‘Whatever you say bounce off me and sticks to you,’ is the rest of that riposte, and what the Tesla Inc TSLA Chief Executive, Elon Musk, said in response to Twitter Inc TWTR blaming him (in part) for its missed earnings report on Friday.
What happened: Twitter’s revenues for the second quarter came in at $1.18 billion, falling short of Street expectations by 1%, with the company blaming its legal battle to close the $44-billion acquisition by Musk and a weakening digital advertising market.
“Advertising industry headwinds associated with the macroenvironment, as well as uncertainty related to the pending acquisition of Twitter by an affiliate of Elon Musk,” the micro-blogging company said on Friday while deciding to not give any forward guidance for the third quarter citing the continued uncertainty of the Musk acquisition.
Twitter said it has spent $33 million on expenses surrounding the acquisition, and also called Musk’s planned termination invalid, saying, “Twitter believes that Mr. Musk’s purported termination is invalid and wrongful, and the merger agreement remains in effect.”
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Here are the earnings numbers.
Earnings per share: A loss of 8 cents, adjusted, vs expected earnings of 14 cents
- Revenue: $1.18 billion vs. $1.32 billion
- Monetizable daily active users: 237.8 million vs 238.08 million expected
- Costs and expenses grew 31% to $1.52 billion
Why it matters: The microblogging company has been reporting that less than 5% of active users are bot and spam accounts every quarter since 2013 — Musk cited the percentage of bot and spam accounts as his justification for pulling out of the agreement.
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Twitter was recently had its request granted by the Delaware court of chancery for a fast-track trial, now set for October, versus the February date Musk wanted.
Price action: Shares of Twitter are up 1.59% to $40.15 on Friday, while shares of Tesla were flat at $815.96 at the time of writing.
Photo: Created with an image from Heisenberg Media on Flickr
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