Twitter share price crashes amid fears Elon Musk deal could be pulled

File photo dated 26/04/22 of The Twitter social media app running on a mobile phone in London, as hundreds of profiles belonging to the “very worst” Twitter trolls reared up within days of Elon Musk’s multibillion-pound buyout bid, according an international network of volunteers. Issue date: Monday May 9, 2022. (PA Wire)

Twitter’s share price has plunged in pre-market trading, in the wake of Elon Musk’s announcement that his deal to buy the company is on hold.

The price dropped by more than 20 per cent in the wake of Mr Musk’s announcement, dragging it down to around $36. That is well below the $54.20 per share that Mr Musk offered in the deal.

Mr Musk said that he was postponing the detail until he could get more information on Twitter’s claim that less than 5 per cent of its users are fake and spam accounts.

The announcement came amid increasing speculation that Mr Musk could pull out of the deal before it is completed, given the turbulence in both Twitter’s share price and the stock market more generally.

Mr Musk said in his announcement that the postponement was temporary – but it nonetheless fed into more suggestions that he could decline to go through with the deal.

“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” he wrote in the tweet. It included a link to a report on a filing from Twitter that made the 5 per cent claim as part of its data on how many users it can serve ads to.

Mr Musk did not give any more information about his reasoning, what details he was looking for, or how they might affect his decision to go through with the deal in the end.