Twitter to Hold Shareholder Vote for Elon Musk’s Buyout

CNBC: Twitter said that it would hold a shareholder meeting to vote on the company’s $44 billion acquisition by Elon Musk on September 13. The shareholder meeting will commence at 10:00 AM PT, and will be available via a webcast. Shareholders will be able to watch the meeting live and then vote, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Twitter’s board of directors has previously urged its shareholders to approve the company’s sale to Musk (CNBC). 

Wall Street Journal: Last week, Twitter reported second-quarter results that showed a surprising decline in revenue that it blamed on advertising weakness and uncertainty related to the deal. The company also reported a wider loss and said expenses included $33 million in acquisition-related costs. Though Twitter’s shares rose around 1% following the report, analysts said Twitter’s stock likely would have taken a hit if Mr. Musk wasn’t on the hook to buy the company. A day earlier rival Snap Inc. posted its weakest-ever quarterly sales growth because of what it said was “increasing competition for advertising dollars that are now growing more slowly.” Mr. Musk has said his primary reason for wanting out of his deal for Twitter is a lack of faith in the company’s longstanding estimate that less than 5% of its monetizable daily active users are spam or fake accounts. He has said that estimate is probably too low. In a May 6 meeting with Twitter executives about how spam and fake accounts are calculated, Mr. Musk ’s team said he was “flabbergasted to learn just how meager Twitter’s process was” and pointed to the absence of automated tools to help with the calculation, a recent court filing showed (Wall Street Journal).