Yesterday we told you that Elon Musk is demanding that Twitter take care of three things before he moves forward with his acquisition of the company. He wants to know how many fake accounts created by bots contain illegitimate Twitter subscribers. The company says that the number of fake users is less than 5% of the total which is a figure heavily rejected by the richest man in the world as being false.
Musk's tweet helped sent the shares up by over 6% even though no terms of a deal were discussed with any major financing partners. The SEC’s complaint, filed in federal district court in the Southern District of New York, alleged that Musk violated anti-fraud provisions of the federal securities laws., Twitter's board today voted to approve the $44 billion merger. Still, on the corner of Wall Street and Main Street, the pricing of Twitter's shares remains well below the $54.
In an interview with Bloomberg last month, Musk said that he will cut the salaried workforce at Tesla by 10% over the next three months. He also said that his goal to slash jobs at the electric carmaker has come about because of a"super bad feeling" he has about the U.S. economy. Talking about the possibility of a U.S. recession, the CEO said,"It is not a certainty, but it appears more likely than not."Musk's fear of receiving a margin call is a legitimate concern.
To reduce the risk of receiving a margin call, Elon Musk will need to make a change to how the deal is currently financed. This could be done by reducing the value of the deal. The quickest way this could be accomplished would be for Elon to announce that he was walking away from the deal. Short-seller Hindenburg Research said last month,"If Elon Musk's bid for Twitter disappeared tomorrow, Twitter's equity would fall by 50% from current levels.
A short-seller is a trader who profits from a falling stock by borrowing the shares and then sells them hoping to buy back the stock at a lower price. Now that Twitter's board of directors has approved the deal, it has sent the SEC a letter recommending to Twitter stockholders that they vote "the adoption of the merger agreement." If the deal were to close now, investors in Twitter would collect a profit of $15.22 for each share they own.