Tesla Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Elon Musk has said that he was excited about his pending acquisition of Twitter Inc, despite he and other investors were overpaying for the social media firm, news agency Reuters reported. The Tesla CEO, the world's richest person, is pursuing the Twitter acquisition after earlier trying to back out of the $44-billion deal.
In July, Musk tried to walk away from the takeover agreement on discovering that Twitter had allegedly misled him about fake accounts, among other concerns. Musk's allegations were also partly pointed out by Twitter whistleblower Peiter "Mudge" Zatko that became public in August.
According to the report, Musk was replying a question during a call after the electric vehicle maker's quarterly report. He described Twitter as an asset that had "languished" for a long time. "Myself and the other investors are obviously overpaying for Twitter right now. The long-term potential for Twitter in my view is an order of magnitude greater than its current value," Musk said.
In the same conference call Elon Musk also spoke optimistically about Tesla. The US-based electric carmaker, with a market cap now under $700 billion, could be worth more than the combined value of Apple Inc's $2.3 trillion and oil producer Saudi Aramco's $2.1 trillion, he said.
According to some experts, Musk who has been trying to raise cash to fund the Twitter purchase, may need to offload about $3 billion more in stock after the Tesla quarterly report to do so.
A Delaware judge ordered a pause to Twitter Inc's lawsuit against Elon Musk, giving the billionaire until October 28 to close the deal.
Tesla investors feared that the billionaire may sell more Tesla stocks to finance the deal and may be spreading himself too thin, pulling down shares.
Musk, CEO of SpaceX, and Neuralink and Boring Company, has said that he does not have a current plan to combine them with Twitter under one umbrella.