Elon Musk defends tweets in lawsuit alleging they caused Twitter stock to fall before acquisition
Elon Musk defended his pre-acquisition tweets about Twitter's bot numbers in court, claiming they were accurate and didn't mislead investors.Summary
Elon Musk testified in a San Francisco court regarding a class-action lawsuit alleging his tweets about Twitter (now X) misled investors and caused stock prices to fall before his $44 billion acquisition in October 2022. The lawsuit represents shareholders who sold stock between May 13 and October 4, 2022, and claims Musk intentionally drove down the stock price to either abandon the deal or negotiate a lower price. Musk maintained his assertion that Twitter had a significantly higher percentage of bot and spam accounts—at least 20%—than the 5% disclosed in regulatory filings. He likened stating the bot number was higher to stating obvious facts. Former Twitter CEO Ned Segal testified that the company never filed false reports to the SEC regarding spam numbers, and that the actual spam account rate was closer to 1%. Musk had previously claimed Twitter “lied” about the number of bot accounts. The case also references a 2021 settlement where Twitter paid $809.5 million for overstating growth and user figures, and a 2017 correction of monthly user numbers due to an error involving a third-party app.
(Source：Bnn Bloomberg)