Musk Suggests He May Attempt To Reduce The Purchase Price of Twitter

Elon Musk said on Monday that he may seek a cheaper price for Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR), claiming that there may be at least four times as many false accounts as the firm claims.

At a seminar in Miami, he stated, "You cannot pay the same price for something that is considerably worse than they claimed."

Musk, who stated on Friday that his $44 billion plan to acquire Twitter was on hold pending information on spam accounts, reckons that at least 20 percent of Twitter's users are spam accounts, as opposed to Twitter's official estimate of 5 percent.

When questioned during the conference if the Twitter acquisition is feasible at a different price, Musk answered, "It's not impossible."

"The more questions I ask, the more concerned I become," he stated at the All-In Summit 2022.

"They assert that their system is so intricate that only they can comprehend it... It cannot be a profound mystery that is, for example, more complicated than the human soul."

Following Musk's comments, Twitter's stock price declined further in late afternoon trade.

The stock fell more than 8 percent to settle at $37.39, a level lower than the day before Musk disclosed his Twitter stake in early April, raising doubts that the billionaire entrepreneur would proceed with his acquisition of the firm at the agreed-upon price.

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal tweeted earlier on Monday that internal estimates of spam accounts on the social media network over the last four quarters were "far under 5%," in response to days of criticism from Elon Musk regarding the company's treatment of fake accounts.

He noted that Twitter's estimate, which has been unchanged since 2013, could not be replicated outside due to the necessity of using both public and private information to evaluate if an account is spam.

The feces emoji was Musk's response to Agrawal's defense of the company's technique.

"So how can advertisers determine the value of their investment? This is crucial for Twitter's financial health "Musk stated.

Musk has vowed to alter Twitter's content moderation policies, criticizing judgments such as the company's ban of former President Donald Trump as unduly severe and promising to crack down on "spam bots" on the platform.

Musk has proposed testing random samples of Twitter users in order to identify bots. He added, "there is a possibility that it exceeds 90 percent of daily active users."

Independent experts believe that between 9 and 15 percent of the millions of Twitter profiles are automated programs.

Twitter currently does not need users to register with their true names and openly allows automated, parody, and pseudonymous profiles on the service.

It prohibits impersonation and spam, and penalizes accounts whose objective is to "deceive or manipulate others" by engaging in frauds, coordinating abuse operations, or increasing activity artificially.

Concerns regarding Musk's disclosures of market-moving information could be heightened by his private remarks.

Musk, well-known for his honest Twitter posts, has a lengthy history of disputes with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission; a U.S. judge recently reprimanded him for attempting to evade a deal with the SEC requiring control of his Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) tweets.