Elon Musk stoked speculation that he could seek to renegotiate his takeover of Twitter Inc., saying a viable deal at a lower price wouldn’t be “out of the question.”
Twitter shares fell 8.2% at the close of trading in New York. The stock has been dropping on speculation that Musk could walk away from the $44 billion acquisition. That concern has grown in the past week as Musk has questioned Twitter’s publicly disclosed data on the percentage of spam and fake accounts on its social-media service.
Musk pressed further on that front Monday at a Miami tech conference, estimating that fake users make up at least 20% of all Twitter accounts. That was the low end of his estimate on the number of bots on the network, and he asked rhetorically if it could be as high as 90%, according to a livestreamed video of his remarks posted by a Twitter user.
