Despite the fact that the deal is temporarily on hold, Twitter CEO Agrawal said he still expects Elon Musk's $44 billion acquisition to close in 2022.
While I expect the deal to close, I need to be prepared for all scenarios and always do what s right for Twitter, Agrawal said in a Twitter thread on Friday. I am responsible for leading and running Twitter, and my job is to build a stronger Twitter every day. The deal, which would take the social media giant private at $54.20 per share, is currently on hold pending details supporting the calculations that spam and fake accounts represent less than 5% of Twitter's users. In the year, the monetizable daily active user base increased 15.9% to 229 million, including 39.6 million daily active users in the US and 189.4 million daily active users.
Musk has previously promised to crack down on spam bots to improve the user experience on Twitter. Self-described free speech absolutist has also expressed interest in open sourcing Twitter's algorithm to increase transparency and said he would be a free speech absolutist.
The deal must be approved by the shareholder and regulatory approval and satisfy other customary closing conditions in order to close.
Musk stated in a follow-up tweet on Friday that he is still committed to completing the acquisition.
Agrawal spoke about the company's recent decision to cut back non-labor spending.
He explained that our industry is in a very challenging macro environment right now. I won't use the deal as an excuse to avoid making important decisions for the health of the company, nor will any leader at Twitter. In addition to the spending cuts, Twitter has announced plans to pause most hiring and backfills, except for business critical roles.
The general manager of the consumer product division, Kayvon Beykpour, and the revenue product lead, Bruce Falk, have both been let go. Jay Sullivan, Twitter's vice president of consumer products, will serve as the general manager of BlueBird and interim general manager of Goldbird.
Agrawal says that he will continue to embrace the deep complexities of Twitter and that users and investors should expect more change for the better. He said that he will try to bring more transparency to users regarding the company's work.
He concluded that you won't see tweets from me on the topic of the day or the loudest sound bite, but rather on the ongoing, continuous, and challenging work our teams are doing to improve the public conversation on Twitter.
Friday's trading session closed at $40.69 apiece, down more than 9%. The stock is down nearly 5% year-to-date and about 21% in the past year.