Elon Musk said his deal to buy Twitter was on hold, raising questions about the takeover.
Photo:
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News
Shares of
Twitter Inc.
TWTR -2.19%
tumbled in premarket trading after
Elon Musk
said his deal to buy the social-media company was on hold.
Shares of Twitter shed 11% before the opening bell, falling to $40.33. If shares of the company open at that price Friday, it would mark the lowest level for the stock since early April, just before Mr. Musk disclosed a surprise 9% stake in the company.
Mr. Musk, the chief executive of
Tesla Inc.
TSLA -0.82%
, last month struck a deal to buy Twitter and take it private, capping a topsy-turvy month for the social-media company and its stock. But on Friday morning, he tweeted, “Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.” He linked to a May 2 Reuters report about a recent Twitter securities filing with those statistics.
Later Friday morning, he added on Twitter that he was “still committed” to the acquisition. That helped Twitter trim its losses after earlier falling more than 20% in the premarket session.
Still, at its premarket price, Twitter’s shares are now trading about 26% below the deal price of $54.20 a share. Shares of the company had already been falling recently, reflecting investor worries about the outlook for the deal.
But Twitter, like many technology stocks, has also been hit hard lately by a broad market selloff of riskier assets. Tesla shares have also been pummeled. Yet Tesla shares jumped 7.1% on the news Friday before the opening bell.
Write to Caitlin McCabe at [email protected]
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
