Tesla, which Musk had proposed using to help fund the Twitter deal, jumping 7%
•Musk has already sold off more than $8 billion worth of his Tesla shares to finance the purchase. Originally Musk had committed to borrowing $12.5 billion with Tesla stock as collateral to buy Twitter. He also would borrow $13 billion from banks and put up $21 billion in Tesla equity
• This is a giant leveraged buyout. Musk has raised $25.5 billion of fully committed debt and margin loan financing from a dozen banks to back the bid
• The proposed deal of buying out Twitter had continued to pressure shares of Tesla, which had already fallen 16% this week. The sharp jump in the price of Tesla shares before the opening bell Friday singled rising doubts that Musk will acquire Twitter.
• In a memo sent to employees and confirmed by Twitter, CEO Parag Agrawal said the company has not hit growth and revenue milestones after the company began to invest “aggressively” to expand its user base and revenue.
• Musk has been critical of Twitter’s moderation policy. He has said he wants Twitter’s algorithm to prioritize tweets to be public and was against too much power on the service to corporations that advertise.
Source: Mint