Elon Musk said on Friday that his $44 billion purchase of Twitter Inc was on hold for the time being due to pending information on spam and fraudulent accounts.
"Twitter agreement on hold temporarily seeking information supporting computation that spam/fake accounts do indeed comprise fewer than 5% of users," Musk wrote in a tweet.
In premarket trade, shares of the social networking business plummeted by 20%. Twitter did not reply quickly to a request for comment.
Earlier this month, the business calculated that fraudulent or spam accounts accounted for less than 5% of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter.
It also stated that until the transaction with Musk is finalized, it faces various risks, including whether advertisers would continue to spend on Twitter.
Musk, the world's richest man and CEO of Tesla Inc, had stated that one of his top goals would be to eliminate "spambots" from the site.
On April 14, Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for $43 billion. Musk said that I am proposing to purchase 100% sharing at $ 54.20 per share at a 54% premium to the rate the day before I started investing in Twitter. This offer is my best and last and if it is not accepted, I will have to reconsider my position as a shareholder. Musk owns a 9.2% stake in Twitter. It was revealed on 4 April.
Musk may have offered $43 billion in an initial filing then, but since Twitter's deal was approved on Monday, that figure has jumped to $44 billion. How the figure increased is not yet known.