Musk hints at paying less for Twitter than his US$44B offer

DETROIT –

Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, gave Monday’s strongest hint yet that he would prefer to pay less for Twitter than the $44 billion offer he made last month.

According to Bloomberg News, Musk stated that a deal for a more affordable price was possible at the Miami Technology Conference. saidIt viewed a livestream video from the conference, which was posted by a Twitter user.

Musk stated that spam bots account for at least 20% of Twitter’s 229 million accounts. saidThe report states that he was at his lowest point of assessment.

This came just hours after Musk started trolling Paraj Agrawal, Twitter CEO. He posted a series tweets explaining the company’s efforts to fight bots and how it consistently estimates that less than 5 percent of Twitter accounts are fake.

All in all, analysts believe that Musk wants to exit the deal or seeks a lower price. This is largely due to the dramatic decline of Tesla stock value, which some of Musk has promised to finance the acquisition of Twitter.

Twitter shares closed Monday at $37.39, down just over 8 percent from the closing price. This is below where it was before Musk announced that he was Twitter’s largest shareholder. Musk offered to purchase Twitter for $54.20 per Share on April 14.

Musk tweeted Friday that his plan to purchase Twitter was temporarily halted as he attempted to find the source of fake accounts on the social media platform. Musk, SpaceX CEO saidThe hold was placed pending details about Twitter’s calculation that fake accounts account less than 5%.

Agrawal, in tweets posted Monday, acknowledged that Twitter is not perfect at catching spam. Agrawal stated that the company had made an estimate of less spam every quarter. “Our estimate is based on multiple human reviews of thousands of accounts that are sampled at random, consistently over time,” Agrawal wrote.

He noted that estimates for the past four quarters were well below 5%. “The error margins on our estimates give us confidence in our public statements each quarter.”

Musk responded to his favourite platform with a smiley emoji of poop. He then asked how Twitter’s advertisers knew what they were getting for their money.

Tesla shares closed Monday with a loss of nearly 6% at $724.37. They have lost nearly a third of their value since Musk’s Twitter announcement.

Musk did not respond to messages requesting comment immediately. The All In Summit saidIt sent an email confirming that it would upload the video of Musk’s appearance within the next days.