Twitter: shareholder vote to be held by August

Twitter expects a shareholder vote on Elon Musk‘s takeover offer to come in early August. 

Twitter shareholder vote expected in August

This was reported by Reuters, revealing that the company says it continues to work constructively to complete this deal. 

Theoretically, the transaction would currently be at a standstill, after Musk decided to stall apparently due to uncertain data on the massive presence of bots on the social network. 

In reality, it seems that the deal is proceeding, albeit not expeditiously, so much so that the company has agreed to provide Musk with details of its internal estimates regarding the presence and activity of bots on their platform. 

Elon Musk is currently a minority shareholder in Twitter, but with a stake second only to that of Vanguard Group. However, he has refused to join the company’s current board of directors because he aims to take it over completely. 

In recent days, Musk’s lawyers had warned that he might abandon the idea of acquiring the company if he was not provided with the data he had requested on bots, spam and fake accounts, so much so that the company has since agreed to provide it to him. 

As Reuters reports, part of this data is made up of Twitter’s “firehose”, i.e. an immense amount of data comprising all the tweets published on the platform and analyzed with different parameters. It is not certain, however, that this data is sufficient to answer the questions posed by Musk. 

It is worth remembering that Musk himself had said he was prepared to have the data analyzed by an independent source of his own, so it is possible that even the mere provision of this information could at least answer his questions. 

It remains to be seen what will emerge from those analyses, and whether what emerges will jeopardize the takeover or not. 

The market and investors await the conclusion of negotiations

As far as the company is concerned, the next step is to set a date for the shareholder consultation. Twitter’s chief lawyer, Vijaya Gadde, said during an employee meeting that it would be sometime in late July or early August.

The situation therefore still seems to be at a standstill, but at least something is still moving. At this point in time, it is not yet possible to say for sure whether the takeover will take place or not, but Musk’s attitude could also be aimed at proposing a new offer at a lowered price. 

The purchase price set by Musk for now is $54.2 per share, and if the deal goes through, this will be the price paid. After the announcement of the offer, Twitter’s share price on the stock exchange had risen from $39 to $54, but later fell back to below $36 when Musk suspended the takeover process. 

However, it has now returned to $39, i.e. perfectly in line with the pre-bid value. This dynamic seems to suggest quite clearly that at the moment there is total uncertainty about the outcome.