Elon Musk lays out three hurdles to hatching the Twitter deal

The Future. Elon Musk is revealing where he’s at with his acquisition of Twitter. On Twitter’s end, it’s a question of bots and shareholder approval. On his, it’s that little question of how he’s paying for it. If a deal does go through, expect Musk to beta test features and outline experiments in much the same way: awaiting all of our hot takes — probably in the form of a tweet.

Hurdles to the nest
Musk’s takeover of Twitter is turning into a saga. In the latest episode, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO lists the three things he’s still waiting on to close the deal (if he wants a deal to close…).

• He’s “still awaiting resolution” on the number of bot accounts on the platform.
• He’s still working out the details of his debt financing.
• He still needs to win the approval of Twitter’s shareholders.

Twitter, please
So, how is Musk faring on these goals? Twitter announced earlier this month that it would comply with Musk’s request for data on the number of bot and spam accounts. And yesterday, the company’s board asked shareholders to “vote (for) the adoption of the merger agreement.” That ticked Twitter’s stock up 2% to $38.70… still way under the $54.20 that Musk said he would buy the company at.

But then comes the issue of Musk’s financing. While he previously said that he had secured funding through both his own equity and two bank-loan commitments. But those bank loans were leveraged against his stake in Tesla, which — like every other stock — has taken a nosedive. So, it looks like Musk may rely less on those loans and put up more equity. He reportedly also asked his buddy and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey to hold onto his equity.

No one said piecing together $44 billion was going to be easy…