Shares of Twitter (TWTR) dropped 7% in premarket trading on Monday amid news that Elon Musk plans to cancel his $44 billion deal to buy the social media platform.

Musk said that he was walking away from the Twitter deal due to the number of bots and fake accounts on the site, which he claims the company is not being truthful about.

Twitter shares rebounded slightly in early morning trading, down nearly 6%, while shares of Tesla (TSLA) were up over 0.50% at the same time.

Musk’s attorneys informed the Twitter board on Friday of Musk’s cancellation plans, but Twitter responded by saying it would sue the billionaire to enforce the takeover deal. Twitter contends spam accounts only comprise 5% of its monetizable daily active users, information which it said has been provided to Musk.

Musk took to Twitter to express his thoughts about a potential lawsuit. The Tesla CEO posted a mocking meme Sunday that featured images of himself laughing over how the platform is looking to “force” him into a deal and would have to release the bot information he claims it is withholding in court as part of the lawsuit.

Musk, who has 100.8 million followers on Twitter, also posted another tweet Sunday showing an image of Chuck Norris in front of a chessboard, captioning it “Chuckmate.” It was unclear at the time of writing if the second post was also a poke at Twitter.

Back in May, Musk announced that he had put the Twitter deal “temporarily on hold” as he waited for more proof about the bot and spam accounts.

According to the Washington Post, last month, Musk was provided with Twitter’s internal trove of data called its “firehose” which includes information on the massive 500 million tweets posted to the site each day. The data provided featured information about the device each tweet came from as well as details on the accounts that tweeted, the news outlet said.

As of Monday premarket trading, shares of Twitter were trading at $34.80, down $2.01, or 5.46%.

Elon Musk backing out of his deal to buy Twitter sets the stage for litigation over a $1 billion breakup fee as well as harm done to Twitter's reputation and share price.
Elon Musk backing out of his deal to buy Twitter sets the stage for litigation over a $1 billion breakup fee as well as harm done to Twitter's reputation and share price. AFP / Olivier DOULIERY
RELATED STORIES