Elon Musk says Twitter takeover 'temporarily on hold'

Elon Musk's $44 billion deal to buy Twitter is "on hold" for the moment, the billionaire business tycoon said on Friday.

"Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users," Musk tweeted.

The price of shares in the social media company dipped double digits in premarket trading after the Tesla and SpaceX CEO's tweet.

In his tweet announcing the snag in the deal, Musk shared a news article from earlier this month about a Twitter disclosure in which the company estimated that fake or spam accounts represent fewer than 5% of its 229 million monetizable daily active users in the first quarter.

Last month, Twitter agreed to sell the company to Musk for $44 billion in cash. Musk plans to take the social media company private and focus on making the platform more friendly toward free speech.