Elon Musk's proposed acquisition of Twitter may fall apart over his doubts that the company is accurately reporting the number of spam bots on the service, according to a report, even as company executives reiterated the number is low and tried to better explain how they calculate the figures.
Twitter Stock Drops 4% in Morning Trading.
Twitter has repeatedly said that spam bots represent less than 5 per cent of its total user base. Mr Musk, meanwhile, has complained that the number is much higher, and has threatened to walk away from his agreement to buy the company for US$44 billion (S$61.6 billion) until he gets confirmation about Twitter's bot percentage.
Mr Musk's team has concluded that Twitter can't verify its figures on the spam accounts and has "stopped engaging" in discussions around funding the deal, the Washington Post reported on Thursday (July 7), citing people familiar with the matter. This issue has put the acquisition by the Tesla chief executive officer "in serious jeopardy," the newspaper said, citing the people.
"Twitter has and will continue to cooperatively share information with Mr Musk to consummate the transaction in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement," a company spokesman said in a statement to Bloomberg News after the Post published its story. "We believe this agreement is in the best interest of all shareholders. We intend to close the transaction and enforce the merger agreement at the agreed price and terms."