Musk reverses course to buy Twitter for original deal price

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has once more reversed course and agreed to purchase Twitter for the originally agreed $54.20 per share.

After a brief halt in trading due to the announcement, the value of Twitter shares increased by 18%. According to a report by Bloomberg, sources with knowledge of the situation asserted that Musk updated his offer in a letter to the social networking site. 

The original deal between Twitter and Musk

In April, Musk made an initial offer to purchase Twitter for $54.20 per share, or about $44 billion. He highlighted a desire to turn the platform into a “digital town square” and to treat free expression more seriously. Additionally, he promised to eliminate the platform’s pervasive spam and scam bot issues, particularly prevalent in the cryptocurrency sector.

However, in June, the billionaire threatened to back out of the deal if Twitter hid data regarding bots and ultimately withdrew from the agreement out of concern that the social networking platform was exaggerating the severity of its spam issue, causing noncompliance with contractual obligations. On the other hand, in May, Twitter asserted that 95% of the accounts were supported by genuine people. 

Musk claimed in a July filing that Twitter had refused to give him data that wasn’t backed by qualifiers or other factors that made the data “minimally useful” when he asked for confirmation of these statistics.

Despite Musk’s attempts, Twitter soon after sued the billionaire to make him carry through. In reality, a clause that would have allowed Jack Dorsey’s platform to compel him to complete the merger was included in the original merger agreement. It also accused Musk of causing initial doubt about their acquisition, which contributed to the company’s poor Q2 financial statistics.

Private conversations Musk had exchanged about his plans for Twitter with other billionaires, including Jack Dorsey, surfaced last week as part of his lawsuit against the firm.