Shortly after putting the Twitter deal on temporary hold over spam accounts on the platform, billionaire Elon Musk clarified that he is "still committed" to the acquisition of the social media giant.
The clarification came a couple of hours after Musk tweeted that the $44-billion deal for Twitter's takeover has been paused till it is ascertained whether spam or fake accounts represent less than five percent of the microblogging site's total user base.
Musk's decision to put the mega-acquisition on temporary hold sent Twitter shares nosediving by 17.7% to $37.10 in premarket trading.Still committed to acquisition
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022
Twitter had informed the stock exchanges on May 2 that the fake or spam accounts on its platform represent less than 5 percent of its monetisable daily active users during the first quarter.
The social media company had 229 million users who were served advertising in the January-March quarter.
The disclosure came days after Musk, shortly after sealing the deal to acquire Twitter, said that one of his priorities would be to remove "spam bots" from the platform.
Twitter had, in the exchange filing, also noted that it faced several risks until the deal with Musk is closed, such as whether advertisers would continue to spend on the platform and "potential uncertainty regarding our future plans and strategy."
Musk's deal to buy Twitter, even if it sails through, is expected to take months to come to fruition as the billionaire needs to secure the finances. He has raised $13 billion in loans secured against Twitter and a $12.5 billion margin loan tied to his own Tesla Inc stock.
Over the past couple of weeks, he has been speaking about reducing the operational costs of Twitter, and has tweeted about eliminating the salaries of the company's board of directors, which he said could result in about $3 million in savings.
With inputs from Reuters
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