While Elon Musk’s decision not to buy Twitter was heavily telegraphed, that’s still not stopping investors from taking it out on the company’s stock Monday morning.
Shares of the social media company fell nearly 10% in early trading as investors reacted to the news.
Musk, late Friday, announced he was backing out of the $44 billion deal, citing the company’s alleged lack of transparency over the issue of bots on the site. Twitter, in turn, announced it planned to take Musk to court, hoping to force him to go through with the purchase.
Musk reacted to the lawsuit Monday, posting a meme of him laughing at the legal action, rather than taking the typical “refrain from comment” approach most companies do when a possible court date is pending.
As of 9:45 a.m. ET, Twitter stock was trading at $34.49, a slight recovery from the am lows. That’s a far cry from the $51.70 it hit on April 25, when Musk announced he planned to buy the company for $54.20 per share.
And analysts say Twitter could have a long way to go before hit hits bottom.
“We believe that Elon Musk’s intentions to terminate the merger are more based on the recent market sell-off than the [percentage] of fake accounts on TWTR or TWTR’s ‘failure’ to comply with his requests,” said Jefferies in a note to investors on Sunday.” In the absence of a deal, we would not be surprised to see the stock find a floor at $23.50.”
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