Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, triggered speculation that he might seek to renegotiate the acquisition of twitter, a social media platform, saying he would not rule out a lower price for the company. Musk said at a technology conference in Miami on Monday that it was not "impossible" to reach a viable deal at a lower price. Twitter shares fell 8.1% on hearing the news.
The stock has been falling on concerns that musk might abandon its $44 billion acquisition of twitter. This concern has increased over the past week as musk questioned Twitter's publicly disclosed data on the percentage of spam and false accounts on its social media services.
Musk further emphasized this on Monday, predicting that fake accounts account for at least 20% of all twitter accounts. Twitter declined to comment.
The sell-off of twitter shares accelerated after musk tweeted on Friday that the acquisition was shelved until he found more details about the false account and its prevalence on the platform. Musk later wrote that he was "still committed to acquisitions," and twitter chairman BRET Taylor responded, "so are we."
Musk began buying twitter shares in January and disclosed its 9.2% stake in the company on April 4. Twitter's board of directors accepted Musk's $44 billion bid for the company on the 25th, but the deal has not been completed.
Twitter's share price has now repudiated all the gains since musk disclosed his shareholding, which is far lower than his acquisition offer. One theory is that musk tries to pay a lower purchase price for twitter by asking the question of false accounts.