Twitter calls Elon Musk’s case against $44 billion deal ‘implausible’

Twitter has accused Elon Musk of creating a ‘new set of excuses’ to avoid honoring his $44 billion deal to buy the social media company, calling his recently filed objections ‘implausible and contrary to fact “.

After Twitter sued Musk last month to force the deal, Musk filed a countersuit last week in an attempt to block the social media company’s efforts, which are still under seal. A judge ordered his release on Friday.

Twitter went public with its rebuttals to the Tesla CEO’s court case on Thursday in a court filing shared by Bret Taylor, chairman of the social media group’s board of directors.

In his countersuit, Musk again claimed that Twitter violated the agreement by significantly underestimating the proportion of spam and bots on its platform. The billionaire’s own analysis estimated the number of bot or spam accounts to be at least 10% of all users. Twitter previously estimated that bots made up less than 5% of accounts.

Musk also claimed that Twitter overestimated the number of its monetizable users, alleging that the number of users who actually saw advertising on the service was “about 65 million fewer” than the company depicted in regulatory filings. . Musk claimed that only around 16 million users saw the “majority” of the advertising.

Twitter responded by calling Musk’s estimates “factually inaccurate, legally insufficient and commercially irrelevant.”

He said the methodology behind Musk’s estimates was “untenable on its face” and “did not measure the same as Twitter or even use the same data as Twitter.”

The company questioned the veracity of Musk’s data, saying a tool allegedly used to analyze the data labeled the billionaire’s own account a “likely robot”.

Twitter concluded: “Musk’s counterclaims, based on distortion, misrepresentation and outright deception, change nothing.”

In addition to the filings, both parties are scouring the waters for additional information regarding the wording of the agreement.

Musk subpoenaed Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase for more details on how they advised Twitter, requesting documents detailing financial performance, discussions with the company about the deal and any analysis of its valuation.

Twitter, meanwhile, sent requests for information to the banks responsible for financing the deal by Musk, as well as co-investors and others in the billionaire’s orbit.

As the dispute with Twitter escalates and heads for an expedited court date on October 17, Musk is also facing questions from fans and Tesla shareholders about his role as chief executive of the electric car maker.

At Tesla’s annual meeting on Thursday, Musk addressed several issues related to the Twitter dispute and said he had “a good idea of ​​where to lead the engineering team at Twitter to radically improve it. “.

Asked what would happen to Tesla if he left or shared his time, Musk replied, “I think Tesla would continue to do very well even if I was kidnapped by aliens or returned to my home planet.”

Additional reporting by Richard Waters in San Francisco