Elon Musk on Tuesday tweeted that his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter "cannot move forward" unless company CEO Parag Agrawal publicly proves that less than 5% of users are bots or spam accounts.
Why it matters: Musk's Tuesday tweet was just the latest in a series of ongoing acts from Musk amid his bid to buy Twitter and take it private. Here is a timeline of Musk's remarks, discussions and dealings in his quest to buy the company.
March 26: Musk contacts Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s founder, former chief executive officer and one of Twitter’s current directors, to discuss "the future direction of social media," including the benefits of open social protocols, according to an SEC filing.
March 27: Musk tells Twitter executives he is considering various options, including potentially joining the Twitter board, seeking to take Twitter private or starting a competitor to Twitter, per the SEC filing.
- Musk had discussions with Twitter executives about how he purchased a major stake of more than 5% of Twitter stock.
April 4: Musk announces he has bought a 9.2% stake in Twitter, the equivalent to 73,486,938 shares of Twitter common stock at the time and worth about $2.89 billion.
April 5: Twitter submits a filing before the SEC that makes Musk a director until 2024.
April 11: Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal tweets that Musk would not be joining Twitter's board.
April 14: Musk offers to buy Twitter, saying he would pay $54.20 a share in cash, or about $43 billion, according to documents filed with the SEC.
April 15: Twitter enacts a defensive measure — called a poison pill on corporate terms — that would stop Musk's potential $43 billion hostile takeover bid
April 21: In a federal securities filing, Musk says that he didn't have any equity partners for his Twitter takeover bid.
April 25: Twitter agrees to be acquired by Musk for $44 billion. Musk would pay $54.20 per share and would have been personally responsible for half of the financing.
May 10: Musk says he would reverse Twitter's current permanent ban of former President Trump.
May 14: Musk tweets that his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter is "temporarily on hold" as he wants to learn more about Twitter's recent estimate that spam and fake accounts make up less than 5% of total users.
May 16: In a tweet thread, Agrawal lays out how Twitter found that "less than 5%" of its users are spam or fake accounts. Musk replies with a poop emoji.
- Later that day, Musk said at the 2022 All-In Summit that a viable Twitter deal is "not out of the question" at a lower price.
- He also criticized Agrawal's comments, saying there is probably four to five times the number of bots compared to what Twitter had said.
- The lowest estimate, Musk said, is that Twitter is 20% full of bots.
May 17: Musk says his bid to buy Twitter "cannot move forward" because he has questions about the fake and spam accounts number.
- "My offer was based on Twitter's SEC filings being accurate," Musk said in a tweet. "Yesterday, Twitter's CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does."
- In a lengthy regulatory filing the Twitter board urged shareholders to vote in favor of the deal and provided a play-by-play look into how the board reached an agreement with Musk last month.
Go deeper ... The Musk-Twitter endgame
