Elon Musk acknowledges that he overpaid for Twitter but praises the it's "great potential."
Despite his previous attempts to back out of the $44 billion agreement, Elon Musk expressed excitement on Wednesday about his upcoming acquisition of Twitter.
During the conference call that Tesla held with analysts and investors, the billionaire CEO of the company discussed the deal.
Musk added, 'I think it's huge that something sort of sat around for a while, but has enormous potential. Despite the fact that I and the other investors are clearly overpaying for Twitter at the moment, in my opinion, the company's long-term potential is significantly bigger than its current valuation.
Musk and the social media juggernaut reached an agreement in April to buy it and take it private for $54.20 a share. He informed Twitter of his intent to end the agreement in July, alleging that the social media network had broken its commitments by exaggerating the amount of spam and fraudulent accounts there. Twitter claims that fewer than 5% of its user base is made up of spam and fraudulent accounts. Twitter retaliated by suing Musk, alleging that he was refusing to uphold the terms of the contract because 'the arrangement he made no longer serves his personal interests.' Musk then filed a countersuit, which was later updated to incorporate claims made by Peiter 'Mudge' Zatko, a former Twitter security head and whistleblower, last month.
According to Musk, his choice to acquire Twitter may shorten the three to five years needed to create X, a 'everything app.'
Musk co-founded X.com in 1999, which was initially an online bank. A year later, it merged with software company Confinity Inc. and adopted the name PayPal. In 2002, online retailer eBay paid $1.5 billion for the electronic payments startup, and in 2015, PayPal was split off into a separate business. Musk rebuilt the website in 2017 after purchasing the X.com domain name.
Musk claimed there is now no compelling reason to combine his enterprises under one brand when questioned about the prospect. Musk is the founder of SpaceX, Neuralink, and the Tesla Motors in addition to Tesla.
