Whether Elon Musk likes it or not, Twitter plans on completing its $44 billion sale to the Tesla CEO, despite his concerns about the number of fake accounts circulating on the platform.
“Twitter is committed to completing the transaction on the agreed price and terms as promptly as practicable,” the company said in an SEC filing on Tuesday.
In some stronger language, Twitter’s board also told The New York Times, “We intend to close the transaction and enforce the merger agreement.”
Twitter made the statements after Musk signaled he might try to cancel the deal unless the company supplies proof to back up its claim that less than 5% of Twitter’s daily active users are fake and spam accounts. His main concern is that Twitter has been grossly undercounting the bot problem on the platform.
“Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%.This deal cannot move forward until he does,” Musk wrote in a tweet.
At the All-In Summit on Monday, Musk also suggested he might need to re-negotiate the deal at a lower price. “It’s not out of the question,” he said.
However, it might not be easy for Musk to back out of the deal without paying up. He’s subject to a billion-dollar breakup fee if he walks under certain conditions, according to the agreement he made with Twitter.
But as CNBC notes, Musk could try to cancel the deal over claims Twitter committed fraud by failing to accurately report the number of spam accounts on the platform. Nevertheless, Twitter might respond by suing him for billions of dollars in damages if the deal falls through. The company could also take Tesla's CEO to court and demand the judge force him to buy the social media platform at the agreed-upon price, citing Musk's agreement to the contract.
In the meantime, Musk continues to question how Twitter counts spam and fake accounts. On Tuesday he also suggested the US Securities and Exchange Commission investigate Twitter over how the company reports fake/spam account numbers in its stock exchange filings.