Elon Musk raised further doubts about the future of his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter on Tuesday, saying “this deal cannot move forward” until he gets more details about the volume of spam and fake accounts on the platform.
Mr. Musk, who is carrying out a public tweet-by-tweet negotiation for the influential social media platform, has latched onto the issue of fake accounts in recent days, in a move that some analysts figure is an attempt to drive down the acquisition price or walk away from the deal altogether.
Twitter has long said in regulatory filings that fewer than 5 percent of its accounts are fake — a figure that Mr. Musk says is hard to believe. In a tweet published at 3:32 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, Mr. Musk said the figure could be well above 20 percent, without providing information to support the claim.
“My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate,” Mr. Musk said in the message.
The tweet on Tuesday built off similar remarks by Mr. Musk at a technology conference in Miami on Monday. Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, said striking a deal for Twitter at a lower price was “not out of the question” considering the questions about spam and fake accounts, according to a person who attended the event.
Twitter’s shares fell 8 percent on Monday to close at $37.39. That is far below the $54.20 a share that Mr. Musk agreed to pay last month to buy the social media company. It is also below where Twitter traded before Mr. Musk initially revealed that he had bought a big stake in the company, the opening move in what has become an increasingly convoluted takeover saga.
In premarket trading, Twitter’s shares slipped further, falling more than 2 percent.
Mr. Musk, who also leads the electric automaker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX, has unleashed confusion over the state of the deal. Last Friday, he tweeted that his purchase of Twitter was “temporarily on hold” until he could get more details about the volume of spam and fake accounts on the platform. He later followed up saying he was still “committed” to the deal.
Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s chief executive, posted a lengthy thread on Monday detailing how the company calculates its number of bots. He said the company had shared an “overview of the estimation process with Elon a week ago.” Mr. Musk responded to the thread with a poop emoji.
Mr. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Twitter declined to comment.
Tech company stocks have taken a beating since Mr. Musk first announced his acquisition of Twitter earlier this month. Shares of Tesla, which are Mr. Musk’s main source of wealth, have fallen almost 30 percent.
Renegotiating a deal would not be easy. In addition to a $1 billion breakup fee, Mr. Musk’s deal with Twitter includes a “specific performance clause,” which gives the company the right to sue him and force him to complete the deal so long as the debt financing he has corralled remains intact.
But Mr. Musk has also created very public headaches for Twitter. Over the weekend, he tweeted that Twitter’s legal department had “called to complain” that he violated a nondisclosure agreement discussing its bot sample size of 100. Mr. Musk’s deal with Twitter also has a nondisparagement clause that prohibits him from tweeting negatively about the transaction.
The two sides have so far continued as if there is a deal. Teams for both sides held a previously scheduled meeting on Friday. (Twitter confirmed the meeting was “part of the transaction planning process.”) On Friday, Bret Taylor, Twitter’s chairman, tweeted: “We remain committed to our agreement.”
Mike Isaac contributed reporting.
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