Tuesday 17 May 2022 02:04 AM Musk says Twitter deal at lower price is 'not out of the question' trends now
Elon Musk on Monday fueled speculation he could be seeking to negotiate a lower price for his proposed $44 billion buyout of Twitter, telling a Miami tech conference that an agreement at a lower price wouldn't be 'out of the question.'
Musk and Twitter agreed a deal on April 25, but it now appears that Musk could be having second thoughts. On Friday, after weeks of complaining about the company's operations in a series of tweets, he announced he was putting the deal on hold.
He then tweeted about his surprise to learn that only 5 percent of Twitter accounts were bots or spam, and on Monday responded with a poop emoji to CEO Parag Agrawal's lengthy thread explaining the problem in trying to detect and eliminate bots.
'So how do advertisers know what they're getting for their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter,' Musk said.
Journalist Molly Jong-Fast replied: 'You're obviously trying to get out of the deal.'
Twitter's shares fell 8 percent on Monday to close at $37.39 - significantly below the $54.20 a share that Musk agreed to pay last month to buy the social media company.
Musk told the Miami audience that he thought around 20 percent of Twitter accounts were fake.
Elon Musk is seen on Monday addressing the All In podcast conference in Miami
Attendees had paid $7,500 each for tickets to the three-day conference in Florida
He asked rhetorically if the figure could be as high as 90 percent, according to a live-streamed video of his remarks posted by a Twitter user, and obtained by Bloomberg.
'Currently what I'm being told is that there's just no way to know the number of bots,' Musk said at the conference.
'It's like, as unknowable
