Twitter says it has spent $33 million in Q2 2022 on pending acquisition by Elon Musk

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Twitter has spent around $33 million on its pending buyout by Tesla CEO Elon Musk during the second quarter of 2022, the company disclosed as part of its earnings release on July 22.

This development comes on the heels of the social media firm scoring an early win in its legal battle against Musk earlier this week as a US judge agreed to fast-track the case with an October trial date, mentioning that Twitter deserved a quick resolution of the deal's uncertainty.

Twitter had sued Musk on July 12 in the Delaware Court of Chancery to enforce the merger agreement, days after the billionaire said he was terminating his $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter.

In its earnings release, Twitter mentioned that Musk's purported termination is "invalid and wrongful", and the merger agreement remains in effect.

The social media firm also partly blamed the uncertainty surrounding this acquisition for a decline in its Q2 revenues which amounted to $1.18 billion, a 1 percent drop year-over-year.

It also attributed the weakening digital advertising market amid macro environment challenges as another key reason for the revenue decline.

Net loss widened to $270 million for the quarter as compared to a net profit of $66 million in the same period last year.

Twitter's monetizable daily active users (mDAUs) however grew by 16.6 percent year-over-year to 237.8 million, driven by ongoing product improvements and global conversation around current events, the company said.

Twitter also reiterated that false and spam accounts represented fewer than 5 percent of users during the quarter, based on an internal review of a sample of accounts, a figure it has mentioned every quarter since going public in 2013.

The company's costs and expenses rose by 31 percent YoY to $1.52 billion for the quarter, of which $19 million was attributed to severance costs.