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Twitter, Inc. Stock Falls as salesforce.com Walks Away From Bid

By Daniel Sparks – Oct 14, 2016 at 9:44AM

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The struggling social network apparently isn't the "right fit."

Twitter headquarters. Image source: Aaron Durand (@everydaydude) for Twitter.

What happened?

Shares of social network Twitter (TWTR) fell by about 6% on Friday when news broke that salesforce.com (CRM 0.22%), which was at one point considering whether it should place a bid to buy Twitter, will not be making a bid after all.

TWTR Price Chart

TWTR Price data by YCharts.

"In this case, we've walked away," said Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff in an interview with the Financial Times (via Reuters). "It wasn't the right fit for us."

This news follows a previous report earlier this month from Bloomberg stating top potential bidders, including Salesforce, were no longer interested in bidding for the company. But this report may carry more weight for investors since it quotes Benioff directly.

Does it matter?

Twitter shareholders -- or investors in any stock, for that matter -- shouldn't buy or sell based on acquisition and merger speculation. Until there's an official announcement of an acquisition directly by the companies involved, there is simply too much uncertainty for investors to evaluate what a deal could mean.

Given that a buyout was never certain in the first place, this news has no bearing on the underlying value of Twitter's business.

Daniel Sparks has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Twitter. The Motley Fool recommends Salesforce.com. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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