After enormous back and forth situations on the data for the spam and fake accounts, Twitter executives finally are complying to provide the infamous data to Elon Musk. And all this after he announces that he will leave the deal and not proceed with it if they don’t. All that it takes to convince Twitter to comply is to threaten with leaving the deal.
According to the Washington Post, the social media company finally complies with the requirements. It gives Elon Musk access to the private data of the company before he continues his purchase. The social media, which faces about 500 million posts on a daily basis generates a great database that undergoes analyses in detail.
Twitter Complies To Elon’s Spam Account Requirements
Numerous companies around the world already pay a great amount of money to get access to it. All this in order to optimize their ads. The data includes information such as real-time records of posts, the type of devices that the Twitterati use, and some info on the accounts that are active.
Following the letter that Elon Musk’s lawyers sent to Twitter regarding the matter, many first class newsletters show interest in the happenings and the pressure that is creating over the deal is forcing the company to comply to the requirements. New York Times, Daily Mail, and The Washington Post are just some of the pioneering newsletters to cover the topic.
In the official letter to Twitter, Elon warns the social media executives that it is the high time to address this issue as it deserves, because if they don’t do it, he will leave the deal. Twitter is one of the leading social media companies in the world and as such has over 220 million users worldwide.
According to their claims, the spam/fake accounts consisting in these 220 million do not exceed 5%. And that is a very bold statement to make, if not backed up with official realistic data. So why did Twitter resist to show the data immediately?
In the letter that Elon’s lawyer team sent, they say that this is a requirement that has to be addressed, since all this ‘actively resisting and thwarting’ that the company does smells funny and that makes the billionaire to want the data even more. After all, according to Musk, access to this data is something that is mentioned in the buying contract. Declining to present the information is a direct material breach of the deal agreement.
As such, allows Elon to brake the deal and back off from buying of the media without penalties. And they wouldn’t like that, because if nothing more, they were looking forward to this $1 billion penalty of Elon brakes the deal.
Critics give their view on the situation and question Elon’s determination to buy the social media even more now. Some are seeing this 5% issue as something that Elon uses as an excuse to get out of the deal. That he finally realizes that he is overpaying for the company. At first, he’s making some bold statements in the fashion of “I don’t care for the economics of the situation”.
However, now more and more it seems that he does. Maybe he did not care when the price had a difference of about $0,2 per share, but now, with the difference so high he most certainly does care. If he is to buy the social media at the current price, he would pay around $33 billion. Which is a considerable difference. The ‘leftover’ $11 billion is the equivalent to the worth of his space exploration company SpaceX.
From the University of Richmond, they are sure that the access to the data will not satisfy the billionaire. According to Carl Tobias, Elon will face discouragement when he realizes how broad this information is. When he sees how much time he needs to review it, he will seek some other issue to grasp to. Carl is sure Musk’s commitment to acquisition is not so great as he claims.
“Even were Musk to secure access to the ‘firehose data’, it would be resource-intensive to review the data and may prove unsatisfactory to Musk. In short, it now seems that the standoff continues,” – Tobias says.
Since this saga of buying, then not buying, then buying again starts, Twitter’s stock market price fluctuates more and more. If in the past 5 years the company faces a constant rise and eventually reaches about 150% increase in price. But now, on the contrary, in only one year it faces a fall of 35%. The trend for the several past days is uprising again, but still far below the course where it was before the deal negotiations started.
When the deal is struck, the price that is agreed is $54,2 per share. However, the current price is $40.44 on the market. That is a difference of about 25%, which makes the billionaire pay 25% more than the company is worth.
Nevertheless, both sides agree that they are still willing to move on and finish the transaction. Musk is ‘still committed to acquisition’ and Twitter will ‘continue to cooperatively share information with Mr. Musk to consummate the transaction in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement”.
Vijaya Gadde is previously a victim of Elon’s Tweet attacks, plus a chief legal officer in Twitter. Reports state that past Wednesday, she shares information to all shareholders that she will introduce a vote on the deal at the end of the summer. Late July to mid-September is the period when we can expect all this to end.
Just imagine if the shareholders vote not to sell the company to him. That would be some dramatic turn of events. Hopefully there will be no more complications, since the world has had enough of it lately.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7ojx4Fw1XY
