contents
Even when the first rumors circulated that multi-billionaire Elon Musk wanted to buy Twitter, it had to be pointed out that with Mr Musk’s statements you never know exactly what he really wants. And neither, and whether they are the whole truth.
And so one can now wonder again what he means with the brief tweet that the purchase of Twitter has been put on hold until he knows more about the proportion of false users on the platform.
It could be that Musk is actually asking about fake and spam accounts. That he fears buying something different than what he originally thought. It’s possible that the problem of bot accounts is a little more difficult to solve than Musk confidently assumed – or, conversely, that it’s so negligible that a few fewer bots wouldn’t automatically make the platform a lot more valuable.
Is the financing structure crumbling?
So it could also be that it’s not about content, but about money – although Musk has repeatedly emphasized that he doesn’t care. Because the purchase offer was astronomical, for a company that does not have too rosy profit prospects, at least in the near future.
After things went very quickly with the original offer and the yes of the Twitter management, the specialists may have sat down and calculated thoroughly – and got cold feet in the process. After all, Musk couldn’t pay the $44 billion in cash out of his own pocket, but had to bring investors on board, sell Tesla shares and take out loans from banks, also with these shares as collateral.
But because they are now sagging, the complex financing structure could crumble. And generate worse losses than the billion that Elon Musk would have to pay to Twitter as a penalty if he were to pull out of the deal definitively.
Everything remains unclear
But it’s also still possible that Musk will go through with the purchase. Maybe he wants to push the share price down a bit with his tweet – something he has done repeatedly and has at most been gently punished for. Twitter stock is currently trading at around $45, well below Musk’s $54 offer. If it fell any further, he might consider making a new offer for less money — or he might want to pressure shareholders to sell to him soon.
Finally, there’s the possibility that Musk never really wanted to buy Twitter, that it was all just a bluff or a game he no longer enjoys. Or that he might even have managed to somehow profit from the whole mess.
So it remains completely unclear how this story will continue. However, Twitter executives and employees, some investors, or those who have been excitedly discussing free speech online for the past few weeks might feel foolish.